topic: Climate Change Negotiations

topic: Climate Change Negotiations

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Plastic pollution talks end & Arctic peoples return home to a ‘sink’ of plastic
- In the wake of the plastics treaty talks in Ottawa, a new report highlights the severe impacts of plastics and petrochemicals on Arctic Indigenous communities.
- Indigenous delegates were left with bittersweet feelings that negotiations did not lead to commitments to cut plastic production, while oil companies and producing countries say more recycling is the answer.
- The Arctic is a hemispheric sink collecting plastic pollution from all corners of the world and is melting four times faster than the rest of the world.
- Indigenous communities in Alaska are among those who bear the brunt of climate change and plastic pollution, with studies finding toxic chemicals in peoples’ blood, breast milk and placentas, and melting ice impacting hunting and food security.

Global conference to accelerate nature-based solutions: Q&A with Self Help Africa’s Patricia Wall
- This week, more than 150 conservation and community organizations, experts and policymakers are gathering in Zambia for the Accelerating Nature-based Solutions conference.
- Discussions will dive deep into critical issues and concerns regarding nature-based solutions and the roles of agroforestry, farmer-managed natural regeneration and wildlife conservation in NbS.
- The conference will also address the issue of carbon offsetting and greenhouse gas emissions, and the need to safeguard the rights of local communities or Indigenous communities when implementing nature-based solutions.

U.S. natural gas expansion would surrender world to fatal warming, experts say
- The United States is planning a major expansion of its export infrastructure for liquified natural gas (LNG), a fossil fuel mostly containing methane. Public outcry in the U.S. over the risk to the global climate forced U.S. President Joe Biden to pause the LNG permitting process for reconsideration in January.
- However, the U.S. continues investing billions in new LNG infrastructure abroad. Scientists and climate activists around the globe are warning that LNG expansion renders U.S. climate commitments unreachable, locks in fossil fuel emissions for decades and could trigger catastrophic warming.
- LNG emits more than coal when exported due to massive leaks of methane into the atmosphere during oceanic transport, a preprint study has found. Another report estimates that emissions from planned U.S. LNG exports, if all 12 facilities are approved, would total 10% of the world’s current greenhouse gas emissions.
- Climate impacts around the world would be severe, scientists say. Drought in Europe, for example, is already leading to higher food and energy prices, creating conditions for poverty even in developed nations, while a tipping point in the Amazon Rainforest could lead to mass deaths due to extreme heat and humidity.

‘Indigenous’ and ‘local’ shouldn’t be conflated: Q&A with Indigenous leader Sara Olsvig
- Although there wasn’t much to celebrate at the COP28 climate summit for Indigenous peoples, who were vastly outnumbered by fossil fuel lobbyists, leading advocate Sara Olsvig points to some progress made.
- Olsvig is adamant that efforts to tackle the climate crisis must not infringe on the rights of Indigenous peoples, and that the approach to take must be centered on respect for human rights.
- She also successfully pushed for the final text of the summit to distinguish between Indigenous peoples and local communities, saying the long-held practice of conflating the two has often been to the detriment of Indigenous groups.
- “We have already reached the tipping points in a climate sense,” Olsvig says. “Now we are also reaching tipping points in a human rights sense. And this is a very, very worrying development for the world.”

For forests, COP28 was better than expected, but worse than needed
- The COP28 climate summit in Dubai was a mixed bag for forest conservation as climate mitigation.
- The final text included the goals from the 2021 Glasgow Declaration, which calls for halting deforestation by the end of the decade.
- However, the summit failed to make progress on paying countries to keep forests standing to offset emissions elsewhere, which has run into trouble following carbon offset scandals.
- Observers say the COP30 summit in Brazil in 2025 will see a larger push for forest protection.

Science panel presents COP28 with blueprint for saving the Amazon
- Five policy briefs launched at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai highlight the critical challenges facing the Amazon Basin, as well as the immediate actions and solutions needed to ensure a sustainable future for the region’s ecosystems and the 47 million people living there.
- The reports, published by the Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), a high-level science body, cover cross-cutting topics, from root causes of deforestation and rethinking Amazon infrastructure to restoration and finance solutions.
- Stressing the urgency of preventing the rainforest from crossing a tipping point into a dry scrubland, the panel calls for leveraging nature-based solutions and Indigenous knowledge to consolidate new social bioeconomies that can “leave forests standing and rivers flowing.”
- Based on a previous SPA brief, Brazil launched Arcs of Reforestation, a $205 million program to restore 6 million hectares (15 million acres) of deforested and degraded forest land in some of most affected parts of the Brazilian Amazon.

