A new generation of conscientious hair salons is cropping up across Canada, offering a breath of fresh air in a usually toxic industry. Here’s how salons and their customers can – pardon the pun – join the cutting edge of sustainability.

Chop lightly 
The average salon produces 821.76 kilograms of waste annually, and Canada’s salons produce 20,355 tonnes of waste per year combined. But Green Circle Salons (GCS) offers an innovative way to lower that number with certification. Nearly 500 participating salons separate their hair clippings, chemicals, foils, colour tubes, paper and plastics for pickup by GCS, which ensures that 85 to 95 per cent of solid waste and seven to 10 per cent of liquid chemical waste is diverted from landfills and waterways. The materials are repurposed in unique ways – clippings can be transformed into absorbent booms for oil spills, chemicals can be incinerated into waste for electricity, and more. 

Choose conscientiously 
Many salons offer paraben- and sulfate-free shampoos and styling products, but that doesn’t mean these options are necessarily toxin-free. Customers may only be exposed monthly when they get their hair done, but stylists risk exposure almost daily (one in five suffers a job-related illness). “I’ve talked to many hair stylists that were told by sales reps that certain brands were ‘all natural’ and ‘organic’ and yeah, the product may contain a handful of natural ingredients, but those claims are still completely misleading,” says journalist Adria Vasil. “That’s why it’s incredibly important to do a close ingredient check yourself.” She stresses that many hair serums and conditioners still contain toxic siloxanes (silicone-based hair-smoothers), even though companies advertise natural ingredients like argan oil. While Vasil says some greener pro hair care lines still need to try a little harder (like Alterna, which still uses siloxanes), a growing number are doing it right. She recommends Organic Matter, John Masters Organics and Aveda. 

Toronto’s award-winning worldSALON is really pushing the envelope with its own hair care line, worldPRODUCTS, which contain no parabens, sulfates, phthalates, fragrance or colour. The little green oasis is making headlines with other eco-initiatives, too, like reducing its energy consumption by 70 per cent since 1999. The salon is a perm-free zone and even uses water heated by solar power.

Hold the hairspray 
Ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) have long been banned from aerosol products, but CFC-free aerosol sprays still contain hydrocarbons and compressed gases that contribute to global warming, as well as air-polluting volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Use pump products instead. 

Green is the new blond 
Hair dye is a tangled issue. According to a John Frieda study, 55 per cent of Canadian women say they can’t live without hair colour. Unfortunately, permanent hair dyes – even those tagged “natural,” “herbal” or “organic” – contain at least some chemicals of concern, like paraphenylenediamine (PPD), ammonia or resorcinol (or toxic alternatives like PTD, MEA or heavy metals). The “better” brands just use less of them. The only truly natural, plant-derived, permanent hair colour is henna, which salons generally avoid because it’s notoriously hard to work with. The colourists at Montréal’s alternative Studio Sundari are among the brave souls who will apply pure henna!

Luckily, industry leaders are responding to the demand for safer permanent dyes with an impressive array of less-toxic options. Toronto’s Green Beauty uses Organic Color Systems, a certified professional line that’s ammonia-free and lower in PPD than conventional products. Essensity by Schwarzkopf is a gentler line with predominantly biodegradable formulas. Vancouver’s eco-gem Clover Earthkind Salon has an assortment of sustainable options, though colour technician Jen Vanderleij says they like to keep them a secret. (She will spill that Organic Salon Systems is the salon’s most popular brand.)

Use your melon
There are many other ways to go green, from big (using renewable energy and sustainable construction materials) to small (compact fluorescent lighting, serving organic fair-trade coffee or sending email appointment reminders). Thanks to some forward-thinking salons and their customers, we’re seeing true examples of environmental leadership and responsibility. After all, trendy haircuts come and go, but being kinder to the planet is always in style.

Do you have other great ideas to add to this list? Please share your two cents in the comments. Find tons more stories, ideas, recipes and advice in our Green Living blog.

The post Green Hair Rocks appeared first on A\J.

Christian McEachern recalls his time as a peacekeeper in the former Yugoslavia as working “22 or 23 hours a day on the front line, being shot at – or guys are getting killed or wounded with land mines.” During his 14 years in the Canadian Forces, including tours on United Nations-sanctioned peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and Uganda, McEachern witnessed and experienced firsthand a number of horrifying events. “By the time I came home after about a year and a half in Yugoslavia … I was pretty wired,” he says. “And it wasn’t just me, it was everybody.”

Upon returning from operations overseas, McEachern and many of his army buddies fell to partying hard. “You could still do your job, but you were making more self-destructive decisions,” he says. “When you look back at my dossier at when I got in trouble at particular times, it was all related to either right after an operation or after a significant event within the military.” Now in his 40s and living outside of Black Diamond, Alberta, McEachern presents the image of a fit, avid outdoorsy-type. He also suffers from post-traumatic stress, and was honourably discharged from the Canadian Forces in 2001.

I first met McEachern in 2009 while conducting research for my PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manitoba. Through conversations with him and other Canadian and American veterans during the past five years, I became aware of a growing grassroots movement among veterans seeking ways beyond conventional treatments to manage their stress injuries. Some are turning to writing groups, meditation and volunteering, but an increasing number are turning to nature – farming and gardening, hiking and fishing, building relationships with dogs or horses. This does not mean conventional treatments are obsolete. Many veterans continue to benefit from medication and therapy, but find that nature provides an additional measure of support, relief and healing in their lives.

After receiving his diagnosis in 1998 and undergoing years of counselling and medication, McEachern describes sitting on the banks of the Columbia River in 2005 and finally feeling “at peace with life for a moment” and realizing “maybe it would be helpful for other veterans to be able to sit here on the river bank, too.” From 2006 to 2011, McEachern ran the non-profit Canadian Veteran Adventure Foundation (CVAF) with a vision to provide another tier of care and treatment for veterans suffering from stress injuries through outdoor programming and adventure training. Among other activities, the CVAF took stress-injured veterans rafting, horseback riding and camping.

Veterans turning to nature for occupation, support and healing has deep roots. In Defiant Gardens, Kenneth Helphand describes how First World War soldiers planted and harvested gardens right in the trenches. “In contrast to war,” he writes, “gardens assert the dignity of life, human and nonhuman, and celebrate it.” Garden therapy was used to treat shell-shocked First World War soldiers, and horticultural therapy was first developed in US veterans’ hospitals during the Second World War.

In 1942, the Canadian government instituted the Veterans’ Land Act, which provided grants, low-interest loans and training for veterans to become farmers, smallholders and commercial fishers. The program supported more than 140,000 veterans before being terminated in 1977.

