Oxford City Council has published a list of nine key actions that communities and individuals can adopt in order to reduce their carbon footprint. This list is part of Oxford’s plans to reach net zero by 2040 or earlier.
The first seven measures are living car-free, traveling less, flying less, reducing energy consumption, eating less meat and dairy, reusing and recycling appliances, and using gardens in biodiversity friendly ways. The last two measures are contacting politicians and investing money sustainably.
The list of individual actions comes on top of a set of political actions the Council has already taken on a local level. These include the introduction of a Zero Emission Zone in the City Centre, investment into the hybrid battery energy storage system ‘Energy Superhub Oxford’, and creating a Zero Carbon Roadmap.
The individual actions also needed to be supported by national policy. The Council notes that there is a lack of funding from the central government for improving the energy efficiency of housing. It says that this refurbishment is “critical to reducing emissions and preventing increasing levels of fuel poverty”.
Energy efficiency has also been the target of the recent Insulate Britain protests. Blocking important highways, activists have called for national programmes to help insulate private and social housing. Insulate Britain say that failure to insulate is linked with high environmental and social costs.
Low Carbon Oxford North expressed its support for the Council’s list of measures. However, the group also highlighted the role of central government in making local change easier. They said: “As our government hosts the climate talks in Glasgow this week and next, we hope they will announce new practical policies and funding to make it easier for individuals and households to play their part. This is particularly important on flying and on home energy, especially insulation.”
Student-led Oxford Climate Justice Campaign, said: “We especially call on the University of Oxford to listen to the advice given by Oxford City Council and to immediately end financial ties to the fossil fuel industry. Despite partially divesting its endowment fund, the University’s pensions continue to invest in fossil fuels. We call on the University to publicly demand USS, the University pension provider, divest from fossil fuels immediately or for the University to at least provide alternative ethical pension options for staff.”
The University and the Home Office has been contacted for comment.
The thing with writing about uni sport is that basically nobody was at the match, and the responsibility falls on me to take you through the motions of what happened. But the score hangs unapologetically above these words, and the story seems pre-told: a narrow victory over Brookes. There were probably some moments where it was close and some moments where Oxford pulled away and it was dramatic till the end and everyone was pleased and we all lived happily ever after. Annoyingly, this is exactly how it was.
But put aside your narrative templates for the moment and come down to Iffley Road. It’s the second league game of the season and the Blues are warming up to play their biggest rivals in a division where, historically, to get promoted, you need to win close to all your matches. As a spectator, you join me on the unwelcomingly hard school-hall benches by the entrance to the court. The Brookes benches have a decent smattering of supporters, our benches a bit less so. I try and extract some information from the warm-ups. The Brookes players look a bit bigger, a bit more imposing. Oxford seems to be getting in a few more threes than before the last match. Nothing jumps out at me, and the game tips off.
The game tips off and this time, I’m determined to understand things a bit more. Immediately, the match seems faster paced than last week. There is more movement and slicker passes. Everyone just seems a bit more on the ball. Yet the scoreboard is barely changing. Every attack seems to be thwarted at the last moment.
Last week, I said that drives on a fast transition, i.e. running up to the basket before the opposition gets back in defence, are “quite straightforward”. But this requires correction, because although Oxford keep getting the ball quickly up the court, the opposition are are also quickly getting back to defend. These fast counters generally end with one offensive player streaking towards the hoop, and one defensive player streaking after him, and one player jumps and the other player flies, and everyone else looks on. At this point, only one player can succeed. Either the shooter manages to manoeuvre the ball over/around the defender, or, alternatively, the defender blocks it, the shooter falls to the floor, and the opposition subs are on their feet, cheering.
This first quarter is characterised by a lot of this defensive cheering, and not much else. It ends 12-7. And still, nothing quite has jumped out at me. The play has been higher quality than last week but there’s not been much drama, and characters have not yet emerged. Though Oxford are ahead, it’s not an indication of who’s going to win this game, because this game hasn’t really begun.
The players walk back onto the court and someone on the bench near me crows at Orin Varley, the captain, and star player from last week, “hey Orin, you know you’ve got to get it in the basket, right?” Orin smiles in a please-shut-up kind of way and the second quarter begins. Straight away, Orin is driving, gets past one, gets past two, but is blocked. Soon after, Charalampos (Harry) Kokkalis, a Blues player always with a particularly serious expression on his face, is driving, gets to the hoop and whips the ball out wide, flying off the court in the process. This drive-and-pass tactic is one Jamie, the coach, has been trying to encourage. Eventually, the move leads to a three, and Oxford have built up a lead. It’s 17-9. The engine of the game seems to just now be lightly rumbling, the gears starting to turn.
There’s a free throw—the unimpeded shot(s) you get when you’ve been fouled. Free throws have this mysterious power to cast silence over the room. There’s no passes to call for, or positioning to be organised, so everyone just watches and waits. But through the silence, the Brookes coach, a bearded guy in a t-shirt and khakis, calls out plaintively to his players “give me some good defence now please”. And for the next couple minutes, Oxford fails to score, and Brookes come back, and it’s 17-17. There are four minutes to go. The gears are turning a bit faster.