COP28 ‘breakthrough’ elevates litigation as vital route to climate action
- In the past three decades, the United Nations has sponsored 28 annual climate summits. But that process has failed to provide a legally binding path to significant carbon emission reductions or to the phaseout of fossil fuels responsible for the climate crisis.
- The just concluded COP28 summit, held in Dubai and largely controlled by fossil fuel interests, has pledged “transitioning away from fossil fuels” but that deal is also voluntary. Now, with the world on track for catastrophic global warming, litigation is increasingly being used to force governments to regulate fossil fuels and enforce existing laws.
- Thousands of climate-related lawsuits are underway to reduce emissions, stop drilling or gain compensation for the Indigenous and traditional peoples who are the most vulnerable to climate impacts.
- But despite some court wins for the environment, the litigation process is slow and unlikely to achieve major results in time to staunch fast-moving warming. Even when lawyers do win climate suits, there is no guarantee governments or corporations will obey judicial decisions.

NGOs at COP28 demand Vietnam free climate advocates before it gets energy funding
- Vietnam has unveiled the resource mobilization plan for its just energy transition partnership (JETP) at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
- The $15.5 billion plan, a partnership between Vietnam and G7 countries, outlines the policies and financing Vietnam will need to achieve 47% renewable energy and peak emissions in 2030.
- Environmentalists are calling for Vietnam to release imprisoned climate activists and guarantee protections for civil society before the JETP can move forward.
- In the past two years, Vietnam has imprisoned six leading environmental advocates, including individuals working on alternatives to fossil fuel expansion.

Any fossil fuel phase-out deal at COP28 must include global shipping (commentary)
- If ocean shipping were a country, it would be the sixth-largest carbon emitter, eclipsing Germany, so the International Maritime Organization recently set targets to reduce shipping’s 1 billion tons of annual emissions in order to reach zero by 2050.
- International shipping accounts for about 2.2% of all global greenhouse gas emissions, plus 40% of all cargo carried by these ships is oil, gas, and coal, making shippers a key cog in the global fossil fuel supply chain.
- “I call on the COP presidency [to] include all global polluters in any agreement on phasing out fossil fuels, even those far out at sea,” a new op-ed states.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Despite progress, small share of climate pledge went to Indigenous groups: report
- A report from funders of a $1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous peoples and local communities’ land rights made at the 2021 U.N. climate conference found that 48% of the financing was distributed.
- The findings also show that only 2.1% of the funding went directly to Indigenous peoples and local communities, despite petitions to increase direct funding for their role in combating climate change and biodiversity loss.
- This is down from the 2.9% of direct funding that was disbursed in 2021.
- Both donors and representatives of Indigenous and community groups call for more direct funding to these organizations by reducing the obstacles they face, improving their capacity, and respecting traditional knowledge systems.

African leaders & activists will bring new demands, hopes to COP28
- As world leaders prepare to meet in Dubai for COP28, African activists bring new hopes and expectations following the first-ever Africa Climate Summit (ACS) that took place in Nairobi in September.
- The ACS resulted in a historic Nairobi Declaration, calling on the global community to fulfill promises for climate financing, adaptation, mitigation and emissions reduction.
- Activists say they hope COP28 will result in decisive action to implement the Loss and Damage Fund that aims to support countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, but skeptics say they worry this summit will result in the same old story, especially as the COP28 presidency is held by an oil baron.

Climate loss & damage fund ‘the furthest thing imaginable from a success’
- The fifth and final meeting of the U.N. Transitional Committee to design a loss and damage fund ahead of COP28 climate summit concluded in Abu Dhabi last month without a mandate that wealthy, industrialized nations pay into it, sources say.
- Frequent Mongabay contributor and journalist Rachel Donald joins the Mongabay Newscast as co-host to speak with Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, to unpack this most recent negotiation.
- In addition to leaving out a provision for contributions from wealthy nations, the fund will be housed in the World Bank, a global lending institution that continues to fund coal projects and has been linked to human rights abuses.
- The text of the fund will move to the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai next month, where it will be considered by member countries.

U.N. carbon trading scheme holds promise and peril for tropical forests
- Suriname is one of the first countries to announce it aims to use emissions reduction results through a forest conservation scheme known as REDD+ to trade almost 5 million carbon credits underArticle 6 of the Paris Agreement.
- Article 6 of the agreement establishes a framework for emissions trading through market and non-market mechanisms, which are poised to play a central role in delivering the pledged emissions cuts of many countries.
- Around 85% of countries that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement have indicated their intent to use international carbon markets to achieve their updated or new emissions reduction targets.
- While some experts see Article 6 as a valid way to channel finance into REDD+, others are wary that it could compromise the integrity of the system.