A 2013 Canadian Department of National Defense (DND) study reports that 13.5 per cent of soldiers who served in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2008 suffer from deployment-related mental injuries. Some experts outside the DND argue the study severely underestimates the number of suffering soldiers and veterans, and suggests the real number could be double. Post-deployment screening reports have found that one in four Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan engages in high-risk drinking or experiences negative states ranging from depression to thoughts of suicide.

Invisible injuries have always been part of a soldier’s war experience, and have been described using various terms, including ‘shell shock’ (WWI), ‘battle fatigue’ (WWII), and ‘post-Vietnam syndrome.’ In 1980, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) became the common term to describe combat soldiers’ and veterans’ distress. Today, however, there is growing debate over the term disorder. Many veterans consider their distress to be an appropriate response to the trauma and violence they have experienced and in which they have participated. The umbrella term ‘operational stress injury’ is now used within the Canadian Forces to describe “any persistent psychological difficulty resulting from operational duties performed while serving.” Many veterans favour this term, which emphasizes their suffering as an injury rather than a mental illness.

Symptoms of PTS include nightmares, thought intrusions, physical sensations and flashbacks. It is difficult to predict memory triggers, and because of this many veterans isolate themselves. PTS sufferers can also experience problems falling and/or staying asleep, an inability to concentrate, irritability, intense anger and hypervigilance. Further, many take years to come forward about their suffering for fear of being stigmatized as weak, crazy or fakers.

Humans have long turned to nature to ease what ails us. Most of us have an intuitive sense that walking in the woods, exploring outside with children or working in a garden makes us feel well. There is a growing body of empirical research indicating that nature contact is important for human wellbeing at physical, psychological, cognitive and emotional levels. Theories and research studying the human-nature relationship are diverse, but tend to agree that the human brain evolved in complex environments, in which our survival depended on constant interaction with other creatures and the Earth, and that deep ecological instincts continue to be rooted in the human psyche.

Studies have shown that surgery patients with a view of trees from their hospital beds required a shorter stay and fewer medications and experienced fewer postsurgical complications than patients whose windows looked onto a brick wall. Prison inmates with a view of farm fields used healthcare services less often than those who looked onto an inner courtyard. Other studies have found that blood pressure, anger and aggression all decrease when participants walk at a nature reserve, but increase when participants walk in an urban setting. Children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder experience fewer symptoms when they spend time in nature. Elderly nursing home residents who spent time in a garden instead of staying indoors reported both improved moods and lower levels of anxiety, which was confirmed by their significantly lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. Physical contact with certain soil bacteria has also been found to have an antidepressant-like effect by boosting serotonin levels.

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert and her students recently conducted an experiment with rats in which one group received the typical laboratory-enriched environment including plastic toys, tunnels and mirrors, while another group received sticks and leaves, small logs and pebbles. While there was little difference in the rats’ cognitive behaviour, “we are seeing a difference in emotional resilience,” Lambert told me. “The animals in the natural environment are bolder and their stress hormones are at a healthier level.”

Many European countries are putting such research findings into practice by offering ‘green care’ within their wider healthcare programs. For example, in The Netherlands, green care farming (also called social farming) has become a comprehensive, professionalized movement, with more than 1,000 privately owned care farms that earn an income from selling agricultural products, while also offering agriculture-related healthcare activities. A healthcare professional can refer a patient to work on a farm for a continuous period or as a weekly activity – in addition or as an alternative to medication and/or therapy – and farmers are paid to provide this service by healthcare institutions, insurance plans or even directly by clients. Farmers benefit from the added workers, while clients derive health benefits from working on the farm.

Most other European countries offering green care are doing so in a less formal way and catering to a smaller client base. Only Flanders (Belgium), Norway and Slovenia are moving in a similar direction to The Netherlands, with the primary involvement of private farmers. In countries such as Germany and Austria, green care remains the responsibility of healthcare professionals and most care-related gardens and farms are operated by healthcare establishments. In Italy, France and Ireland, volunteer cooperatives provide green care and see it as part of a social philosophy to help clients with mental health difficulties participate in wider society.

The United Kingdom has a growing focus on social and therapeutic horticulture. This movement developed out of traditional horticulture therapy, but celebrates the benefits of social interaction and sense of community in the healing process. Today more than 1,000 programs provide care to more than 21,000 people per week in the UK.

There is no organized discussion of green care in North America. The Canadian government’s 2009 decision to close prison farms suggests an attitude of hostility towards the concept.

However, my research suggests there is a grassroots, veteran-led green care movement in North America. In the US, individuals and organizations such as the Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC) are finding opportunities for former military personnel to retrain as farmers. The main emphasis of the FVC, which has supported more than 1,000 farmer-veterans in the past six years, is that agriculture provides a viable career option for retired military personnel. “Agriculture is not easy and veterans have a lot of practical skills,” says Tia Christopher, FVC chief of staff and a US Navy veteran. “They also have a huge strength – due to what many of them have lived through – that helps them stick it out in a very, very tough secondary career.”

“In the military, we’re taught to be given a task, to see to that task, and to complete that task. And it’s been hard with prolonged warfare for service members to see the completion of a task … I think there are very negative psychological consequences to that,” Christopher explains. “We’ve found that when veterans can follow a plant cycle, when they prepare the earth, they plant the seed, they nurture it, they harvest it, and they eat it or they sell it – that process in itself is healing.”

My research and conversations with American veterans show that many are gravitating towards small-scale, organic, farms – a trend Tia Christopher confirms. “Even though we have veterans representing all different schools of thought when it comes to agriculture, I’ve found anecdotally that the majority of veterans entering this field want to do sustainable agriculture in some way, shape or form,” she says. “They want it for their own personal health, and then that translates to what they raise for other people, what they want to sell, and how they want to live.” Many veterans also attest to a strong desire to continue serving their communities in meaningful ways, and farming and working outdoors offer possibilities for engaging with plants and animals, nurturing and cultivating new life, and providing healthy foods to feed other people.

Nathan Lewis, an Iraq war veteran, co-founded the non-profit Veterans’ Sanctuary in Ithaca, New York, in 2009. The Veterans’ Sanctuary is a three-fold project that includes a community garden, a writing group and a paper-making initiative, all to support veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as they transition to civilian life. “It’s really nice at the end of the day to stop and look at what your labour has produced, to look at something tangible and, without a doubt, positive,” says Lewis about working in the garden.