Josh Soifer comes on. I hadn’t realised he had been off for so long. He’d got into foul trouble early in the match, so Jamie had saved him and now it seems it’s time. Josh is a bit of a beast. He’s a 6’5” Canadian with one of the more powerful builds on the team. As his first action, he fails to score a two but gets it in on the rebound. It’s unclear to me how certain players consistently get rebounds when these situations look to me like a crush of people with no clear way to negotiate them, but Josh tells me you just get the knack for it, so I guess that’s fair enough. Where the ball’s going to go, how to react to the different directions players come from: it’s all so quick, you just get a sense for it. And the height and strength help too.
OUBbC player Alex Koukouravas. Credit: Oxford University Basketball Club
Orin scores a big three. Our critic on the bench shouts “finally!”. Alex Koukouravas, a first-year grad with professional BBL experience and a clearly high basketball IQ, hits a massive three straight after. Oxford are in the lead again. And now they’ve transitioned fast, and flying towards the hoop, but it’s not straightforward, it’s blocked, and Brookes go mental, and I’m writing notes so fast. Brookes hit a three. Orin misses a three. Brookes get a two. Oxford miss. Another two for Brookes. Another two for Brookes. Harry gets a foul. He misses both free throws. The buzzer goes. It’s half time, and it’s 27-29.
The game just exploded, as if that slow-scoring opening was compressing energy that had to be released. Everyone on the benches is looking around at each other. In professional sport, the notability of a moment is confirmed through texts from friends and through social media. The instances take on greater significance because they are filmed and shared and commented on. But here, there is nothing to consecrate the moment. And it’s not that it was so unbelievable. It’s just that it was noteworthy, yet only lives on in the words I’ve written here. And the story is only a story because the moments live on and add up to something in memory and in ink.
The Blues come out for the third quarter. They’re two down. Everybody gets back in their hard, wooden seats and watches a ten-minute masterclass. Akin Akinlabi, a player who seems to have some leadership qualities, who is the guy who shouts ‘hu-stle!’ in between the shouts of ‘defence’ when on the bench, hits a big three. Soifer links up with Sam Ajakaiye—6’6”, though not very intimidating—to produce a great two. Down the other end, Sam blocks, and it falls to Orin who hits another three (another shout of “finally, Orin!”).
The Brookes coach is back to shouting about better defence, but this time it doesn’t work. And Alex is having the quarter of his life. As Jamie says later, it seemed like every shot he went for was guaranteed to go in from the moment the ball left his hands, especially ‘shots off the bounce’ (i.e. some dribbling and then a shot). As the quarter closes, one of the more belligerent Brookes players shoots a successful three from a mile out and lifts his hands in the air like ‘is that enough for you?’ but it’s not enough because it’s 63-50, and the buzzer goes.
The Oxford players lumber over to their bench. As Jamie praises them, they have that exhausted but satisfied expression that comes from success under pressure. As much as training and team socials can do, there’s nothing as good for bonding as a big collective effort in circumstances that require it. They’ve bonded in the same way that you do with people you do a big hike with, or who you go through an essay crisis with. There’s an understanding and appreciation built that does not need to be stated.
In some way, it feels like I’ve just seen the A-team, the Oxford Blues at their best. Yet this isn’t the A-team. Akin is not fully a starter. Sam has been third-choice in his position up to this point—his two superiors are both ill. But Akin’s put in one of his best performances. And Sam has really seized the opportunity. And Alex is serving up shots to remember—he ends the game on 25 points. And Josh S is in full power mode. And Orin, though not getting that many points, has been defending Brookes’ best player without really getting any rest breaks. And still, Orin, along with Akin and Josh S get ‘double doubles’, i.e. they get double figures in both points and rebounds.
So many individual performances. And the players are competing with each other for those precious game minutes. But in this moment, at the end of the third quarter, they’re all just happy for each other, and talking about the shots, and the blocks, and they’re deeply held together, as a team.
When I look back on my notes, I’m surprised how tight it got towards the end. I didn’t remember that with 2:22 to go, there were only three points in it—it was 70-67. I think that spell in the third quarter just made me trust the team. There was some sense of inevitability. Throughout the match, Brookes were only ever ahead by two or three points. They just were not as good. And though it ended with only a 7-point margin, the way Oxford closed out the game, especially the last 40 seconds, with confidence and calm, makes me pretty optimistic about the next match against these rivals.
The game ended 78-71, and as I said at the beginning, it panned out pretty much in the way that score suggests it did. But as I also hope to have demonstrated, the predictable story is still worth telling because, forgive the earnestness, the power of sport is to be a reliable producer of drama and characters and narrative arc. The game was tepid and understated until that explosion at the end of the first half. But that outburst seemed almost inevitable because the game had a plot to unveil.
And now you’ve met Orin, and Josh, and Alex, and Akin, and Sam, and there are many more players for you to meet—they just have to prove they’re worth meeting. A patchwork of moments produced a rollercoaster between drawing and winning, and the job of the players, as we look forward to the next game and games in future weeks, is to insert themselves into that patchwork, and, I guess from their point of view, to make it less of a rollercoaster. From a narrative perspective though, I say keep the rollercoasters coming.
Three Balliol students have launched a campaign against sexual violence, organising an open letter and protest aimed at ending a “culture of enabling and impunity” at Balliol College.
Emilia Bedingfield, Clara Holcroft and Fiónn McFadden – who is also a columnist for Cherwell – started a movement aimed at ending a culture of sexual violence and reforming what they see as a hopelessly outdated and ineffective welfare system at Balliol College. This comes following reports by Al-Jazeera of years of inappropriate behaviour by Oxford Professors, and the mishandling by the college of a student who came forward to report sexual violence.