Control of Africa’s forests must not be sold to carbon offset companies (commentary)
- A forest carbon deal between Blue Carbon and the nation of Liberia would give the company exclusive rights to control 10% of the nation’s land mass for 30 years.
- Blue Carbon has also signed MOUs for similar deals with Tanzania and Zambia (and others) and combined with the Liberia deal, the land controlled by the company in these three African nations represents an area the size of the whole of the United Kingdom.
- “Carbon colonialism is a false solution to the climate crisis,” a new op-ed states. “The only real answer is to end our fossil fuel addiction by dramatically reducing our emissions, while financially supporting countries and local communities to protect their forests, rather than wrest control of them.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Can carbon markets solve Africa’s climate finance woes?
- The African Carbon Markets Initiative, a consortium of Global North donors, corporate representatives, conservation groups and energy lobbyists, is pushing to expand carbon markets on the continent.
- The effort has gained the vocal support of Kenyan President William Ruto, along with a number of other African heads of state, who see carbon markets as a way to generate badly needed climate finance.
- But African environmental groups have sharply criticized carbon markets, saying they represent a “false solution” to the climate crisis and will mostly enrich bankers and traders based outside the continent.
- The drive to scale up carbon markets in Africa and elsewhere is set to be a major agenda item at this month’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

Muslim community must have a seat for global climate change discourse (commentary)
- Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the world’s total population, much of which is impacted by climate change.
- At the same time, Islamic worldviews can bring solution-based perspectives to events like the upcoming COP28 climate conference later this month.
- “It should be recognized that Islamic frameworks of climate solution thinking are important, and the climate issues facing Muslims need to be at the forefront of climate discourse as well,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Ahead of COP28, pope spurs policymakers, faith leaders to push climate action
- In his October 4 papal declaration, Pope Francis called unequivocally for climate action in the face of a disastrously warming world.
- The pope’s message comes at a decisive time, as world leaders prepare to meet for the COP28 summit, in a United Nations climate process that many critics say is broken and has largely stalled since the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.
- The pope’s call for action also comes at a time when the world’s faith-based climate movement — which was greatly energized by Paris, and which has had some notable successes since then — is struggling.
- Mongabay spoke with faith leaders, theologians and policymakers to assess the challenges that Francis’ message presents, and whether it can reinvigorate global religious leaders and spur the grassroots faithful to political and social action on the environment. Reportedly, Francis may travel to COP28 to press his message in person.

Stop playing politics with climate change: Q&A with Nigeria’s Nnimmo Bassey
- The Niger Delta has endured extensive pollution and risks to human and environmental health in the past half-century due to oil production; an estimated 9-13 million barrels of oil were spilled across the region between 1958 and 2020.
- Simultaneously, the effects of climate change, flooding, decreased rainfall and increased temperatures have hindered food production across Nigeria amid a population spike.
- In this context, Mongabay interviewed Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) following the inaugural Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi.
- “Climate change is a life or death matter and should not be seen as an opportunity for politicking or for economic speculation,” Bassey says.

Pope Francis condemns world leaders for deeply flawed UN climate process
- In the leadup to the 2015 Paris summit, Pope Francis issued Laudato Si, “On Care for Our Common Home,” a landmark climate and faith document that ultimately saw much of the pope’s language of human responsibility and hope enshrined in the breakthrough climate agreement.
- But this week Pope Francis issued Laudate Deum, a follow up document which condemns world leaders for eight years of climate inaction and of making hollow unfulfilled pledges as they repeatedly fail to respond effectively to the severely escalating global climate crisis.
- The pope notes in the new document that it is the world’s poorest who suffer most from the battering of record heatwaves, storms, floods, droughts, melting glaciers, and rising seas. He also asserts that it is the obligation of the world’s wealthiest nations to decisively lead humanity out of the crisis, before Earth reaches “the point of no return.”
- It seems clear from the timing of Pope Francis’ declaration that he hopes it will positively influence COP28, the climate conference to be held in early December in the United Arab Emirates, where an oil company executive will preside as chair.

