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The Prince of Wales has been criticised for flying 125 miles in a private helicopter to deliver a speech about lowering aircraft emissions.
The royal flew from Highgrove to Cambridge to give a lecture at Cambridge University’s Whittle Laboratory, where he spoke to researchers about the decarbonisation of air travel.
In his speech, Prince Charles urged researchers to “act quickly to rescue this poor old planet”.
Reports claim that the total trip would have caused carbon emissions of roughly 2.5 tonnes and cost roughly £12,000.
Prince Charles, who regularly speaks about the dangers of climate change, has been criticised by activists such as Graham Smith, CEO of campaign group Republic.
Created with Sketch.
Created with Sketch.
1/20
Fatou, 30, comes from a family of farmers approximately 20km away from the village of Bousra where she now lives with her son Ibu. Her husband grows rice during the rainy season and the rest of the time performs duties as a marabou (fortune teller). She joined the Ampa Awagna agricultural camp for two weeks in July 2019. She says that prior to enrolling on the course, the lack of knowledge in how and when to fertilise her crops resulted in extremely low yields. Fatou explains: “I wasn’t doing anything before I got married but I started market gardening after I came here. I was farming vegetables before but I had some challenges. You can really see the difference in my smallholding now.” She earned £150 for her family selling her recent crop for New Year celebrations. “I now want to get more land and grow my business”.
Images Paddy Dowling/Y Care
2/20
Djifanghor, 27, is a single mother who lives alone in the village of Niaguis with her mother. After her father died in 2008 her eldest brother was forced to work away to protect the family income. “I don’t have a husband or a boyfriend," she says. "The father of my daughter has gone away so life is challenging raising her on my own. The most difficult part is to be able to provide her with what she needs when she asks." Djifanghor jumped at the chance to learn how to farm the land – she says agriculture is her passion and her vegetable garden. “I’ve been involved in the Ampa Awagna project for a year and prior to enrolment, I had no idea how to set up a vegetable garden. I have just started the vegetable garden and so far I have only sold lettuce. I am also growing chard, carrots, tomatoes and onions on the small plot of land donated from a Catholic church nearby. The bishop tells all his parishioners to come and buy from me”.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
3/20
Belange, 23, lives in the village of Soutoure, near Kolda. Her parents have always traditionally farmed rice & peanut crops but have noticed the rainy season is unstable – sometimes there is more rain and sometimes there is not enough. “This year it has rained so much, the field flooded and we have lost the rice we were growing. We harvested half the yield of rice we would normally have”. Despite being heavily pregnant she works from dawn to dusk in her lush market garden, tending her chickens and her pigs. Having excelled at the initial 2-week agricultural training camp at Ampa Awagna, Belange was asked to complete the 50-day intensive agricultural camp. She adds: “I am earning much more than I did before the training. I’m growing tomatoes, peppers and chillis and I have much more output. Our life is better now – we don’t need to get help from others or have to ask people for money.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
4/20
Elie, 27, along with her family fled Oussouye in the Ziguinchor Region of Senegal in 1998 at the height of the conflict. She recalls stories of how the rebel groups lit fuel around shelters and make-shift homes and those residents who tried to escape were shot. “I still hear the crying and screams of those who perished … that is still what I have in my mind”. Elie holds a masters’ degree in law and would like to become a magistrate, but it is very hard for her to continue at university as it requires a lot of money and she doesn’t have a business to fund the next phase of her studies. “So I’d like to get these agricultural skills from the Ampa Awagna course, start my own business and return to studying later when I have the money.” “In my village we use to grow rice but due to the impact of climate change, we grow far less than before. We can’t find enough land to do what we need to do, as the sea level is rising.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
5/20
Dry inlet at Mandina village near Sedhiou. In recent years water reserves where Cattle used to graze the lush grass at the bank has dropped significantly. All that remains are the discarded nets from a once active fishing area for locals, now a vast area of cracked mud and salt crystals.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
6/20
Khady, 32, lives 4km from Ziguinchor. She participated in both the Agricultural Training camp in December 2018 and spent 3 months at the Incubation camp where she learnt how to transform her crops. “I am an orphan, both my parents are dead and I now have to support all of my family; I have seven siblings and my grandmother to care for.” Having enough food is a major challenge for the family as the rainy season is so short now. Fatou has learnt from the Ampa Awagna project how to transform her vegetables into juice to sell and dreams of one day having her own company and employing others. “The money I get from my market garden is not enough but it’s better than nothing.” “The biggest challenge I have supporting our family is food – having enough for everyone to eat. We have porridge in the morning and then rice for lunch and supper. We have some rice to eat but not enough to sell.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