The three second-years launched the open letter on Monday. They have accumulated over two hundred signatures in the first twenty-four hours and the support of many of the largest student organisations aimed at fighting sexual violence, including Womcam and It Happens Here. It can also count on the support of the Balliol College JCR and Anvee Bhutani, the SU president.
Clara told this paper that “the one thing we haven’t heard is a surprise. We hear recognition, gratitude, I’m so glad you are doing this and ideas of how others can get involved”
The College first reported on the allegations in the Master’s weekly message on Friday, which arrived to students via the JCR President. Buried in the email, the Master makes vague allusions to safety, welfare and disciplinary procedures.
The allegations against the college involve both allegations of inappropriate behaviour by a tutor and the neglect and maltreatment of a student who came to the college after a sexual assault. Both of these events were extensively covered in the Al-Jazeera investigation “Degrees of Abuse”.
Beyond these failures, the students also criticise the general culture that they say has allowed this level of impunity to develop. Bruce Kinsey, head of Welfare, who the students say has been previously criticised for not being receptive to calls for changes and not accepting of victims of sexual assault, was singled out again in the Al-Jazeera video for allegedly telling a victim of sexual assault that “she had to be wary of the effect she had on men” and that she was very physically attractive.
The students behind the open letter criticised the fact that the college was still heavily promoting his activities. More generally, they hoped that the welfare system would be reformed. Emilia told Cherwell that “if his role is not completely diminished, we hope that it is split up … ideally we want to see a wider restructuring of the role”.
Reverend Kinsey told Cherwell that “Due to the confidential nature of my conversations with students, I am not able to comment in detail. Nevertheless, I would like to clarify a couple of details. Over several years, I have spoken to the student in question about a variety of matters, most of them not pertaining to these allegations. My comments concerning these other matters have been conflated and misapplied here.”
More broadly, the students demand in the open letter that the college “holds the appropriate people accountable”, admits failure in its handling of these cases and “reviews all cases of this nature over the last three years”. They told Cherwell that much of the vagueness in the demands was intentional, as they were critical of the fact that the College placed the onus on students to come forward and propose reforms, rather than that they realised the scope of the problem and offered to change.
Balliol College told Cherwell that “Balliol College takes the safety of its students extremely seriously, including any allegations of sexual abuse or harassment. Our policies and processes for investigation in these kind of cases reflect current national guidelines, and we are always very mindful of the need to give the necessary support to the students involved to protect their mental and physical safety. We are of course aware of the concerns expressed by some of our student body in the wake of the Al Jazeera allegations, and will be discussing with them how those concerns might be met.”
The students intend to hand the open letter to Dame Helen Ghosh, Master of the College, on Monday of Week 5. They are also organising a protest on Sunday at 1 PM, outside Balliol College, although they request that everyone who intends on coming ensures they do not violate any College regulations.
Image credit: Clara Holcroft – Balliol Community for Safety
This article was corrected at 16:43 on November 3rd to remove a sentence which claimed that a fellow of Balliol College was named in the Al Jazeera investigation.
In a recent report on multidimensional poverty, Oxford University highlighted findings revealing that many women in impoverished households are excluded from education.
Completed by the United Nations Development Program and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), the study found that one in six of the world’s poor live in households where no woman or girl has completed six years of education but at least one man or boy has.
The gender disparity is highest in Arab states, the report found, constituting 70% of poor households who have at least one educated man or boy but no woman or girl. Furthermore, figures showed that disparities were also high in South Asia and Sub-Saharan African, constituting 65.9% and 65.2% of poor households, respectively.
Director of OPHI, Dr. Sabina Alkire, stated in the article that in order to achieve an equitable future “where all people enjoy core capabilities they value and have reason to value,” the global community must address structural inequalities.
Moreover, the article notes that gender inequality was found to persist past access to education and extend into women and girls being at higher risk for violence. Additionally, as a study specifically about multidimensional poverty, the report found that 1.3 billion people are multidimensionally poor, and “ethnic groups” experience higher levels of poverty compared to non-ethnic groups.
OPHI defines multidimensional poverty as “the various deprivations experienced by poor people in their daily lives–such as poor health, lack of education, inadequate living standards, disempowerment, poor quality of work, the threat of violence, and living in areas that are environmentally hazardous among others.”
As an economic and research policy center a part of the Oxford Department of International Development, OPHI’s strategy towards poverty reduction relies heavily on data collection and a “methodological framework.”
Specifically, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) used by the United Nations was devised by Dr. Sabina Alkire alongside Professor James Foster to measure poverty based on compounding factors i.e. education, health, and work life.
Figures from the report were collected through data across 109 countries and 5.9 billion people.
OPHI runs a series of events as well as a seminar series, summer school, and research workshops.
Their last event, titled “Envisioning a More Equitable Future: Using Multidimensional Poverty Indices as a Policy Tool,” was on October 4th and 5th over Zoom. The meeting focused on social development in Chile and featured an address from President Piñera regarding the importance of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network in combating poverty using MPI research.
The full press release as well as more information about multidimensional poverty can be accessed at ophi.org.uk.