U.N. ‘stocktake’ calls for fossil fuel phaseout to minimize temperature rise
- The U.N. climate change agency published a new report Sept. 8 confirming that while there has been progress on climate change mitigation since the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, more needs to be done to limit the global rise in temperatures at 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels.
- The report is an element of the global stocktake, a Paris Agreement-prescribed inventory of progress toward climate-related goals.
- The authors of the report called for phasing out fossil fuels and ramping up renewable energy.
- The global stocktake process will conclude at the U.N. climate conference (COP28) beginning Nov. 30 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Study: Tricky balancing act between EV scale-up and mining battery metals
- A recent study finds rapidly switching to electric vehicles could significantly cut emissions but also increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium and nickel.
- Mining metals like lithium has major environmental impacts including deforestation, high water use, and toxic waste.
- Electrifying heavy-duty vehicles requires substantially more critical metals than other EVs and could account for 62% of critical metal demand in coming decades despite making up just 4-11% of vehicles.
- The researchers recommend policies to support recycling, circular economies, alternative battery chemistries, and coordinated action to balance environmental and material needs.

Macron touts forest conservation while promoting gas project on PNG visit
- During a recent visit to Papua New Guinea, French President Emmanuel Macron spent time with both fossil fuel executives and conservationists.
- Macron attended a presentation on the Managalas Conservation Area, which is supported by France as well as other European countries, and praised Indigenous peoples’ protection of the forest.
- During Macron’s visit, French firm TotalEnergies voted to undertake construction of a $10 billion liquefied natural gas project that will release an estimated 220 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Massive carbon offset deal with Dubai-based firm draws fire in Liberia
- According to a draft contract seen by Mongabay, Liberia may sign away the rights to nearly 10% of its total land mass to a United Arab Emirates-based firm for carbon offset development.
- The firm is owned by Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, the youngest member of Dubai’s royal family and an investor in energy projects across Africa and the Middle East.
- Environmental groups in Liberia say the deal could violate multiple laws, including those meant to protect community land rights.
- The deal comes as the UAE prepares to host the COP28 climate conference, where rulemaking around carbon markets will be a hot agenda item.

Seas of grass may be dark horse candidate to fuel the planet — or not
- Several kinds of grasses and woody shrubs, such as poplar and willow, have undergone U.S. testing for years to see if they can achieve high productivity as cellulose-based liquid biofuels for cutting greenhouse gas emissions in the global transportation sector. Some of these grasses also would have value as cover crops.
- While these experiments showed promise, the challenges for scaling up production of grass and woody shrub-derived biofuels over the next few decades remain significant. And time is short, as climate change is rapidly accelerating.
- Another roadblock to large-scale production: Millions of acres of land in the U.S. Southeast and Great Plains states would need to be earmarked for grass cultivation to make it economically and commercially viable as a biofuel.
- If many of those millions of acres required conversion of natural lands to agriculture, then deforestation and biodiversity loss due to biofuel monoculture crop expansion could be a major problem. On the plus side, grass biofuel crops likely wouldn’t directly displace food crops, unlike corn to make ethanol, or soy to make biodiesel.

U.N. climate chief calls for end to fossil fuels as talks head to Dubai
- International climate talks began in Bonn, Germany, on June 5.
- A key part of the discussion will be the global stocktake, assessing progress toward the emissions cuts pledged by nations as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
- Discussions will work to provide the technical details of the stocktake, but the consensus is that the world is not on track to cut emissions by 50% by 2030, which scientists say is key to keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5°C (2.7°F) over pre-industrial levels.
- The talks are a precursor to COP28, the annual U.N. climate conference, scheduled to begin Nov. 30 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, which is a major oil- and gas-producing nation.

Latest environmentalist arrest shocks Vietnam’s battered civil society
- Prominent Vietnamese environmentalist Hoang Thi Minh Hong has been arrested, becoming the latest civil society activist to face charges of tax evasion.
- Hong’s NGO, the Center of Hands-on Action and Networking for Growth and Environment (CHANGE), shut down last year amid intense pressure on civil society groups in the country.
- Another leading environmentalist, Goldman Environmental Prize winner Nguy Thi Khanh, was also jailed on tax evasion charges, but released from prison five months early on May 13.
- Fellow activist Dang Dinh Bach, jailed for five years for tax evasion, plans to begin a hunger strike “to the death” on June 24.

Expedition to Pacific ecosystems hopes to learn from their resilience
- An expedition led by National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project will voyage across the Pacific over five years to gather information about marine ecosystems needing protection.
- The Pristine Seas team will collaborate with Pacific island nation governments, communities, Indigenous and local peoples, and local scientists, to gather data and produce films.
- The first stop of the expedition will be the southern Line Islands, part of Kiribati, to understand how its reefs recovered after an El Niño triggered a large-scale bleaching event in 2015 and 2016.

