Eu

A bizarre decision has been made by the EU to increase the maximum limit of GM material allowed in organic food, and effectively legitimise widespread GM contamination.

You might be alarmed to think that any GM ingredients end up in organic food, and you're right to be so. The previous maximum limit of 0.1 per cent was set simply because that was the lowest level that food could accurately be tested for GM contamination.

The new limit is 0.9 per cent, the same that applies to non-organic food, and while this might not sound like much, it does now mean that organic food can be polluted with much greater quantities of GM material before it has to be labelled with a warning. If organic food is tested and found to contain 0.8% GM contamination, it will be labeled as ‘GM free'.

This makes absolutely no sense. The success of organic foods has come about precisely because we trust them not to contain toxic chemicals and GM produce. As our campaigner Ben Ayliffe pointed out in the Independent, the shelves are groaning with organic food because it's what shoppers want, while GM food is conspicuous by its absence for the opposite reason.

For the EU to say it supports organic farming while increasing the level of contamination it can contain smacks of double standards. Do we see the lobbying fingerprints of the monolithic biotech companies all over this? I'll leave you to make up your own mind.

Greenpeace's call for 40 per cent of our oceans to be set aside as reserves may sound radical, or even far-fetched. But it isn't. Others, such as the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution have echoed what we're asking for. And sometimes, size DOES matter.

Large-scale Marine Reserves build in resilience to the ecosystems they encompass, allowing them to adapt to changes we might not even be able to predict (as well as those we are anticipating, like climate change). Most of what politicians have proposed quite simply doesn't go far enough: they are either too small, or too weak (the proposals, not the politicians).

Amidst all the current hoo-hah about Trident, we have some good news from Russia or, at least, the potential for good news.

Back in September, our Partners in Crime report revealed how Finland is importing vast quantities of timber logged illegally in neighbouring Russia. According to federal law, all forestry management plans must undergo an Environmental Impact Assessment - in the republic of Karelia these assessments are not being done yet the local government continues to hand out logging permits.

However, this week the Head of the Federal Forestry Agency in Russia has ordered an immediate investigation into the problem, appointing a commission to report back next month. This is a huge step forward and acknowledges the scale of the problem - of all the timber felled in Karelia, the majority is illegal.

Car manufacturers are trying to sabotage a new European climate law that would force them to improve the efficiency of their new vehicles. But there's time to act to make sure that Europe's cars are cleaner and greener in future.