I write in genuine fear. I have discovered that C has read my diary and the results were not pretty – and now I’m super lost as to whether I’m to blame?! GDPR would certainly be on my side. Regardless, if anyone is reading this now that shouldn’t be, please don’t for your sake and that of your oh-so-delicate ego. In these pages, I speak only bare-faced truth of what I see, and in the cold, bright light of my photograph flash its subjects often do not look pretty. My mother did warn me not to write anything in my diary that I didn’t want other people on the trip to read. I guess I just hoped it would be one of the guys from the brass band…
Oh did I not mention? We’re sharing our Slovenian hostel room with a literal 10-piece brass band. It’s exactly like you’d imagine. Watching from the outside, when they all leave, it’s like a clown car. You think it’s over, there can’t be any more of them, but it turns out you’ve only just reached the cornet section.
As this is the second hostel we’ve stayed in, I’d summarise my current thoughts on hostels as a whole as very much like living in a localised uni Freshers’ week: meeting people, smiling, sharing bathrooms, asking where ‘the party’ is (the brass band dudes seem quite keen to bond, all I know is they can keep their trombones to themselves), seeing naked ladies in the shower room. Classic Freshers’ activities. Speaking of which, the Slovenian drinking scene is a strange one. You cannot find a frosty pint anywhere. It’s all hot chocolate, mulled wine, gin toddies, and even a hot mojito – which just feels straight-up unnatural. Basically, the logic seems to follow:
Goal: To be warm.
Outside = cold
Inside = warm
British solution: Stay inside until the beer jacket kicks in when you need to wander home on a frozen 2am morning
Slovenian solution: Make outside warm too a.k.a. fire, heaters and warm drinks are a must!
Back to the day, as we walked around Ljubljana, it dissolved from ex-Eastern bloc chic to slightly saccharine loveliness. The landscape read far more as a watercolour painted-set of some Nutcracker ballet performance than reality. We’re talking snowy peaks, blues/pink sky of sunrise, candy floss clouds lazing in a haze of azul. It certainly gave the drama on stage in our group some much needed gravitas. I think the lack of sleep is getting to us. Slight jabs have turned to full-out blows, eventually leading to me mediating over the phone with C’s boyfriend because she was feeling left out of the group(!) My first question: How? There are literally only 4 people on this trip? Plus due to our hostelling situation we basically live like those petri-dish bacterial colonies grown where it’s impossible to distinguish the individual microbes from the green smudge of the whole without a really really good microscope – but I guess C must have really good eyesight.
The conversation with the boyf was basically a parent-teacher conference, in which I was the already over-worked primary school teacher being told by a patronising parent that the child’s finger-painting skill inadequacy showed a fundamental failure in my ability to educate. Oh, and of course while this all went down, the other child in the class left unsupervised found a friendly looking man in a van who offered her candy in exchange for her credit card details (a.k.a. A just got phished with one of those text message bank account scams). So I look forward to spending the rest of the evening sorting that out too, can’t wait to see my phone bill at the end of this trip.
I wonder if the brass band has an extra spot on in their group? I can probably manage the triangle…
£15.7 billion. This was the University’s net contribution to the UK economy in 2018-19, according to the economic research consultancy London Economics. Initially it seems shockingly large how one single institution can contribute so much in one year. I could never imagine this amount of money, so much so that I had to double check the number of zeros you add on to a billion. It’s nine.
The University’s total operational costs in 2018-19 were £2.6 billion, making the net economic contribution £13.1 billion and the benefit to cost ratio of 6.1:1. To put this into perspective, Frontier Economics found that the economic impact generated by all English universities, including the international students and visitors they attract, was over £95 billion of gross output in 2018-19. To compare this with other universities across the country, the economic impact of the University of Birmingham was £3.5 billion in 2014-15, the University of Nottingham contributes £1.1 billion each year, and Durham £1.1 billion.
So where, then, does Oxford’s £15.7 billion come from? The London Economics report splits the economic impact of Oxford University into 5 groups. Research and knowledge transfers account for £7.9 billion, unsurprisingly the largest amount of the groups. At Oxford, every £1 invested into university research and knowledge exchange activities generates £10.3 in return for the UK economy.
Research impact was calculated using information about research grants and contracts. At £771 million, the University’s recurrent funding from Research England was the largest research income received by any university in the UK that year. By using an economic multiplier, a factor which is applied to the measures in all 5 groups to account for the estimated direct, indirect, and induced impacts, LE estimated that the direct impact attributable to Oxford’s research was £4.5 billion.
Knowledge exchange refers to income from intellectual property licencing, the turnover from the 168 spinout companies that are partly owned by Oxford University, and the turnover form the 32 companies in the Begbroke and Oxford Science Parks (excluding 27 Oxford spin-outs to avoid double counting). These activities generated an estimated £3.4 billion of economic impact across the UK in 2018/19.
Teaching and learning activities account for £422 million. These financial benefits are explained by the enhanced earnings that graduates benefit from, and as a result the additional tax received by the Exchequer. In August 2021 Ezra reported that graduates from the University of Oxford have the highest average graduate salary, of £34,802, 45% more than the national average. Students’ enhanced earnings and consequential increase in tax payment each make up about 50% of the £422 million.
Educational exports are the third group, making up £732 million. London Economics only considered the impacts generated by the tuition and non-tuition fees of international students, because fees paid by domestic students contribute to the UK economy, regardless of the chosen university.