Early release for imprisoned climate activist as Vietnam aims for net zero goals
- Vietnamese climate activist Nguy Thi Khanh was quietly released from prison this month, five months earlier than scheduled.
- No reasoning has been given for Khanh’s release, which has not been formally announced or discussed in local media, but activists note that Vietnam will require international financing to pursue its decarbonization goals, including a recently signed power development plan.
- Three prominent environmental activists remain imprisoned in Vietnam. One, Dang Dinh Bach, has announced plans to begin a hunger strike “to the death” on June 24.

Inaugural Indigenous women’s forum spotlights Congo Basin conservation
- This week, leaders from Indigenous women’s organizations, environment and land management groups and philanthropists are meeting in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, for a forum aimed at strengthening the role of Indigenous women in Congo Basin land management and conservation.
- Organizers hope the forum will result in a fund for Central African Indigenous women supporting biodiversity and climate resilience.
- Research shows that 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in territory managed by Indigenous peoples, yet Congo Basin countries receive scarce funding for conservation.

Mouth of the Amazon oil exploration clashes with Lula’s climate promises
- State-owned Petrobras has requested a license to investigate an oil site in a region in the north of Brazil where the Amazon River meets the Atlantic Ocean.
- The region is home to swathes of mangroves and coral reefs that environmentalists say are highly biodiverse and fundamental to local communities.
- Experts demand that Brazil’s environmental agency reject the license, saying the government hasn’t conducted the required detailed studies to assess the potential impact.
- Critics warn that pursuing fossil fuels contradicts President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s vows to adopt a renewable energy strategy and clashes with global climate change guidelines.

Scramble for clean energy metals confronted by activist calls to respect Indigenous rights
- At the world’s largest gathering of Indigenous peoples in New York, mining for critical minerals is at the top of the agenda as the push for the clean energy transition gains steam worldwide.
- Indigenous leaders are calling on countries and companies to create binding policies and guidelines requiring the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of communities over clean energy mining projects that seek to explore and extract these minerals on their lands or in ways that affect their livelihoods.
- Such binding policies will be very difficult for government, companies and investors to abide by, says an executive, as it gives communities the capability to decline on highly-profitable projects and strategies part of national energy transition goals.
- Indigenous leaders also highlight FPIC as a framework for partnership with such projects, including options for equitable benefit-sharing agreements or memorandum of understanding, collaboration or conservation.

After historic storm in New Zealand, Māori leaders call for disaster relief and rights
- After Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand and mostly impacted Indigenous Māori homes, Māori delegates attending the United Nation’s conference on Indigenous peoples say the government has left them out of recovery services and funding.
- The delegates hope their presence at the United Nations forum will increase pressure on the New Zealand government to include Māori people in disaster recovery plans, provide more support for Indigenous-led climate initiatives, and fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- Māori knowledge, known as Mātauranga Māori, has been increasingly included in climate and conservation projects across the country as part of the ‘Vision Mātauranga’ framework, but it has also attracted fierce debate on its status within the scientific community.

Jatropha: The biofuel that bombed seeks a path to redemption
- Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “miracle” biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree native to Central America, it was wildly promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that could grow on degraded lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.
- A jatropha rush ensued, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields led to plantation failures nearly everywhere. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was tainted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.
- Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, is dependent on cracking the yield problem and addressing the harmful land-use issues intertwined with its original failure.
- The sole remaining large jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have been achieved and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback falters, the world’s experience of jatropha holds important lessons for any promising up-and-coming biofuel.

Newly published carbon market standards aim to increase integrity, confidence
- The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM), an independent governance body, released a set of core carbon principles (CCPs) intended to provide a “threshold standard” for quality in the global carbon market.
- To earn the CCP label, projects must address governance issues such as verification and transparency, ensure that the emissions reductions and removals of carbon actually happen at claimed levels above what would have been accomplished under the business-as-usual scenario, and adhere to strict guidelines intended to ensure that projects don’t harm communities or the environment, according to the ICVCM’s statement.
- The global voluntary carbon market sits at a pivotal crossroads, as several investigations have raised concerns about how much the projects supported by the purchase of carbon credits actually protect or restore forests as a climate change-mitigation strategy.