7/20
A dry inlet bed at Mandina near Sedhiou, where cattle once grazed the lush vegetation on the banks – now all that remains are their footprints and hoof marks
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
8/20
Alima, 31, says her ancestors have always been farmers: “My mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother all were, but they farmed very differently. They would grow rice, maize and millet only, whereas we are choosing what is easier for us to grow. We can now make more profit than in the past.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
9/20
Cezi, 29, lives in Carounate, near Ziguinchor. Her father was killed in 1995 during the conflict when she was just 4 years old. “A lot of people were killed on the same day in my area, houses were destroyed and several families were forced to move away. “My schooling was affected – I felt ashamed when the others talked about their fathers and I didn’t have one. It all affected my studies.” She explains how hard the period was for her family, in particular her mother. “She used to drink alcohol as she said it was the only way to forget the ‘bad souvenirs’ (memories) from that day.” Cezi is one of 11 family members at home. Cezi has been managing a large poultry farm and has now written a business plan so that she can set up her own farm. “I had a passion to work with chickens for a long time but I had no opportunity to do it. So when the YMCA came and asked me what would I like to be trained in at the Ampa Awagna camp, I had no hesitation. I knew I wanted to work with chickens”.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
10/20
The Ampa Awagna project since its introduction in 2017 has trained 354 students in agricultural techniques and empowered 90 participants with the knowledge and skill to start their own companies. Projects like these are monumental in a region where 72 per cent of young people live on less than £1.50 per day.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
11/20
Famatou, 32, lives in the village of Saleykegna. She has struggled in the past to provide enough food for her family to eat. She explained how she had heard the Ampa Awagna project was providing small scale farmers with improved techniques growing crops to increase yields. Since her training, her onions have doubled in size and she has the ability to earn well and provide for her five children. “I get one production and I can earn 35,000 CFA (£54). I’m very happy now that my vegetable garden is doing better. I hope it will continue to be successful, otherwise, this will affect my family, I just love to see my garden grow.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
12/20
Aida, 36, lives in Takou village, near Sedhiou. She has five children and is 8 months pregnant but still works tirelessly on her small holding and with her chickens. The family only eat twice a day but Aida has a business plan to grow her poultry farm. “My mother used to grow rice and peanuts just for food. People still do grow these here but only in the rainy season, which is very short.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
13/20
Lydie, 25, lives in Boukitingho near Ziguinchor. She attended the Ampa Awagna Y Care/YMCA course and learned how to upscale the vegetables she grows by turning produce from the market into syrup, juice and marmalade. This enables her to earn a more consistent income the whole year-round. She is already teaching other women in the village the new skills she learned at the course. “We have a joint piece of land in the village where we can grow our crops, and there we grow carrots, salad, onions and maize. “After I left school I was doing almost nothing, but I joined the project in 2018 and now can contribute income for my family. I can earn 7,000 CFA (approx. £10) from selling the juice and the marmalade. The work is really hard but I like it very much.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
14/20
Y Care International, the YMCA’s aid and development charity, is empowering young women across the world and is supporting a programme in Senegal to address youth unemployment and help the next generation of farmers adapt to climate change. Beneficiaries like Fatou are able to create sustainable lives for themselves and their families.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
15/20
Bouya, 23, lives in a village on the outskirts of Kolda. An orphan, she lost both her parents to illness. Until now Bouya has been totally dependent on her uncle for support. “I’ve just completed the agricultural training camp at Ampa Awagna and I am now planning to develop my own smallholding. The plot of land belonged to my father. My idea is to start growing okra, lettuce, tomato and cucumber – okra is a great crop because it is resistant to the heat. “I dream of one day of having a very big vegetable farm and living back in my home. It would mean a lot to me to be able to be independent, satisfy my own needs and not rely on my uncle.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
16/20