The operating and capital costs of the University (80% of the total) and its colleges (the remaining 20%) account for £6 billion of the £15.7 billion. Tourism accounts for £611 million of the University’s input into the UK economy. Considering only overnight stays from overseas visitors, they estimate about 407,000 out of the 577,000 visitors to Oxford were associated with the University’s activities.
Since the academic year 2018-2019, Oxford has been world leading in COVID-19 research, creating the AstraZeneca vaccine, which aims to have delivered 3 billion doses across the globe by the end of 2021. What we now need is another report on Oxford’s economic impact. I imagine its contribution to the UK Economy will be a lot higher for the year 2020- 21, and the split between the 5 groups of impact may be quite different.
At this point I took a moment to indulge myself, feeling grateful for studying in such a beautiful city, full of rich history and incredible people. The £15.7 billion is starting to make sense now; maybe it isn’t so surprising. After all, the University of Oxford has been a research and learning hub for over 900 years, always pushing academic boundaries. Its staff, students, and alumni have transformed lives in the UK and globally. To contextualise, the seemingly large £15.7 billion is dwarfed in comparison to the UK’s GDP in 2018 —£2.1 trillion. The University, as lauded as it is, only made up about 0.007% of the UK economy.
A team of political and environmental researchers, including Oxford’s Professor Connie McDermott, came together on October 19th to issue an urgent warning: more inclusive and coherent global action is desperately needed to save forests and avert severe social, economic, and environmental disruption.
Since 1990, 420 million hectares of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses. According to data from the University of Maryland and the online monitoring group Global Forest Watch, tree cover loss in 2020 was well above the average for the last twenty years—making it the third worst year for forest destruction since 2002, when serious monitoring began.
Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations’ climate wing, estimates that, between 2007 and 2016, 23% of CO2 emissions globally stemmed from deforestation and forest degradation.
The panel discussed the three-tiered problem plaguing deforestation policy: complexity, regulatory gaps, and implementation gaps. Today, deforestation policy is comprised of a dizzying patchwork of transnational, national, state, and municipal regulations that leave farmers, businesses, and policymakers alike confused. The result, according to the team of researchers, has been feet-dragging and implementation gaps, which have accelerated the pace of deforestation
In a press release, the team of researchers explained the idea of “imported deforestation,” the phenomenon where deforestation in the Global South is driven by a combination of domestic factors and the broader international market and demand for agricultural commodities, bioenergy, and other bio-economic needs in the Global North. A key focus of the panel was highlighting how the narrow focus of modern deforestation policy, which emphasises curbing illegal timber use, obscures more pressing drivers of deforestation, such as agricultural expansion for cattle breeding and the cultivation of soy and palm oil.
Developing countries, such as Ghana, face an impending one-two punch from the laggard state of deforestation policy: tree loss continues to bite into the revenues of people desperately reliant on agribusiness revenues, and rising sea levels and natural disasters from climate change risk ravaging seaside communities.
Yet, Oxford’s Connie McDermott warns that a Western-imposed, one-size-fits-all approach to stopping deforestation also carries considerable risks. “Future change needs to come from all sides,” she said, “research and interventions need to focus on the power dynamics of land use and supply chain governance, and who benefits and who loses.”
Although the UK and EU have introduced policies to curb illegal timber production, these strategies, according to McDermott, often ignore the complex dynamics at play on-the-ground, which alienates local populations and handicaps the effectiveness of the policies.
“There is certainly a democratic deficit with a lot of these policies,” she added, “and there are ethical inconsistencies here: these regulations sometimes say that Western priorities should come first and that local people should not have access to their own resources.”
The path forward, according to the researchers, will require striking a delicate balance between shifting incentives in the global economy and protecting those directly affected by deforestation and the policies that are introduced to tackle it. “The crucial role of states,” according to Dr. Sarah Lilian Burns of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina, is to “correct ecologically or socially unacceptable market failures.”
At the same time, the panel encourages the EU and the UK to support local stakeholders, such as smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa or southeast Asia, in conversations about deforestation policy. “There is a lot of work and effort already happening on the ground, with support from local people, such as approaches to smart cocoa in Ghana, said McDermott, “why don’t we support that process rather than impatiently and unilaterally announcing more demands from the international community?”
The meeting comes just a week ahead of COP26, an upcoming summit in Glasgow bringing together world leaders to reassess global progress on meeting the goals laid out in the 2016 Paris Climate Accord. According to reports, the UK government is pushing for an ambitious agreement to halt and reverse forest loss. Those initiatives will include demands that big producers of soya, coffee, cocoa, and palm oil halt clearances—the second largest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Linacre College has announced they will approach the Privy Council to change its name to Thao College following the signing of a memorandum of understanding with SOVICO Group. The College will be named after the company’s President, Madam Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, who is the first woman in Vietnam to become a self-made billionaire.
The College intends to change their name after receiving the first £50 million of a donation which will total £155 million.
The College says that the donation will have a “transformative effect”, since it has one of the smallest endowments in the University. In 2018, the College’s endowments came to £17.7 million. The donation will go towards the construction of a new graduate centre, and fund graduate access scholarships. A significant part of the donation will go towards the College’s general endowment fund to support the daily running of the College.
SOVICO Group founded the first private airline in Vietnam – VietJet Air. They also founded HD Bank, which is one of the largest banks in the country. As part of the memorandum of understanding, the company has committed to making all of their subsidiaries reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 with the support of academics from Oxford University.
