Friends of the Earth are now calling for the right to a healthy environment to be enshrined in a new Environmental Rights Act.
The act gives local communities the power to hold regulators and public agencies accountable to reduce the multiple layers of pollution affecting their communities to better protect wildlife and people.
Sienna Summers, conservationist at Friends of the Earth, said: “Successive governments have failed to protect our environment from pollution and ensure that people can continue to enjoy the health and wellbeing benefits that come from our abundant nature.”
Nature has been depleted
“That’s why we ranked pollution hotspots based on constituency, allowing citizens and legislators to understand how pollution is affecting their communities and take action.”
“What harms wildlife often harms people too. Many of us are forced to breathe the same polluted air and live near rivers and streams laced with sewage. We can choose to avoid these polluted waters, but many precious species cannot escape the pollutants we pour into their living spaces.”
They added: “Polluters must be held accountable for the damage they cause and forced to clean up. Stronger laws holding polluters accountable would give communities back the power to defend their rights in court and create a cleaner, healthier environment for both wildlife and people.”
Friends of the Earth has plotted these natural pollution hotspots on a map that can be viewed online. hereChelsea and Fulham was identified as the constituency with the highest concentration of pollution hotspots, followed by Salford, Worsley and Eccles, Vauxhall and Camberwell and Battersea.
This map of nature pollution hotspots highlights that around one in six species across the UK are at risk of extinction, making England one of the most naturally depleted countries in the world.
Habitat
Species that symbolize a healthy environment, such as river otters, dippers, Atlantic salmon and mayflies, enjoy little protection in some of the hardest hit areas, as raw sewage, toxic chemicals and sludge are pumped into their habitats more than 1,000 times a day.
Excess nutrients from sewage have led to massive algae blooms that suck the oxygen out of the water, literally suffocating fish and other wildlife.
Studies have shown that noise pollution affects the communication and foraging abilities of more than 109 species of organisms across a range of environments, including birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, arthropods and mollusks.
Impacts include loss of biodiversity, declines in wildlife populations, and changes in vocal behaviour, such as birds increasing the volume of their calls to counter the urban acoustic environment.
Light pollution particularly affects nocturnal creatures, such as bats and moths. Most bat species avoid brightly lit areas, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as artificial light from homes, businesses and roads encroach on their habitats, even in rural areas.
Swam
Four of the 11 threatened mammal species in the UK are bats. Artificial light can also disrupt migratory bird routes, reducing migration success, survival and reproduction.
Air pollution is also a major threat to wildlife, particularly pollinators which are essential for food production. UK native plant species are particularly vulnerable to nitrogen overload caused by air pollution, with around two thirds of species under threat.
Toxic fumes from air pollution can reduce a bee’s ability to detect scents by up to 90 percent from just a few meters away, making it nearly impossible for them to follow the trail of flowers.
From the danger of sewage-filled waterways to breathing in toxic levels of air pollution and witnessing the degradation of beautiful countryside and decline of wildlife, pollution affects people as well as nature.
There are only three rivers in England that are designated as “bathing beaches” safe enough to swim in, and the water quality of these is simply described as “poor”.
This author
Brendan Montague is EcologistThis article is based on a press release from Friends of the Earth.