Laurentine, 26, runs a smallholding of pigs near Kolda. She is using the new farming methods she learnt on the Ampa Awangna camp and is extremely positive about the future. “Before the training, we used traditional methods. The programme taught me the modern way is to keep them in the shelter as when they wander around they can bring back diseases”. She now has 40 pigs and hopes in the next 10 years to move to a much larger holding where she wants 200-300 pigs. “If you feed the pig well and it fattens up in 18 months then you can sell a big pig for its meat for 35,000 – 50,000 CFA [£54 - £76], but if you don’t feed it well it can take 2 years to get to this size. So for us, the challenge is finding food for the pigs. If we had enough we could start killing them and selling the meat – there is really good money this way.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
17/20
Belange, 23, lives in the village of Soutoure, near Kolda. Having excelled at the initial 2-week agricultural training camp at Ampa Awagna, Belange was asked to complete the 50-day intensive agricultural camp. She explained: “When I returned, I started growing in my vegetable garden, rearing pigs and poultry. I am earning much more than I did before the training. I’m growing tomatoes, peppers and chillis and I have much more output. Our life is better now – we don’t need to get help from others or have to ask people for money.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
18/20
Khady, 32, watering her crops of Aubergine and Ochre near Ziguinchor. Watering the crops to ensure they produce the best yields takes several hours a day. She participated in both the Agricultural Training camp in December 2018 and spent 3 months at the ‘Incubation camp’ in Oct – December 2019 where she learnt how to transform her crops into juices and syrups.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
19/20
A beneficiary of the Y Care/YMCA Ampa Awagna, Belange, 23 stands marking the spot, where the rice harvest should have reached. The deficit in rice crop yields (the staple diet) reported by several farmers or total crop-losses due to inconsistent rainfall have pushed vulnerable households with depleted food stocks to begin using negative coping strategies such as decreasing the number of meals per day for the family.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
20/20
Alphonse George Manga, regional executive secretary for YMCA Senegal, explained: “We are in a changing world, we can’t stay in the past. For this century things are changing for the better for women. I think in the future there will be a role reversal. Where previously, women were required to stay at home, they are now far more skilled and empowered. They can do and be whatever they want if they are just given a chance and a little bit of help.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
1/20
Fatou, 30, comes from a family of farmers approximately 20km away from the village of Bousra where she now lives with her son Ibu. Her husband grows rice during the rainy season and the rest of the time performs duties as a marabou (fortune teller). She joined the Ampa Awagna agricultural camp for two weeks in July 2019. She says that prior to enrolling on the course, the lack of knowledge in how and when to fertilise her crops resulted in extremely low yields. Fatou explains: “I wasn’t doing anything before I got married but I started market gardening after I came here. I was farming vegetables before but I had some challenges. You can really see the difference in my smallholding now.” She earned £150 for her family selling her recent crop for New Year celebrations. “I now want to get more land and grow my business”.
Images Paddy Dowling/Y Care
2/20
Djifanghor, 27, is a single mother who lives alone in the village of Niaguis with her mother. After her father died in 2008 her eldest brother was forced to work away to protect the family income. “I don’t have a husband or a boyfriend," she says. "The father of my daughter has gone away so life is challenging raising her on my own. The most difficult part is to be able to provide her with what she needs when she asks." Djifanghor jumped at the chance to learn how to farm the land – she says agriculture is her passion and her vegetable garden. “I’ve been involved in the Ampa Awagna project for a year and prior to enrolment, I had no idea how to set up a vegetable garden. I have just started the vegetable garden and so far I have only sold lettuce. I am also growing chard, carrots, tomatoes and onions on the small plot of land donated from a Catholic church nearby. The bishop tells all his parishioners to come and buy from me”.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
3/20
Belange, 23, lives in the village of Soutoure, near Kolda. Her parents have always traditionally farmed rice & peanut crops but have noticed the rainy season is unstable – sometimes there is more rain and sometimes there is not enough. “This year it has rained so much, the field flooded and we have lost the rice we were growing. We harvested half the yield of rice we would normally have”. Despite being heavily pregnant she works from dawn to dusk in her lush market garden, tending her chickens and her pigs. Having excelled at the initial 2-week agricultural training camp at Ampa Awagna, Belange was asked to complete the 50-day intensive agricultural camp. She adds: “I am earning much more than I did before the training. I’m growing tomatoes, peppers and chillis and I have much more output. Our life is better now – we don’t need to get help from others or have to ask people for money.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