Linacre College was founded in 1962 as a graduate society for men and women. It was named after Thomas Linacre, an English physician and humanist scholar. It became an independent college of the University in 1986 via Royal Charter.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao has an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion. Alongside her position as President of SOVICO Group, she has investments in HD Bank and real estate, including three beach resorts. She is ranked in 1111th place onForbes’ list of the world’s richest billionaires.
Two Oxford University professors are members of the advisory board of a company which operates a power station which has been described as the largest source of greenhouse emissions in the UK.
Professor Sir John Beddington and Lord John Krebs sit on the Independent Advisory Board on Sustainable Biomass of Drax, who describe themselves as a “UK-based renewable energy company”. Professor Beddington acted as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Government between 2008-2013, and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, and Professor of Natural Resource Management at Oxford University. Lord Krebs is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at Oxford University, and a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords.
Drax operates the largest power station in the UK near Selby in North Yorkshire. The Drax plant was one of the largest coal-powered generators in Europe before four of its six generating units were converted to burn biomass. The company received £800m in subsidies from the government to support this transition in 2020.
Compressed wood pellets like those used by Drax. Image: Oregon Department of Forestry/CC BY 2.0 via flickr.com
Biomass consists of organic material, such as compressed wood pellets, which is burned for electricity generation. It is considered a renewable energy source because, unlike fossil fuels such as coal, more biomass feedstock can be produced once it is burned. Drax says that biomass is a low carbon and renewable source, and can become carbon negative when combined with carbon capture.
However, some scientists and campaigners have disputed biomass’ classification as a renewable energy source alongside solar and wind power. Central to this is a supposed loophole in counting the emissions from biomass, where emissions from the supply chain are not counted towards the total emissions of the country in which the fuel is burned. Draxsources its biomass from “sustainably managed” forests in Canada, the USA and EU, Brazil, Russia and Belarus. According to an analysis by Chatham House, none of the emissions from the harvesting of trees and their transportation are included in the total emissions of the UK.
Scientists have also questioned whether the energy from biomass can be absorbed by replanting trees or other feedstock. Chatham House say that the growth in biomass consumption, which is predicted to rise by 17-20 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2025, will outstrip the absorption of CO2 by replanted feedstock. “Although the CO2 should eventually be reabsorbed, the elevated levels in the interim are likely to be incompatible with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. They also increase the risk of reaching a climate tipping point,” they said.
Generating energy from biomass is a tentpole of plans countries have made to transition away from fossil fuels. Almost 60% of renewable energy generated across the EU in 2019 came biomass. In 2020, solid biomass produced a third of all renewable energy generated in the UK. Tom Harrison, an energy transition analyst at the climate think-tank Ember told Cherwell: “If the renewable or carbon-neutral status of biomass were to be removed tomorrow it would have enormous repercussions for UK and EU renewable energy targets.” Chatham House say that if emissions from the supply chain were included in the UK’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, it would increase its total by 22-27%, which is the equivalent of the emissions from 6-7 million passenger vehicles.
A report from Ember has found that once emissions from the full supply chain of the Drax plant have been counted, the plant becomes the biggest single source of carbon dioxide in the UK and the third largest in Europe, producing 14.8 Mt of CO2 a year. A spokesperson from Drax disputed this, telling Sky News that Ember’s interpretation of these figures was “completely at odds with what the world’s leading climate scientists at the UN IPCC say about sustainable biomass being crucial to delivering global climate targets”.
Drax was recently dropped from an investment index of the world’s most environmentally-friendly energy companies after S&P Dow Jones changed their methodology.
Image: Cherwell
Professor Beddington has historically been critical of governments’ reliance on biomass for achieving renewable energy goals. In 2018, he was among hundreds of scientists who co-signed a letter to the EU Parliament, urging them to “avoid expansive harm to the world’s forests and the acceleration of climate change”. He also signed a letter to The Guardian in 2017, which warned that the EU’s plans to expand the ambition of its renewable energy directive could lead to an increasing number of trees being felled for use as a biomass feedstock. The letter said that this would lead to more carbon being released into the atmosphere from the process of forestry, and would have a “large” effect on the world’s biodiversity. It also cautioned that proposed “safeguards” in the legislation such as managing forests “sustainably” would not stop the negative effects of large-scale biomass cultivation and use.
However in 2021, as Chair of the IAB, Professor Beddington signed a series of “findings and recommendations” to the CEO of the Drax group which said: “There are no simple conclusions such as ‘biomass is always bad’ or ‘biomass is good’ for greenhouse gas mitigation.”
A quote from Professor Beddington carried on Drax’s website says: “The IPCC and Committee on Climate Change both recognise that sustainably sourced biomass will play an important role in meeting climate change targets. I decided to chair the IAB because it’s vital that biomass is sourced sustainably and takes the latest scientific thinking into account.
“As the science evolves, we will make recommendations to ensure that the biomass used at Drax makes a positive contribution to our climate and the environment.”
Professor Sir John Beddington (right) as Chief Scientific Officer in 2011. Credit: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office/CC BY 2.0 via flickr.com
Lord Krebs’ position on the IAB is listed on his House of Lords register of interests as a “renumerated” position. During a debate on Biomass Electricity Subsidies in May 2021, he described the debate over the impact of biomass feedstock cultivation on biodiversity as “a contested topic with opposing views”. He also pointed to a 2021 literature review from Resources for the Future which showed that an increase in demand for forest products (including biomass) in the South-Eastern United States was associated with an increase in the forested area of the region.