Lewis suffers from service-related PTS and recalls the period following his return home from Iraq as an “unsteady, dark, troubling time.” He was very unhappy and suffered from extreme anger and deep guilt about his participation in the war. The next few years were filled with heavy drinking, substance abuse and bar fights. This period contrasts sharply with his Veterans’ Sanctuary work. “A lot of vets have trouble sleeping, and I have here and there, but if [I’m] outside with a shovel for eight to 10 hours, and especially doing it as a labour of love, I don’t have trouble sleeping anymore,” he explains. “I want to be out there, so I have no problem whatsoever cranking out a 10 or 12 hour day, and then sleep comes real easy.” He laughs.

The many projects that come with tending a large garden and two greenhouses provide “a lot of anchors into life,” says Lewis. “If you’re feeling bad, and you’re suicidal, you feel very alone and gloomy. Anything that keeps you strapped into this world – into the living – is good. I can’t go nowhere because the beets need watering and the chickens need to be fed. And that’s all I can think to do. I’ve seen too many people go off, fall apart, kill themselves, or just drop out of life, and it’s sad.”

The main goal for the Veterans’ Sanctuary garden is sustainable food security, independence and resilience. “We like to think about and follow a lot of permaculture principles to try to integrate things, instead of just big monocrops,” Lewis explains. “It’s not only food security, but to have real food that is healing and nourishes bodies, so veterans can get their nutrients, and they have a fighting chance to tackle some of the more long-term, deeper spiritual/soul/war trauma issues, to try to sort them out.”

In Canada, veterans’ groups have focused more on outdoor activities. In mid-2011, Christian McEachern’s CVAF disbanded due to a lack of funding. However, he continues to find personal healing through nature, particularly in his relationship with horses. In 2007, he got his first horse, a thoroughbred gelding and ex-racehorse that was having difficulty adjusting to life after racing and was destined for slaughter. The bond and trust that developed was healing for both. Soon after, McEachern rescued a second horse.

“There’s a peace that you can’t really explain when you’re with them,” he says. “You really have to be in the moment with horses. I tend not to think about everything that’s going on when I’m in my zone with them.” McEachern confesses he would not have been in the right frame of mind to accept horses into his life when he first got out of the Forces and was very angry. “That’s not the right place to be when you’re with horses – but I think they came to me at a time when I was ready for them.” He now has six, and when I ask if he rides every day, McEachern replies, “Oh yeah, I try to.”

Working with horses allows veterans to “regain a connection with another social animal in a way that helps build self-confidence, and brings people out of depression.” – Steve Critchley, Canadian Forces veteran & Can Praxis co-founder

Indeed, therapeutic relationships with dogs and horses are a growing area of grassroots veterans’ care in Canada. Several organizations provide specially trained service dogs to veterans and other first responders suffering from stress injuries.

In the spring of 2013, on a ranch northeast of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, an equine therapy program called Can Praxis began offering its services free of charge to stress-injured Canadian Forces veterans and their spouses. A main benefit of working with horses, says Steve Critchley, Can Praxis co-founder and a 28-year veteran of the Canadian Forces, is that veterans “regain a connection with another social animal in a way that helps build self-confidence, and brings people out of depression.”

Most veterans who participate in Can Praxis gain confidence when they realize a horse will trust them, which then lends to reconnecting with their families. “The horse is a great teacher,” explains Jim Marland, an Equine-Assisted Learning facilitator, psychologist and Can Praxis co-founder. He says a horse will “let you know when something’s not quite right or when it is great. Oftentimes, it’s much easier for [the veterans] to talk about [something] when it’s been pointed out by a horse, [rather] than some psychologist who asks the difficult question.”

Funding is a major challenge for most groups offering nature-based support to veterans. The Outward Bound Canada Veterans Program, which offers weeklong adventure-based resiliency training for Canadian Forces veterans in the Rockies, is one of the few groups that has been successful over a number of years. Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing Canada, which offers fly fishing and fly-tying education and outings to disabled military personnel and veterans, is also expanding its reach throughout Canada.

Unlike in the US, organized opportunities for Canadian veterans to start farming and gardening are almost non-existent, despite the benefits these activities provide. In my conversation with neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, she explained how in the warzone soldiers’ brains help to protect them by making associations with certain sounds and smells. “It was absolutely adaptive and absolutely normal for them to be very vigilant about every little thing in their environment – that kept them alive,” says Lambert. “But the problem is: how do you switch from that vigilance to telling your brain, ‘Ok, I’m in a different environment; I’m safe; I don’t need to be that hypervigilant right now’?”

Lambert believes that nature contact “optimizes the transition from a combat zone.” She says it is important for veterans to help their brains transition to civilian life by weakening some of the associations with sounds, smells and other sensations of the combat zone. “And that’s maybe what they’re doing in some of these farming situations where it is quiet and there aren’t loud noises. They’re not using power tools, they’re using their hands. They’re having some time where they’re not activating those associations.”

It’s time to pay attention to the voices of veterans who are finding paths through suffering and despair by connecting with nature. It’s time to fund and support veteran-led initiatives to make these activities and experiences available to as many veterans as would like to participate – and others, too. It’s time to acknowledge what the research makes clear and what many European countries already know: contact with nature matters. It matters for veterans, it matters for others suffering from injuries and mental health issues, and truly, it matters for all of us.

“There are not many fixes, and gardening’s not a fix, but it’s an effort,” says Iraq war veteran Nathan Lewis. “It gives you a fighting chance. It keeps you in the game. It allows you to take control of your own situation, of your own destiny.”

War and other forms of political violence directly affect soldiers and civilians alike. Stress injuries among soldiers and veterans can touch all of our lives. Wounded Warriors Canada offers ways you can support veterans. Military Minds Inc. connects those with post-traumatic stress with programs that can help.

Contribute by contacting your MP or the Minister of Veterans Affairs and letting them know you support the green care movement and would like to see funding for its therapies and programs. Tell them that post-traumatic stress is often a long-term or even lifetime injury. Use facts from this article. Send them this article. 

The post Making Contact appeared first on A\J.

For nearly five years, Sustainable Waterloo Region (SWR) has been convincing companies and organizations around Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge, Ontario, to instigate a cultural shift that would help sew environmental responsibility into the way Canada’s 10th most populated urban area grows and evolves. In early 2013, SWR proudly claimed that one-seventh of Waterloo Region’s workforce was now turning this vision into reality, and that local businesses had already made public commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to taking 10,000 cars off the road. In January 2014 it launched Sustainability CoLab, an offshoot social enterprise that aims to inject the same momentum into other communities.