4/20
Elie, 27, along with her family fled Oussouye in the Ziguinchor Region of Senegal in 1998 at the height of the conflict. She recalls stories of how the rebel groups lit fuel around shelters and make-shift homes and those residents who tried to escape were shot. “I still hear the crying and screams of those who perished … that is still what I have in my mind”. Elie holds a masters’ degree in law and would like to become a magistrate, but it is very hard for her to continue at university as it requires a lot of money and she doesn’t have a business to fund the next phase of her studies. “So I’d like to get these agricultural skills from the Ampa Awagna course, start my own business and return to studying later when I have the money.” “In my village we use to grow rice but due to the impact of climate change, we grow far less than before. We can’t find enough land to do what we need to do, as the sea level is rising.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
5/20
Dry inlet at Mandina village near Sedhiou. In recent years water reserves where Cattle used to graze the lush grass at the bank has dropped significantly. All that remains are the discarded nets from a once active fishing area for locals, now a vast area of cracked mud and salt crystals.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
6/20
Khady, 32, lives 4km from Ziguinchor. She participated in both the Agricultural Training camp in December 2018 and spent 3 months at the Incubation camp where she learnt how to transform her crops. “I am an orphan, both my parents are dead and I now have to support all of my family; I have seven siblings and my grandmother to care for.” Having enough food is a major challenge for the family as the rainy season is so short now. Fatou has learnt from the Ampa Awagna project how to transform her vegetables into juice to sell and dreams of one day having her own company and employing others. “The money I get from my market garden is not enough but it’s better than nothing.” “The biggest challenge I have supporting our family is food – having enough for everyone to eat. We have porridge in the morning and then rice for lunch and supper. We have some rice to eat but not enough to sell.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
7/20
A dry inlet bed at Mandina near Sedhiou, where cattle once grazed the lush vegetation on the banks – now all that remains are their footprints and hoof marks
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
8/20
Alima, 31, says her ancestors have always been farmers: “My mother, my grandmother and my great grandmother all were, but they farmed very differently. They would grow rice, maize and millet only, whereas we are choosing what is easier for us to grow. We can now make more profit than in the past.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
9/20
Cezi, 29, lives in Carounate, near Ziguinchor. Her father was killed in 1995 during the conflict when she was just 4 years old. “A lot of people were killed on the same day in my area, houses were destroyed and several families were forced to move away. “My schooling was affected – I felt ashamed when the others talked about their fathers and I didn’t have one. It all affected my studies.” She explains how hard the period was for her family, in particular her mother. “She used to drink alcohol as she said it was the only way to forget the ‘bad souvenirs’ (memories) from that day.” Cezi is one of 11 family members at home. Cezi has been managing a large poultry farm and has now written a business plan so that she can set up her own farm. “I had a passion to work with chickens for a long time but I had no opportunity to do it. So when the YMCA came and asked me what would I like to be trained in at the Ampa Awagna camp, I had no hesitation. I knew I wanted to work with chickens”.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
10/20
The Ampa Awagna project since its introduction in 2017 has trained 354 students in agricultural techniques and empowered 90 participants with the knowledge and skill to start their own companies. Projects like these are monumental in a region where 72 per cent of young people live on less than £1.50 per day.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
11/20
Famatou, 32, lives in the village of Saleykegna. She has struggled in the past to provide enough food for her family to eat. She explained how she had heard the Ampa Awagna project was providing small scale farmers with improved techniques growing crops to increase yields. Since her training, her onions have doubled in size and she has the ability to earn well and provide for her five children. “I get one production and I can earn 35,000 CFA (£54). I’m very happy now that my vegetable garden is doing better. I hope it will continue to be successful, otherwise, this will affect my family, I just love to see my garden grow.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
12/20
Aida, 36, lives in Takou village, near Sedhiou. She has five children and is 8 months pregnant but still works tirelessly on her small holding and with her chickens. The family only eat twice a day but Aida has a business plan to grow her poultry farm. “My mother used to grow rice and peanuts just for food. People still do grow these here but only in the rainy season, which is very short.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
13/20