Will clean-energy minerals provoke a shift in how mining is done in Africa?
- Meeting the Paris climate goals to curb global warming could quadruple demand for metals like lithium, cobalt and nickel by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. About a fifth of these critical reserves are found in Africa.
- With mining activity ramping up across Africa, civil society organizations are asking for concrete changes in how mining is done and whose needs it addresses.
- Many activists who work with communities in Africa fear that far from benefiting from their mineral wealth, countries that hold reserves for critical minerals will pay the steepest price for their extraction, a replication of the mining footprint without a transformation in the way mining is done.
- While most activists and observers agree about the need to pursue the highest environmental, social and governance standards, many CSOs say it doesn’t have to happen as part of a superpower-led geopolitical race but be part of a globally accepted framework.

A liquid biofuels primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world impacts
- Liquid biofuels are routinely included in national policy pathways to cut carbon emissions and transition to “net-zero.” Biofuels are particularly tasked with reducing emissions from “hard-to-decarbonize” sectors, such as aviation.
- Three generations of biofuel sources — corn, soy, palm oil, organic waste, grasses and other perennial cellulose crops, algae, and more — have been funded, researched and tested as avenues to viable low-carbon liquid fuels. But technological and upscaling challenges have repeatedly frustrated their widespread use.
- Producing biofuels can do major environmental harm, including deforestation and biodiversity loss due to needed cropland expansion, with biofuel crops sometimes displacing important food crops, say critics. In some instances, land use change for biofuels can add to carbon emissions rather than curbing them.
- Some experts suggest that the holy grail of an efficient biofuel is still obtainable, with much to be learned from past experiments. Others say we would be better off abandoning this techno fix, investing instead in electrifying the transportation grid to save energy, and rewilding former biofuel croplands to store more carbon.

Make it local: Deforestation link to less Amazon rainfall tips activism shift
- A new study supports mounting evidence that deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest correlates with a reduction in regional rainfall.
- Experts say this research reinforces the findings of other studies that claim the Amazon is leaning toward its “tipping point” and the southern regions are gradually becoming drier.
- Environmentalists see this research as an opportunity to reshape conservation activism and policy towards local communities.

Companies eye ‘carbon insetting’ as winning climate solution, but critics are wary
- A tool that wields the techniques of carbon offsets is surging among companies claiming that it reduces their carbon footprints. The tool, known by some as “insetting,” had simmered for more than a decade on the fringes of climate action among brands that rely on agriculture, but is now expanding to other sectors.
- Insetting is defined as company projects to reduce or remove emissions within their own internal supply chains. Proponents say it is valuable for agriculture-based firms struggling to address indirect emissions from land that has already been deforested. Like offsets, insetting can bring social and economic benefits to communities.
- Some oppose the tool outright, saying it is subject to the same problems as offsets (including lack of permanence and enforceable standards), but can also be worse as it can lead to double-counting climate benefits and can have weaker oversight.
- Having now become popular with major corporations such as Nestlé and PepsiCo, insetting as a climate tool is poised to see increased scrutiny as companies and researchers figure out its place in corporate action and reckon with the urgency to reduce emissions from agriculture.

Carbon market intermediaries act with little transparency, according to report
- A new report reveals that few of the brokers, resellers and cryptocurrency vendors that act as intermediaries in the voluntary carbon market reveal the commissions and markups on the credits they buy and sell.
- This lack of transparency makes it difficult, if not impossible, to accurately assess how much money from these purchases is finding its way to climate mitigation efforts.
- The report calls on intermediaries to disclose their fees and on supporting organizations to share more information about these transactions, with the goal of illuminating the true potential impact of the voluntary carbon market on climate change.

Carbon markets entice, but confuse, corporations: Report
- A new report from the environmental nonprofit Conservation International and the We Mean Business Coalition, a partnership of climate NGOs, found that many corporations are interested in using carbon markets to address their emissions.
- The report, released Jan. 12, drew from the responses of 502 managers in charge of sustainability at companies in the U.S., U.K. and Europe.
- Carbon markets, which allow businesses and individuals to offset their emissions by supporting projects aimed at, say, reducing tropical deforestation, are seen by some as a necessary step to reducing carbon emissions globally.
- However, others see carbon markets and the credits they sell as a tool that allows companies to continue releasing carbon with little benefit to the overall climate.