SWR’s flagship program is the Regional Carbon Initiative (RCI), a guided set of milestones designed to turn companies’ GHG reduction goals into reality. As of March, there are 64 RCI member companies that occupy some 2 million metres2 of office space – design and engineering firms, energy services and utility providers, social support and health care providers, environmental advocacy organizations, educational and cultural institutions, retailers, manufacturers, consultants, construction companies, foundations and software developers. SWR supplies GHG accounting software and other tools, technical and strategic expertise, help organizing employee-led green teams and the growing support and wisdom of the rest of the RCI network. It has also shrewdly crafted that network with a strong culture of recognition and a rising bar for achievement.

Read more about SWR, the RCI, Sustainability CoLab and the GHG-slashing business case they’re currently building across Ontario in our feature story. We also asked a couple of Waterloo Region’s leading RCI members to explain how their companies have benefitted from being a part of the network, and the two people driving Sustainability CoLab to explain the impact they expect to see in 2014. Watch all three videos below.

Elizabeth Pringle is an associate partner at Ernst & Young, chair of its Kitchener office’s eco-committee and a volunteer member of SWR’s policy advisory committee. The Kitchener outpost of the global professional services provider has implemented a range of sustainability measures as part of its commitment to the RCI, including changing their document printing systems to save ink, paper and energy; installing sensor lights to cut unnecessary electricity usage and insulating window film to avoid heat loss; replacing plastic cutlery and paper plates to reduce waste; and by deploying a flexible workspace allocation system called ‘hoteling,’ wherein employees that spend a lot of time at clients’ offices can simply book desk space when they need it (rather than having workspaces that are often unoccupied). Find more details about Ernst & Young’s corporate commitments to sustainability here.

Claire Bennett has led Wilfrid Laurier University’s exemplary efforts to prove that Canadian postsecondary institutions can bake sustainability into their operating procedures and reap huge cost savings, a higher quality of on-campus life and a substantial bump in their reputations. In January, WLU became the first university on the planet to go through the STARS [Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System] version 2.0 evaluation process, upping its rating up to silver. Bennett credits SWR’s invaluable support for getting WLU involved in community-scale environmentalism, and the Waterloo-based campus’ strides in waste management have become a fabulous example for other large businesses in the region and universities across Canada.

Mike Morrice founded SWR in 2009 (after developing the concept as an undergrad at WLU, incidentally) and spent nearly five years inspiring and guiding the non-profit’s remarkable progress in Waterloo Region. In January 2014 he transitioned into his new role as executive director of Sustainability CoLab, where he and managing director Priyanka Lloyd will work with the provincial network’s first five community members – SWR, Niagara Sustainability Initiative, Durham Sustain Ability, Sustainable Kingston and Ottawa-based EnviroCentre – to enlist more businesses in committing to reduce their carbon emissions. They’ll also be building knowledge-sharing and support infrastructure to grow and embolden the network to achieve even deeper impacts and encourage a widespread uptake of great sustainability strategies and action plans.

Read more about SWR, Sustainability CoLab and how this network-building movement is turning businesses large and small into community-scale environmentalists in the full feature story.

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The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) has teamed with the Lung Association and the Asthma Society to challenge provincial governments on their use of coal-powered electricity. Fresh from victory in Ontario, where the last coal plant will close in 2014, the formidable group has turned its attention to Alberta by teaming with the Pembina Institute.

Alberta generated 64 per cent of its electricity in 2012 by burning more coal than the rest of Canada combined, higher than the average in the US of 44 per cent. Coal causes more pollution than any other source of electricity, producing sulphur dioxide, mercury, lead, cadmium, hexachlorobenzene, dioxins and furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and arsenic. Globally, coal produces more GHG emissions than any other fossil fuel. In Alberta, GHG emissions from coal-fired electricity – 43 megatonnes – were only slightly less than all oil sand operations combined in 2011.

Nitrogen oxides react in the atmosphere to form ground-level ozone and are linked to the exacerbation of asthma, as is exposure to sulphur dioxide. Exposure to fine particulate matter is known to affect lung development in children and short-term exposure is associated with increased cardiac disease. Mercury and lead can affect neurological development during the early stages of life. Additionally, a dangerously warming climate increases the medical risks of heat exhaustion and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases from more frequent and severe heat waves, while potentially allowing the introduction of new parasites and pathogens. Finally, several substances emitted by coal plants are known, probable or possible carcinogens.

The health impacts are multiple and serious. Numerous reports in Canada and the US have quantified the human health and social costs of burning coal. The Canadian Medical Association’s 2008 Illness Cost of Air Pollution estimates the total economic damages of the health impacts of coal plants range between 0.7¢/kWh to 3.6 ¢/kWh. Additionally, Environment Canada determined the social costs of GHG emissions to be $26-104/tonne. The low end of this is an extra 2.9¢/kWh. Thus the total human health and social costs of burning coal is a minimum of 3.6-5.0¢/kWh. Pricing in the additional health and environmental costs of coal puts coal on par with numerous sources of low and non-polluting sources of electricity.

Currently there are several discussions underway that will affect the length of time coal plants are allowed to operate in Alberta before reducing different emissions, ranging from 40 to 50 years beyond their original commissioning date. Under the dominant federal policies, no coal units in Alberta will feel any regulations until the last day of 2019. Nearly two-thirds will remain immune from any emissions control through 2029. There are units that will be allowed to operate through the 2030s, 2040s, and even one into the 2060s without emissions regulations.

Ontario’s coal fleet, once the size of Alberta’s, will be phased out completely by the end of 2014. Nova Scotia, once more dependent on coal than Alberta, has legislated targets that require 40 per cent renewables by 2020, cutting its coal dependence in half. The coalition health and environmental experts believe that Alberta should show leadership by phasing out existing plants faster than the 50-year lives allowed under the federal regulations. Together they have put out a report called A Costly Diagnosis: Subsidizing Coal Power with Albertans’ Health (pdf).

JANET KIMANTAS: Why is an emergency room doctor working to phase-out coal-fired power?

JOE VIPOND: That’s a good question and the answer is personal and professional. The personal is I have two children and they are impacted by both the non-carbon and the carbon emissions from these plants. Initially I was drawn to climate concerns and I helped work on the report we did in March. It became obvious pretty quickly that the health aspects of burning coal are more attractive to the media and the public than carbon did – reporting that 100 people are dying every year is immediately understood in a way that climate change occurring over many decades is not. Professionally, I don’t see the effects of coal in Calgary they way my colleagues do in Edmonton. There are ten coal-fired plants 40-50 km immediately west of the city and the health impacts are impossible to ignore. StatsCan reports from 2000-2001 show that rates of asthma in Edmonton are ten per cent above the national average – the only stand out in the country. The data was collected completely independently of any consideration of coal-fired power. But one logical explanation would be those coal plants.

