location: Belgium

location: Belgium

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Study: Wild meat trade from Africa into Belgium a health and conservation risk
- Up to 4 metric tons of wild meat is illegally entering Europe through Brussels’ international airport alone every month, a new study says.
- The source for much of this meat is West and Central Africa, with some of the seized meat found to be from threatened or protected species such as tree pangolins and dwarf crocodiles.
- The study comes more than a decade after the same group of researchers found an estimated 5 metric tons of bushmeat entering via Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris weekly, suggesting enforcement since then hasn’t been effective.
- Experts are calling for better detection of wild meat trafficking and stricter enforcement of penalties against the trade in protected species, as well as more frequent checks of the legal trade to uncover illegal shipments.

Belgium bans biofuels made from palm oil, soy
- Belgium will ban biofuels made from soy and palm oil from 2022 onward as part of its effort to combat deforestation, said Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Zakia Khattabi on Tuesday.
- In making the move, Belgium joins Denmark, France, and the Netherlands as other European nations that have barred palm oil-based biodiesel due the crop’s association with large-scale conversion of native forests and peatlands for industrial plantations, especially in Malaysia and Indonesia.
- The ban was the first measure Belgium has taken since it became a member of the Amsterdam Declaration Partnership, which aims to eliminate deforestation from agricultural commodities by 2025.

‘Bring it on,’ EU MP says of trade fight over palm biofuel phase-out
- A European member of parliament says the bloc isn’t concerned about threats by Indonesia and Malaysia to file a trade complaint over an EU policy to phase out palm oil-based biofuels by 2030.
- The two Southeast Asian countries supply 85 percent of the world’s palm oil, and have denounced the EU policy as discriminatory.
- The EU has justified its decision on the environmental impact of palm oil production, notably the large-scale deforestation to clear land for palm plantations.
- Concerns have also been raised that Indonesia’s response of boosting its domestic production of palm-based biodiesel, which a minister calls “green fuel,” could actually result in a net increase in carbon emissions.

Gabonese timber linked to illegal logging seized in Antwerp
- Belgian authorities have blocked a shipment of tropical timber from Gabon after a tip-off by Greenpeace.
- Under the EU Timber Regulation, European companies have an obligation to conduct proper due diligence on the source of the timber they import.
- Greenpeace says this due diligence requirement was not met in this case, as the wood was exported by a Chinese logging firm with previous allegations of illegal logging.

Carbon to burn: UK net-zero emissions pledge undermined by biomass energy
- The United Kingdom and the European Union are setting goals to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But that declaration is deeply flawed, analysts say, due to a long-standing United Nations carbon accounting loophole that turns a blind eye toward the conversion of coal burning power plants to burning wood pellets.
- While the cutting of trees to convert them to wood pellets to produce energy is ultimately carbon neutral — if an equal number of new trees are planted — the regrowth process requires 50 to 100 years. That means wood pellets burned today, and in coming decades, will be adding a massive carbon load to the atmosphere.
- That carbon will add significantly to global warming — bringing more sea level rise, extreme weather, and perhaps, climate catastrophe — even as official carbon counting by the UN provides a false sense of security that we are effectively reducing emissions to curb climate change.
- Unless the biomass loophole is dealt with, the risk is very real that the world could easily overshoot its Paris Agreement targets, and see temperatures rise well above the 1.5 degrees Celsius safe limit. At present, there is no official move to address the biomass loophole.

Nearly four decades of cycling race video reveals climate change’s effects
- A team of ecologists has used video from key locations along the route of the annual Tour of Flanders cycling race to understand how plants are responding to regional rises in temperature.
- After watching more than 200 hours of footage from 36 years of the race, the team found that trees began producing flowers and sprouting leaves earlier in the season.
- By 2016, trees were 67 percent more likely to have produced leaves by the time of the race than in the 1980s. By comparison, few if any trees had leaves before 1990.
- The researchers believe that analyses of video from other cycling races and similar annual events could yield new insights into the ecological changes that temperature changes instigate.

New illegal logging ban in EU could sever all ties with companies working in DRC

Yesterday, the EU joined the U.S. and Australia in banning all timber that was illegally harvested abroad. The new regulation could have a major impact on where the EU sources its timber, and no where more so than the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to a new report by Greenpeace, the DRC’s current moratorium […]

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