Indigenous peoples and communities drive climate finance reform
- At COP26, the United Nations climate conference in 2021, 22 philanthropies and governments pledged $1.7 billion to support Indigenous and community forest tenure as a way to address climate change, but a recent annual report released in 2022 reveals that only 7% of the funds disbursed in the pledge’s first year went directly to Indigenous and community organizations. (A subsequent analysis in 2023 revised this figure downward to 2.9%.)
- In response to an overall trend in which little climate-related aid goes directly to these organizations, they have banded together to develop funding mechanisms to which big donors can contribute. These organizations then control the distribution of money to smaller organizations, allowing more control over which priorities are funded.
- In support of these efforts, the U.S.-based Climate and Land Use Alliance, which is a collective of several private foundations, is working with a broader group of philanthropic climate donors to develop “a ‘plumbing’ system for this finance” through the Forests, People, Climate Collaborative.
- Indigenous leaders say more money overall is needed to protect forests and help to mitigate the effects of climate change, but the 2021 pledge has opened the door to finding ways to involve Indigenous and community organizations in how funds are spent.

Despite pledges, obstacles stifle community climate and conservation funding
- As science has increasingly shown the importance of conservation led by Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), donors have begun to steer funding toward supporting the work these groups do.
- In 2021, during last year’s COP26 U.N. climate conference, private and government donors committed $1.7 billion to secure the land rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities.
- But a recent assessment of the first year of the pledge shows that little of the funding goes directly to them, often going first through international NGOs, consultancies, development banks and other intermediaries.
- Most aid intended to support IPLC-led conservation work follows this path. Now, however, donors and IPLC leaders are looking for ways to ease the flow of funding and channel more of it to work that addresses climate change and the global loss of biodiversity.

COP27 boosts carbon trading and ‘non-market’ conservation: But can they save forests?
- For the first time ever at a climate summit, the final text of this month’s COP27 included a “forests” section and a reference to “nature-based solutions,” — recognizing the important role nature can play in curbing human-caused climate change. But it’s too early to declare a victory for forests.
- By referencing REDD+, the text could breathe new life into this UN framework, which has so far failed to be a game-changer in the fight against deforestation as many hoped it would be.
- COP27 also took a step toward implementing Article 6.4 of the Paris agreement, a mechanism that some see as a valid market-based climate solution, though others judge it as just another “bogus” carbon trading scheme.
- Many activists are pinning their hopes instead on Article 6.8, which aims to finance the protection of ecosystems through “non-market approaches” like grants, rather than with carbon credits.

COP27 long on pledges, short on funds for forests — Congo Basin at risk
- The world’s wealthiest nations have made grand statements and offered big monetary pledges to save the world’s tropical rainforests so they can continue sequestering huge amounts of carbon.
- But as COP27 draws to a close, policy experts and activists agree that funding so far is far too little, and too slow coming, with many pledges still unfulfilled. Without major investments that are dozens, or even hundreds, of times bigger, tropical forests will keep disappearing at an alarming rate.
- The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) offers a case study of just how dire the situation is becoming. While some international forest preservation money is promised and available, it is insufficient to stop companies from leasing forestlands to cut timber and to convert to plantations and mines.
- Some experts say that what is urgently needed is the rapid upscaling of carbon markets that offer heftier carbon credits for keeping primary forests growing. Others point to wealthy nations, who while still cutting their own primary forests, encourage poorer tropical nations to conserve theirs without paying enough for protection.

COP27: ‘Brazil is back’ to fight deforestation, Lula says, but hurdles await
- At COP27 this week Brazil president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva pledged “zero deforestation and degradation of biomes,” a goal to be achieved by 2030.
- Lula also plans to establish a Ministry of Indigenous People, and to end “all the exploration of Indigenous lands by miners, and… to prohibit timber cutters.” Activists said Lula has sent a “strong message” at the COP27 summit, a meeting which has so far seen little climate progress.
- The president-elect has also met with Norway and Germany about restarting the Amazon Fund, which helped finance efforts to keep the rainforest intact until it was frozen in 2019 due to the anti-environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro.
- Lula will likely have to pursue stricter forest enforcement through executive action, as he faces a congress with many members hostile to his Amazon protection promises.

Millions are spent on climate research in Africa. Western institutes get most of it
- More than 75% of funds earmarked for Africa-related climate research go to institutes in the U.S. and Europe, according to a study in the journal Climate and Development.
- Of the $620 million that financed Africa-related climate research between 1990 and 2020, research institutions based in Europe and the United States received most of the funding ($480 million), while those located in Africa got less than 15% ($89.15 million).
- However, the analysis only provides an estimate for financing trends because it leaves out a host of agencies that fund climate research, like aid organizations, and crucially is restricted to English-language research.
- What is equally, if not more, worrisome, is that the prioritization of countries as sites for research doesn’t align with the severity of the climate risks or impacts a country faces.