The Southern Environmental Law Centre (SELC) , a non-partisan legal advocacy organization focused on the southern Untied States, is calling on the UK and EU to end subsidies for the biomass industry. They say that mature forests and wetlands are being cleared to produce wood pellets for export.
The SELC also says that the production of wood pellets is negatively impacting communities who live near production plants. Drax Group is a customer of Enviva, a Virginia-based producer of industrial wood pellets which it exports primarily to Europe and Japan. CNN reported that residents who live near Enviva’s plant in Northampton Country, North Carolina, have suffered from the effects of disturbed sleep and the inhalation of dust from the plant. Enviva told CNN the company takes “environmental justice concerns raised with respect to our operations very seriously. And, we work closely in our communities and community leaders to ensure our operations bring both positive economic and environmental impact.” They also said they had not received noise complaints beyond “generic complaints” from “the same activists we’ve heard before” at a hearing.
Drax says that the IAB was established to “provide advice on sustainable biomass and its role in Drax’s transition to net-zero emissions”. Cherwell has seen a letter from Drax to a campaign group, where they referenced the IAB and Professor Beddington’s qualifications after the group criticised their policy for sourcing biomass. Drax said: “Our sourcing policy was vetted by Drax’s Independent Advisory Board led by former UK Government Chief Scientist Sir John Beddington.”
A spokesperson from Drax told Cherwell: ““Drax has world-leading sustainability standards for its biomass and we make no apology for engaging with leading scientists in the field of sustainable bioenergy and biodiversity in our efforts to ensure the biomass we use makes a positive contribution to the environment. We aim to follow the latest science and ensure good governance and transparency continually drives up standards both at Drax and across the industry globally.”
Regarding the Chatham House report, they said: “We completely reject Chatham House’s analysis, which is based on a series of incorrect assumptions around biogenic carbon and emissions and demonstrates a real lack of understanding of Drax’s business and the biomass industry. The science underpinning carbon accounting for bioenergy is crystal clear: it was set out by the world’s leading authority on climate science – the IPCC – and was reaffirmed in 2019 following review by thousands of the world’s leading climate scientists.
“The UN’s IPCC is also absolutely clear that sustainable biomass is crucial to achieving global climate targets, both as a provider of renewable power and through its potential to deliver negative emissions with carbon capture and storage.
“Drax’s biomass meets the highest sustainability standards and these ensure that we do not use biomass that causes deforestation, forest decline or carbon debt. This is a fundamental commitment in our sustainable biomass sourcing policy.
“All of our emissions are fully reported in our Annual Report which is independently audited. Any claims to the contrary should be backed up by evidence, not based on outdated research and incorrect assumptions.”
Responding to Ember’s analysis which declared the Drax powerplant to be the largest source of carbon emissions in the UK, the spokesperson said: “Ember’s interpretation of the figures for Drax’s CO2 emissions is inaccurate and completely at odds with what the world’s leading climate scientists at the UN IPCC say about sustainable biomass being crucial to delivering global climate targets.
“Drax Power Station produces 12% of the UK’s renewable electricity, keeping the lights on for millions of homes and businesses.
“Converting Drax Power Station to use sustainable biomass instead of coal transformed the business into Europe’s biggest decarbonisation project and has helped Britain decarbonise its electricity system at a faster rate than any other major economy. We have reduced our emissions by more than 90% in the last decade and Drax is now one of Europe’s lowest carbon energy generators.”
Oxford University, Professor Sir John Beddington and Lord John Krebs have been approached for comment.
Correction: an earlier version of this article in our print edition said “Proponents of biomass, including Drax, also argue that it has the potential to be a carbon neutral or negative energy source, since the carbon emissions from burning the fuel may be offset by planting new trees or crops, which absorb CO2 for photosynthesis.” This has been amended to read: “Drax says that biomass is a low carbon and renewable source, and can become carbon negative when combined with carbon capture.”
The print version of this article said that 14% of energy in the UK in 2020 was produced by biomass. That figure did not reflect the total amount of energy generated. This error has been corrected to include the correct figure of 33%. This article has also been updated to clarify that 60% of renewable energy in the EU is generated by biomass.
Update: Although the original article stated that Lord Krebs and Sir John Beddington had been contacted for comment, they had not been given sufficient time to respond. We apologise for the error.
Featured Image Credit: John Grey Turner/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr.com
Dehydrated, dazed, and confused, but thankful to have survived the deadly journey. Thankful to have reached the country of opportunity in which they just might have a better life. Thankful to have briefly escaped the clutch of criminal gangs, whose expensive, illicit and inhumane smuggling is often the only lifeline to ‘freedom’ in Europe. Such a description may represent only a modicum of the range of emotions felt by refugees and asylum seekers, arriving upon unfamiliar shores, having left their worlds behind out of fear for their lives, cultures and families.
Such emotions were visible from the footage plastered across major British media outlets throughout August 2021, as it was reported that ‘record’ daily numbers of migrants had made the crossing over the English Channel and landed on Kent’s southern shores. Notable was the 6th August, where a ‘record’ 482 migrants were recorded upon arrival, as monitored by the Home Office. Record’. Describing migration to Britain’s southern coasts as if it was some sort of competition. A forbidden gladiator-esque sport at the pleasure of the Home Office, who keep tabs and make bets on a treacherous crossing.