JK: Why is getting rid of coal such a priority now?

JV: Well, the information on the health effects of burning coal is increasing rapidly. Even since our March report, the WHO has come out with their conclusions that coal emissions are carcinogenic. At the same time, we now have viable alternatives. We have cheap and abundant natural gas which has negligible non-carbon emissions. But much more important are the renewables. The cost of solar is dropping to the point where its pretty much on grid parity in some jurisdictions. Alberta also has ample wind resources. It is no longer unreasonable to look at alternatives to coal.

JK: You have a young family. How has being a father influenced your activism?

JV: Huge! My time spans have shifted – I no longer think in terms of my own lifetime but in terms of theirs. I’m concerned about what kind of world we are leaving behind and I’m very influenced by the concept of intergenerational human rights.

JK: In the 1980s, doctors helped reduce the risk of nuclear war through organizations like the Nobel-Prize-winning, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Can physicians play a similarly useful role with respect to climate change? If so, how?

JV: Well, we haven’t done enough so far. The CMA released a position paper in 2010 urging physicians to be part of the movement. Doctors have public respect, in a way that perhaps politicians don’t, and we are just now seeing our ability to shift policy. But we have had some victories. The move to phase out coal in Ontario was driven by an Ontario Public Health Association policy paper in 1999. The Ontario Nurses Association were also key drivers in that campaign.

JK: Do you have targets for phasing out coal in Alberta?

JV: We know that it isn’t happening tomorrow, but we think a ten-year time span like in Ontario is reasonable. Natural gas has a role to play but we need to develop renewables. Let’s at least give renewables the same subsidies fossil fuels get.

JK: Do you see your challenges in Alberta as being similar or different than those in Ontario? Will the culture in Alberta present more difficulty?

JV: The current government is very much tied to industry and that’s the hardest thing. But still, there are almost no royalties from coal, so it is not a big revenue generator. There are almost no jobs in these highly mechanized power plants – politically it should be easy. But the big coal producers in this province, TransAlta and Atco being the big ones, are very politically tied.

JK: How do you square the reduction of coal in Alberta with the huge emissions growth in emerging economies – specifically China?

JV: I hear this a lot – why should we do anything? Well, the problem is humanity-wide and we all have to be part of the solution. The whole world has to reduce its reliance on coal and that includes Alberta and China. China has at least been pro-active with renewables. Alberta has not really done anything.

JK: What are your next steps?

JV: Well, we released our report in March and did a media blitz in September. Now we are meeting with MLAs and power brokers from all four parties. The three in opposition have said that they support our efforts, but we need to get that down on paper. There has been a lot of push-back from the ruling Conservatives, but we continue to meet with them and hope for some flexibility. The easiest thing to do is insist that coal-fired plants meet the same emissions standards as natural gas plants.

JK: Has your activism resulted in any personal burn-out?

JV: No. Actually, the opposite of burn-out. It’s too easy to throw your arms up and say “how can we do anything?” But it’s very empowering to be fighting for positive change. A lot of people feel a sense of environmental hopelessness and it’s amazing how much better it is when you are actively working. There is a lot of power that comes from people being actively involved.

The post Coal Remedy (Extended Interview) appeared first on A\J.

Click to launch the map. Last updated Nov. 13, 2014.

The development of shale gas promises to fuel North America’s energy future but with substantive environmental and energy costs. Assumptions that shale gas can be produced at low cost for over a century remain just that: faith-based assumptions. In fact the revolution could dramatically slow down while costs climb dramatically.

To date, Canada has not developed adequate regulations or public policy to address the scale or cumulative impact of hydraulic fracking on water resources or conventional oil and gas wells. Moreover, the country has no national water policy. In the absence of public reporting on fracking chemicals, industry water withdrawals and full mapping of the nation’s aquifers, rapid shale gas development could potentially threaten important water resources, if not fracture the country’s water security.

– Ben Parfitt, from Fracture Lines, written for the Program on Water Issues, Munk School of Global Affairs, uToronto

The map above shows the overlap of shale gas basins, aquifers, fracking wells and calls for moratoria below the 60th parallel. But hydraulic fracturing is dividing Canada’s northern territories as well. In June 2013, for example, the Yukon Council of First Nations unanimously passed a resolution calling on the Yukon government to prohibit fracking and declaring their traditional territories as “frack-free.”

This map also does not show potential water contamination or increased earthquake activity and GHG emissions from fracking. It doesn’t show the cumulative impact of pumping unknown chemical concentrations underground, or the heavy metals, VOCs, brine and radioactive materials that can resurface with flow back. It does not show the lack of government oversight or violated environmental regulations.

Learn about the rapid productivity decline and questionable ROI of fracking wells in Fracking’s Return on Investment is a Myth. Investigate specific fracking sites and moratoria at the Council of Canadians’ Fracker Tracker (where you can also get the most up-to-date information), and get advice from front-line fracking resisters in New Brunswick in 9 Ways to Fight Fracking.

The post Fracking Hotspots in Canada appeared first on A\J.

In the early hours of July 26, 2010, Sue Connolly bundled her children into the car and drove to the local daycare in Marshall, Michigan, like every other weekday. But on this morning, something was not quite right. “There was a very strong odor in the air. It just took your breath away. My eyes and throat were burning.” Connolly would soon discover that the largest and most expensive on-land oil spill in US history had occurred the night before – right in the middle of her community. Like many residents of this sleepy town of 7,000 in the southwestern part of the state, Connolly had no idea that millions of litres of oil were flowing beneath her feet on a daily basis. Today, you would be hard pressed to find anyone in Marshall who is not acutely aware both of the presence of pipelines and the potential danger they represent.

All told, nearly 4 million litres of heavy crude spilled from a two-metre gash in a below-ground pipeline known as Line 6B, blackening a three-kilometer stretch of Talmadge Creek and almost 60 km of the Kalamazoo River, an important regional waterway. Most of the tainted stretch of the river between Marshall and the city of Kalamazoo remained closed to the public for two years, and about 150 families from Marshall were permanently evacuated from their homes. Line 6B is operated by Enbridge Energy Partners, the US branch of Calgary-based Enbridge Inc., and it runs roughly 450 km from Indiana to Sarnia, Ontario. It’s part of the company’s 3,000- km Lakehead system of pipelines, which transports bitumen oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta to major refining centers in the Great Lakes region, the Midwest and Ontario.