Lydie, 25, lives in Boukitingho near Ziguinchor. She attended the Ampa Awagna Y Care/YMCA course and learned how to upscale the vegetables she grows by turning produce from the market into syrup, juice and marmalade. This enables her to earn a more consistent income the whole year-round. She is already teaching other women in the village the new skills she learned at the course. “We have a joint piece of land in the village where we can grow our crops, and there we grow carrots, salad, onions and maize. “After I left school I was doing almost nothing, but I joined the project in 2018 and now can contribute income for my family. I can earn 7,000 CFA (approx. £10) from selling the juice and the marmalade. The work is really hard but I like it very much.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
14/20
Y Care International, the YMCA’s aid and development charity, is empowering young women across the world and is supporting a programme in Senegal to address youth unemployment and help the next generation of farmers adapt to climate change. Beneficiaries like Fatou are able to create sustainable lives for themselves and their families.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
15/20
Bouya, 23, lives in a village on the outskirts of Kolda. An orphan, she lost both her parents to illness. Until now Bouya has been totally dependent on her uncle for support. “I’ve just completed the agricultural training camp at Ampa Awagna and I am now planning to develop my own smallholding. The plot of land belonged to my father. My idea is to start growing okra, lettuce, tomato and cucumber – okra is a great crop because it is resistant to the heat. “I dream of one day of having a very big vegetable farm and living back in my home. It would mean a lot to me to be able to be independent, satisfy my own needs and not rely on my uncle.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
16/20
Laurentine, 26, runs a smallholding of pigs near Kolda. She is using the new farming methods she learnt on the Ampa Awangna camp and is extremely positive about the future. “Before the training, we used traditional methods. The programme taught me the modern way is to keep them in the shelter as when they wander around they can bring back diseases”. She now has 40 pigs and hopes in the next 10 years to move to a much larger holding where she wants 200-300 pigs. “If you feed the pig well and it fattens up in 18 months then you can sell a big pig for its meat for 35,000 – 50,000 CFA [£54 - £76], but if you don’t feed it well it can take 2 years to get to this size. So for us, the challenge is finding food for the pigs. If we had enough we could start killing them and selling the meat – there is really good money this way.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
17/20
Belange, 23, lives in the village of Soutoure, near Kolda. Having excelled at the initial 2-week agricultural training camp at Ampa Awagna, Belange was asked to complete the 50-day intensive agricultural camp. She explained: “When I returned, I started growing in my vegetable garden, rearing pigs and poultry. I am earning much more than I did before the training. I’m growing tomatoes, peppers and chillis and I have much more output. Our life is better now – we don’t need to get help from others or have to ask people for money.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
18/20
Khady, 32, watering her crops of Aubergine and Ochre near Ziguinchor. Watering the crops to ensure they produce the best yields takes several hours a day. She participated in both the Agricultural Training camp in December 2018 and spent 3 months at the ‘Incubation camp’ in Oct – December 2019 where she learnt how to transform her crops into juices and syrups.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
19/20
A beneficiary of the Y Care/YMCA Ampa Awagna, Belange, 23 stands marking the spot, where the rice harvest should have reached. The deficit in rice crop yields (the staple diet) reported by several farmers or total crop-losses due to inconsistent rainfall have pushed vulnerable households with depleted food stocks to begin using negative coping strategies such as decreasing the number of meals per day for the family.
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
20/20
Alphonse George Manga, regional executive secretary for YMCA Senegal, explained: “We are in a changing world, we can’t stay in the past. For this century things are changing for the better for women. I think in the future there will be a role reversal. Where previously, women were required to stay at home, they are now far more skilled and empowered. They can do and be whatever they want if they are just given a chance and a little bit of help.”
Paddy Dowling / Y Care
“He wants to play the role, but not walk the walk,” Mr Smith told The Daily Mirror.
“His view seems to be that it’s one rule for him and one rule for the rest of us. Driving or using the train would have been pretty easy.”
Responding to criticisms, Clarence House issued a statement defending the Prince, explaining his carbon footprint is offset every year.
“The prince is not personally involved in decisions around his transportation arrangements, though he ensures all carbon emissions are offset every year,” a spokesperson said.
“They are made based on what is possible within the constraints of time, distance and security.
“In order for him to undertake as many engagements as he does across the UK and around the world he sometimes has to fly.
“As he has often said, as soon as there is a more sustainable way of making these journeys, he’ll be the first to use it.”