Any sane, rational, and moral person would think that scenes of such abject human suffering and despair would inspire an outpouring of sympathy from every stratumof Britain’s society. Government and citizens united in our post-Brexit utopia of a ‘Global Britain’, where an accepting attitude to multiculturalism and diversity lies at its very core? Where we have discarded the ‘shackles’ of the Strasbourg dictatorship’s restrictive immigration rules, to create a society in which you are welcomed with open arms not on the basis of your nationality, but on the strength of your character and your willingness to contribute to the nation? Where those suffering economic, social and political despair are given the irrefutable chance to create a better, safe and happy life in the ‘best’ country in the world?
Well, like me, you would be wrong. As noted by MP for Coventry North West Taiwo Owatemi, in response to Boris Johnson’s failure to persuade Joe Biden to extend the deadline of withdrawal of US troops from Kabul, this is not the Global Britain we were promised. Flicking between the news and social media provides a wealth of evidence that the Conservative vision for a ‘Global Britain’ is a land that remains as isolationist, disconnected, and intolerant as ever. Frighteningly, this vision has consumed this country from both top-down and bottom-up.
Take, for example, a recent tweet by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), posted on the 28th July. Attached was a video explaining that the charity’s volunteers had received masses of online and real-life abuse for adhering to its policy of rescuing migrants in danger of drowning off of Britain’s shores. The video also showed footage from November 2019 of volunteers rescuing a dingy of twelve people, one of whom was a baby. Yet the near-death of a baby forced to flee persecution and poverty was not enough for many to drive the point home: the comment section was full of people complaining about the ‘migrant taxi service’, echoing the accusations of failed politician-turned-Cameo-star Nigel Farage. Accompanying these were accusations that the RNLI was complicit in immigration crimes and inciting terrorism, as well as much confusion as to why they simply couldn’t just be discarded along the French coast, for the autoritéslà-bas to deal with if they were so desperate. Confusion, anger in fact, as to why the humanitarian charity whose purpose is to save life at sea without rigorously questioning them over their country of origin. A damning indictment indeed of a population gripped by an anti-immigrant and refugee sentiment, who would rather subject migrants fleeing from persecution and poverty to a painful, watery death, than have them move in next door.
Britain’s entrenched problem with immigration has been explained in many ways, it’s a fire which has roared in Britain’s sick belly for centuries now. Such sentiment has exploded since the country voted for Brexit, off the back of an incendiary Vote Leave campaign fuelled by xenophobia, racism and Islamophobia, wrapped in the illogical yet effective promise to ‘TAKE BACK CONTROL’. It must be noted however that it has always existed, entrenched and intertwined in Britain’s culture, politics, institutions and media. And in one institution in particular: the Home Office.
Even in the haze of New Labour’s ‘post-racial’ utopia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, anti-terror legislation spearheaded by the department disproportionately (and later ruled, ‘unconstitutionally’) targeted foreign nationals. Yet it is the incumbent Home Office, and its glorious leader Priti Patel, that has written the textbook on propagating authoritarian, anti-immigration policies that serve to undermine not only decency and compassion within our laws, but the principles of good governance and the rule of law at large.
Patel has been an outspoken advocate for stricter immigration controls since her days starting out in the referendum party. As much as it pains me to say this, one thing I’ll give her is her consistency. Now, as Home Secretary, she’s proposed a points-based immigration system which she herself admitted would not allow her own parents entry, and in response to the rising number of migrants arriving at England’s south coast, threw out the diplomatic textbook with her French counterpart in a vow to make the route ‘unviable’. It’s a shame that her conviction and commitment to turning away victims of war, persecution and genocide isn’t matched by her ability to make logical policy. You can’t render an entire stretch of water ‘unviable’ to migration: it’s a simple fact that people desperate to seek safety will take increasingly dangerous routes, because the slim chance of success will be better than the certainty of death or persecution from which they are fleeing. Even if you placed the navy on speedboats along the Channel holding guns with the order to shoot down any dinghy they saw, that would not stop migration to Britain. Given the government’s somewhat complacent attitude towards international law, I’m surprised that this hasn’t found its way to the Home Office’s policy discussions quite yet. Nevertheless, the facts are simple: Patel’s policies are not going to deter those desperate, or even those choosing to come to Britain for a better life, from coming. The same amount of bodies will arrive on Kent’s southern shores, it’s just that under Patel’s policies, more of them will arrive dead.
This brings me to my final thoughts. It is clear that anti-immigrant and refugee sentiment thus beam as proudly on the mantlepiece of quintessential Britishness as Mary Berry and the Union flag itself, fanned by the flames of insensitive Home Office policy. But one key thing seems to be consistently missing from the debates surrounding immigration in this country: compassion. Britain’s bloodthirsty colonialist past, which has inadvertently and directly contributed to many of the circumstances that drive people from their home countries, means that we, citizens and government alike, have a moral obligation to create a safe, welcoming and just country for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Regardless of that, these are people we are talking about: many of whom are fleeing things most Britons could not imagine having to contend with in their lives. Erasing the language of economic contributions, or quotas, or points, this is the message that the Home Office must promote. Otherwise they, Priti Patel in particular, are complicit in creating, propagating and growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Britain that has unnecessarily claimed too many innocent lives.