Three and a half years later, Enbridge has spent more than $1-billion cleaning up the river, and their work is not yet done. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently ordered the company to return to dredge a 65-km span of the Kalamazoo where remains of the heavy Canadian oil have collected. While most of the crude has been recovered, remnants remain in the floodplains, on riverbanks and in the sediment at the bottom of the river.

With billions of dollars in new pipeline projects and expansions in the works across North America, companies like Enbridge are eager to allay the fears of an increasingly jittery public about the risks of moving oil through pipelines. Hoping to understand what exactly happened there in 2010, I joined a learning expedition to Michigan in May 2013, organized by the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. What I discovered was a community still coping with the tragedy, a community whose story should be a cautionary tale for us all.

On the evening of July 25, 2010, the 0.65-centimetre-thick wall of Line 6B’s 76-centimetre-wide carbon steel pipe ruptured near Talmadge Creek, just over a kilometre away from the nearest pump station. This caused a high priority alarm to sound in the Enbridge central control room in Edmonton. Multiple other alarms went off in the ensuing minutes, indicating pressure problems and discrepancies between the volume of oil entering and exiting the pipe. Control room operators ignored these warnings, believing that a large bubble had formed between batches of crude – not a cause for serious concern.

State of panic

Back in Marshall, oil was pouring into wetlands and Talmadge Creek throughout the night like water spewing from a decapitated fire hydrant. By the next morning, the community was in a state of panic. The river level was already high due to days of heavy rains. Thick, oily muck was now oozing over the banks, coating tree trunks and soil, and sloshing into the flood plains. Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) staff arrived on the scene quickly, finding muskrats, turtles and other small animals coated in oily goo. First responders included firefighters and local utilities who were responding to 911 calls and resident complaints about an unusual odor. Once the source was detected, authorities realized the spill would soon reach the Kalamazoo River, which eventually feeds into Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for millions of people.

“I remember a cop car driving by with a loud speaker ordering everyone in the area to evacuate due to the benzene levels,” recalls Beth Wallace, a community outreach coordinator with the National Wildlife Federation. “At the time we were not aware of how much of a risk it actually was. Nobody knew how to respond. It was unprecedented.”

Some 2,400 km away, alarms continued in Enbridge’s Edmonton control room throughout the morning, yet operators still disagreed on whether there was even a problem. Twice they pumped even more crude into the ruptured pipeline in an effort to solve the perceived “bubble problem,” all the while ignoring the repeated alarms. It wasn’t until the source of the leak was confirmed that an employee from a Michigan utility company called Enbridge directly and the pumps were finally turned off, 17 hours after the spill started.

First responders in Marshall were woefully unprepared for a spill of this magnitude. “When we got a call that there was an oil spill,” says Jay Wesley of the MDNR, “we expected to see an overturned truck or something like that. Half the river was black. My staff had never been trained for this type of event.”

And because Enbridge was not required to disclose to federal and local officials the contents of the pipeline, it wasn’t until a week later that responders even knew what kind of oil they were dealing with.

Horizontal Damage from the Kalamazoo River Oil Spill
The spill was much worse than it would have been at a drier time of the year. Spilled bitumen contaminated large swathes of the floodplain (indicated in orange) in addition to the riverbed.
Map data adapted from: openstreetmap.org, insideclimatenews.org and Enbridge Energy’s “Line 6b Incident – Conceptual Site Model 2013.” Diagram by nik harron.

Health impacts of crude oil exposure won’t be known for years

This was no ordinary crude. Tar sands oil is a thick and viscous substance with the consistency of peanut butter. It has to be combined with a cocktail of toxic chemicals to produce something called diluted bitumen, or “dilbit,” in order for it to flow through pipes. Scientists don’t fully understand how some of these chemicals affect humans and other organisms when released into the environment, as there has been relatively little long-term research into the impacts of oil spills. We do know, however, that these diluents usually include benzene, a known carcinogen that can affect human health at low concentrations over short periods of time.

By the time Sue Connolly picked up her kids from daycare that fateful afternoon, “it was apparent that the children and staff were already having symptoms from the chemicals in the air, including headaches, lethargy and diarrhea. That first night my son was throwing up and within three days, my daughter developed a strange rash. Other children had similar symptoms.”

About 320 people in the area reported symptoms consistent with crude oil exposure and 145 were treated, but some experts say it will be years before the full human health and ecological impacts of the spill are known. Alaskan marine toxicologist Riki Ott has been studying the health impacts of oil spills for years, particularly related to the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989. She says recent medical research has linked exposure to oil spill fumes with a host of symptoms and illnesses in humans and animals, including cancer, liver and kidney disease, fetal abnormalities and miscarriages. Ott predicts the Michigan spill will eventually trigger illnesses in some residents that their bodies haven’t expressed yet. “Very few people are looking at the public health implications of oil disasters. If the full human health costs [of these accidents] were known, it would change our energy future immediately.”

Sue Connolly wonders whether her children will experience fertility problems because of the accident when they want to start their own families. “What if people in our community are being diagnosed with cancer and other health issues in the future? How will we know if it’s connected to this exposure?”

Three years later

Looking out onto Talmadge Creek only 5 km from where the pipeline burst, I had a hard time believing that the entire area was blanketed with a layer of sludge only three years prior. “It was totally devastating to see it in the first weeks and months after the spill because there was visible oil everywhere,” says MDNR’s Jay Wesley. “Now when you canoe it you probably will hardly even tell. And the fish communities are still there, the bugs are coming back, the turtles are still there. So it does show that it is a resilient system and it does heal itself eventually.”

Although the river looks better, Wesley says it will be many more years before the agency can measure the full impact on fish and other animals’ reproductive cycles. And EPA officials estimate there are still roughly 700,000 litres of oil on the river bottom.

“Pervasive organizational failures”

An investigation into the incident by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) cited “pervasive organizational failures at Enbridge” that included deficient management, inadequate training, insufficient pipeline inspections and an ineffective spill response. NTSB chair Deborah Herman famously compared Enbridge’s handling of the spill to “Keystone Kops,” in reference to incompetent police in silent films.

The NTSB found that corrosion of Line 6B was the underlying cause of the catastrophic breach, exacerbated by a flaw in the outside coating of the 40-yearold pipe. Fatigue cracks and corrosion defects had grown and coalesced under polyethylene tape coating that had peeled off the outside of the pipe, eventually producing a substantial crack in the steel. Yet records from the US Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reveal that the defect that led to the rupture was detected at least three times before the spill occurred, and Enbridge had done nothing to address the problem.

Enbridge acknowledges that mistakes were made (which is different from “we made mistakes”) and that they have made many improvements to their operations. “This was the largest spill in the 60-year history of Enbridge,” company spokesperson Jason Manshum told me. “Our goal has been and always will be zero incidents. Clearly we’re not there yet, but we’re putting all the pieces in place to minimize the risk.”

The difference with dilbit

In the aftermath of the spill, there was much debate about the inherent risks of transporting diluted bitumen. Enbridge and the US Association of Oil Pipelines (AOP) claim the rupture of Line 6B had nothing to do with the product being transported. According to John Stoody, AOP’s director of government and public relations, “diluted bitumen is a heavy crude that is similar to others like Venezuela or California or Mexico. We’ve been transporting it through pipelines for over 40 years.” A recent report by the US National Academy of Sciences seemed to agree with this assessment, concluding that dilbit is “no more likely to cause corrosion than other crude oils.”

To prove this to journalists at the Enbridge offices near Marshall, Manshum passed around a small vial full of dilbit to demonstrate that it sounds just like water when shaken and is no less viscous than other crudes. Yet environmental groups continue to have their doubts about its safety. A 2011 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club and the Pipeline Safety Trust claims that in the Alberta pipeline system, which transports a “high proportion” of dilbit, there were 16 times more spills than in the US system. As was the case in Kalamazoo, 40-year-old pipelines that were originally designed for different products are now being used to transport dilbit, which has high sand and sulphur content and is transported at higher temperatures and pressures than conventional oils. Incidentally, this is precisely the plan for the proposed Line 9 Energy East project that would see the flow reversed in an existing 37-year-old pipeline from Sarnia to Montreal without any significant design modifications to accommodate dilbit.

In addition to dilbit’s corrosive properties inside the pipe, the other important revelation from Kalamazoo concerns the way dilbit behaves when it gets outside. The Michigan accident proved that dilbit eventually sinks in water. This fact was one of the most challenging aspects of the cleanup operation, far more difficult than cleaning up oil that is floating. “We’re coming into the third year of intensive cleanup activity, and now we’re looking at very intrusive and expensive dredging to try to get it out of the worst places where it’s accumulated,” says Stephen Hamilton, an ecology professor at Michigan State University and the independent science adviser to the cleanup.

Manshum doesn’t deny that some leaked oil ended up at the bottom of the river, but he attributes this to “turbulent water and high river flows. The oil adhered itself to debris and that’s when it started to sink.”

Jeff Short, a respected US environmental chemist, has found that dilbit does sink in both fresh and marine waters under certain conditions. Environment Canada has reached a similar conclusion and, based on lessons learned in Michigan, the US EPA has urged that special standards be set for tar sands crude because of the additional risks it poses when it spills. Short’s research found that dilbit would sink within 25 hours at low water temperatures and high wind speeds. These are precisely the conditions often found in Kitimat Arm on the central BC coast, where giant oil tankers would congregate should the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific be approved.

Photo from David Kenyon, Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
Enbridge’s Line 6B leaked along Michigan’s Talmadge Creek and Kalamazoo River, impacting several species in the watershed, including painted turtles and the herons that hunt in and around the affected floodplain.

Pipeline accidents will continue to happen

Line 6B through Michigan is now back in operation, although Enbridge is currently in the process of replacing it with a 91.4-cmdiameter pipe (the old line is 76.2 cm) and an increased flow capacity of 500,000 barrels per day (up from 250,000). Given Enbridge’s spotty safety record, many local residents are worried. Marshall homeowner Dave Gallagher, whose house lies directly in the path of 6B, wonders whether the new pipeline will be safe despite Enbridge’s claims. “They’re curving the new pipeline around our house,” says Gallagher. “Pumping oil at that kind of pressure, what’s that going to do to the pipe? The heat that’s generated from these pipes melts the snow in our backyard in the wintertime. There’s no company that can say there will never be a leak. Past experience shows these pipes eventually leak.”

Yet Enbridge’s Manshum insists that the latest advancements in pipeline technologies have made transporting oil in any form safer than ever. To demonstrate, he showed us a sample of the latest materials his company uses to construct their new pipelines. He said the coating is epoxy-bonded with a wall thickness of 1.7 cm for pipes that go under highways and water bodies, and 0.95 cm for the rest, whereas existing lines are typically 0.6 cm thick. “The new coating should not allow any moisture between the tape and steel. We also have more sensors and leak detection capability.”

After the horrifying accident in Lac-Mégantic, Québec, in which a runaway train carrying crude oil derailed, exploded and killed 47 people in July 2013, an expansion of the presumed safer alternative – pipelines – seemed reasonable. Yet this response overlooks one of the central lessons of the Kalamazoo disaster: that pipeline accidents will continue to happen. Over the last 20 years, there have been an average of 250 pipeline incidents each year in the US and one rupture every 16 years on average for every 1,000 km of pipeline in Canada. Across all its operations, Enbridge alone has had at least 804 spills between 1999 and 2010, releasing roughly 19 million litres of hydrocarbons. This amounts to approximately half of the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez tanker after it struck a rock in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in 1988.

“I would love to assure you that there will be no leaks again, but I can’t tell you that,” says Manshum. “We’re dealing with mechanical equipment and there is always the chance of mechanical failure.”

As conventional fossil fuel supplies are exhausted and climate change intensifies, humanity appears to be entering a new and more dangerous energy era. Many mistakes – both human errors and equipment failures – led to and exacerbated the tragedy in Michigan. The Kalamazoo accident showed us that although communities and natural systems can eventually recover, the longterm health and ecological consequences of oil spills are still not well understood. Michigan environmental officials now say it could be years before they are ready to issue a final verdict on the damage done to the Kalamazoo River ecosystem.

“What I think is the really important thing about Kalamazoo is that we are in the midst of a really big fundamental change in the type of fuel we are getting in this country,” says NRDC spokesperson Josh Mogerman. “The industry in Canada plans to triple production by 2030, and folks who are concerned about climate issues and safety issues are concerned about these production numbers. That’s part of the reason why you’ve seen such an uproar over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.”

It’s also important to remember that the Line 6B rupture occurred just minutes from Enbridge’s maintenance facility in Marshall, so some equipment – such as vacuum trucks, skimmers, underflow dams and oil booms – was close at hand. The town is also close to the cities of Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, so more resources – emergency response technicians, other spill containment and control equipment – were readily available.

By comparison, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline would run through remote and rugged wilderness areas (as well as important salmon habitat), where conditions such as deep snow, avalanche hazards, heavy rain or high water flows could make response much less effective.

In its much-anticipated report on the Northern Gateway proposal released in December, Canada’s National Energy Board Joint Review Panel recommended that the project be approved provided that 209 conditions are met. The panel concluded that the pipeline is in the “Canadian public interest” and that the potential for adverse environmental impacts on local communities and ecosystems is outweighed by the expected economic benefits for Canada as a whole.

Related: Indirect Impacts of Pipelines Should Be Included in Assessments

Three years after the Kalamazoo spill, Susan Connolly is still struggling to get answers from Enbridge and local officials about the impacts of the accident. She says county and state governments have refused to conduct a long-term health study and she worries about the future well-being of her family and her community. “We want people to know what happened here and we’re going to keep fighting – we are not going away,” she says. “It’s owed to this community but also to the nation because there are so many other towns that will be impacted by pipelines. They have a right to know and to see what’s going to happen to them too. It’s not a matter of if there will be another spill, but when.”

Click to open the full map.

Get the bigger picture of where and how much oil moves through North America. Check out our interactive map of current and proposed major crude oil and dilbit pipelines, including direction, volume and recent major spills.

Many organizations and cultural groups are confronting proposed pipleline projects in North America. Push back against Northern Gateway via pipeupagainstenbridge.ca and dogwoodinitiative.org, or join First Nations resistence at unistotencamp.com, yinkadene.ca or coastfirstnations.ca. Support efforts to stop the Line 9 reversal at notranscanadapipeline.com. Engage in the battle over Keystone XL at tarsandsaction.org, tarsandsblockage.org or 350.org.

The post The Cautionary Tale of Kalamazoo appeared first on A\J.

Click the image to launch an interactive look at the Beehive Design Collective’s Stories of Bees and Economies, part of their Mesoamérica Resiste poster.

This is an excerpt; you can order the Resource Wars issue for the full story.

THE BEEHIVE DESIGN COLLECTIVE is aptly named, aside from its lack of hierarchy. The activist art organization relies heavily on effective communication, cooperation and a decentralized division of labour to bring its intricate masterpieces to fruition. The Beehive grew out of the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s and a collaborative mosaic installation in Machias, Maine, where they’re now headquartered. Bees steward two historic buildings in Machias; one offers studio and living space for members and visitors, the other serves as a community cultural center. Other Bees are spread across North and South America.

The Bees’ first big collaboration was in protest of Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations in Québec in 2001, and they’ve continued creating and sharing large-scale educational graphics to illustrate the impacts of – and resistance to – globalization, colonialism, resource extraction, biotechnology and other threats to communities and the planet.

Mesoamérica Resiste

Their latest project, the astonishing Mesoamérica Resiste campaign poster aims to capture the narrative of resistance to the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project (MIDP), or simply Project Mesoamerica. Introduced in 2001 as a 25-year, $20-billion infrastructure investment program, the plan was met with immediate resistance from indigenous groups, refugees and migrant justice organizers, rural communities, environmentalists, artists, farmers, women, students and countless others. Opponents are largely protesting a lack of community consultation and the disproportionate focus on infrastructure that will serve trade and corporations, rather than benefitting the community, health and social development of people in the region.

A decade in the making, built on years of research and involving over a dozen illustrators, the finished poster is a double-sided epic that stands 0.9 metres tall and nearly 1.8 metres wide. It features more than 400 species of animals and insects, from the stingless Melipona bee to quetzals to manatees, and at least 100 species of plants, including water hyacinths, vanilla and indigenous corn.

The outside of the poster shows the top-down view of the region, styled like an old colonial map and depicting many planned developments and the major corporate and state players. A banner across the top warns that our economic interventions and resource extraction methods have grown increasingly invasive and depleted the Earth’s biodiversity and resiliency. Inside is the ant’s eye view from the grassroots, at the base of the iconic Ceiba tree. It’s bursting with “stories of resistance and people building alternatives – building local and regional economies and defending their land,” explains Mandy Skinner, an on-and-off Bee since 2004.

The collective is currently touring with Mesoamérica Resiste, sharing the stories behind the scenes they’ve painstakingly depicted, of the lived experiences of those impacted by development projects, militarization and colonialism. While US, Canadian and European tours are focused on fundraising, Latin American tours will be about distributing free copies to people impacted by the MIDP. Skinner stresses the importance of “returning the graphics to people who we talked to on the original research trip and … offering these as tools for their work that they shared with us.” The printing and distribution of posters in Latin America is also being funded by a Kickstarter campaign that more than tripled its goal of $36,000 in December 2013.

Despite the high costs of touring and their reliance on fundraising and poster sales, the Beehive is hardly proprietary about its work. All of their graphics are anti-copyright and they encourage people to share them widely and become storytellers themselves.

Explore the alternative economy

The scene you can explore above – a small section of the inside of the poster – is of a busy hive of Mesoamerican stingless bees building a “solidarity economy” and depicts a number of economic practices, both traditional and new, that people are using in Mesoamerica to build alternatives to the dominant capitalist economy, which doesn’t serve them very well. The scene also explores issues around pollination and the importance of restoring native bee populations.

According to the collective, bees have a significant role in the big picture of development:

As European colonists invaded Central America, they brought with them the invasive European honey bee, which aggressively began to push the native Mesoamerican stingless bees out of their ecological niche. Today, deforestation, pollution and industrial farming are destroying habitat and causing the collapse of pollinator species all over Central America. Bees are an indicator species, and the drastic decline of their populations may forecast a larger ecosystem collapse. Restoring native bee populations is vitally important to the health of ecosystems and agriculture globally, and is directly linked to the survival of Indigenous peoples and beekeeping knowledge. Traditional beekeeping is an intimate relationship between bees, people, culture and the land.

Take a narrated tour of the beehive scene now.

Order the Resource Wars issue for the full story on the MIDP and the making of the poster.

The Beehive Collective also offers a great example of prefigurative politics. By forgoing individual credit and copyright, by centering and strengthening the voices of marginalized people instead of speaking for them, and by building relationships and consensually sharing rather than co-opting the stories of those impacted, the Beehive’s own process beautifully reflects the anti-capitalist, anti-colonial world they want to see. You can learn about how the collective works in our Q&A with Mandy Skinner.

Find upcoming events, see more of the Beehive’s work and join their network of collaborators at beehivecollective.org.

The post Pollinating Resilience appeared first on A\J.