COP27: Climate Loss & Damage talks now on agenda, but U.S. resistance feared
- Loss and Damage (L&D) climate finance will be on the agenda at COP for discussion for the first time ever by the world’s nations, as the result of intense pressure applied by developing countries and NGOs just before the start of COP27 in Egypt.
- L&D refers to reparations potentially owed to poorer, more vulnerable developing nations for the climate harm caused by wealthy nations and their large-scale historical carbon emissions.
- The complexities of the mechanism for calculating losses by developing nations, and paying out of damages by wealthy nations, has never been worked out. The U.S. and other wealthy nations have a history of obstructing L&D negotiations.
- The concern among developing nations at COP27 is that even though L&D is being discussed, wealthy countries will reject the idea of direct no-strings-attached payments from wealthy countries to poorer nations, opting instead for loans, insurance and other less direct financial mechanisms.

Small share of land rights pledge went to Indigenous groups: Progress report
- A report from funders of a $1.7 billion pledge to support Indigenous and community forest tenure made at the 2021 U.N. climate conference found that 19% of the financing has been distributed.
- The findings from 2022 also show that only 7% of the funding went directly to Indigenous and community organizations, despite the protection they provide to forests and other ecosystems. (A subsequent analysis in 2023 revised this figure downward to 2.9%.)
- Both donors and representatives of Indigenous and community groups are calling for more direct funding to these organizations by reducing the barriers they face, improving communication and building capacity.

Africa wants its climate money. Will rich countries pay?
- This year’s U.N. climate conference, set to be held in Egypt, is being seen by negotiators and climate advocates in Africa as an opportunity to push the continent’s needs up to the top of the agenda.
- The conference will take place as a new analysis shows that wealthy countries are falling far short of their commitments to finance climate coping strategies in Africa.
- Negotiators from the African bloc are pushing for an agreement on “loss and damage” funding, which has been described as a form of climate reparations, to be reached at the conference.

What’s the chance of meeting Paris climate goal? Just 0.1%, study says
- Under the 2015 Paris climate accord, nearly 200 countries committed to reducing the carbon emissions that fuel climate change and keeping global warming under 2˚C (3.6°F), or 1.5 ˚C (2.7°F) if possible.
- The 1.5°C goal requires global greenhouse emissions to be cut by 45% by 2030 and brought down to net zero by 2050, which is extremely unlikely to happen, a new analysis has found.
- Even if mean temperatures were held below 2°C, people living in the tropics, in particular in India and sub-Saharan Africa, will be exposed to extreme heat for most days of the year, researchers warned.
- In the mid-latitude zone, which includes the U.S. and most of the European Union and the U.K., deadly heat waves could strike every year by 2100.

Climate pledges could limit warming to 2C. What’s needed is action, study says
- A new study has suggested that global temperatures can be limited to 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels if countries fully meet all of their climate pledges on time.
- However, the researchers say that rapid action is needed within the decade to meet the targets necessary to fulfill this goal.
- This analysis comes shortly after the publication of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report, which says that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025 and nations need to reach net-zero emissions by the 2050s.

‘A huge mistake’: Concerns rise as deep-sea mining negotiations progress
- The International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-affiliated organization tasked with managing deep-sea mining activities, recently held a series of meetings to continue negotiating the development of mining regulations.
- Deep-sea mining may start as early as 2023 after Nauru triggered a two-year rule embedded in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea that could essentially allow its sponsored company to start mining with whatever regulations are currently in place.
- Many states are eager to finalize a set of regulations over the next 15 months that would determine how mining can proceed in the deep sea.
- But other states and delegates have noted the lack of scientific knowledge around deep-sea mining, the absence of a financial compensation plan in the event of environmental damage, and ongoing transparency issues in the ISA — and the unlikelihood of finalizing regulatory measures in a short period of time.

IPCC report calls for ‘immediate and deep’ carbon cuts to slow climate change
- A new report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds that the world could face a more than 3° Celsius (5.4° Fahrenheit) increase in the global average temperature over pre-industrial levels based on current carbon emissions.
- However, the authors of the report say investment in renewable energy, green building and responsible land use could lower emissions enough to stay below an increase of 1.5°C (2.7°F), a target identified at the 2015 U.N. climate conference that scientists predict would avoid the worst impacts of global warming.
- Addressing continued global carbon emissions will require trillions, not billions, of dollars in financing from public and private sources to cut emissions, the report finds.
- Its authors also say that including Indigenous and local communities from the beginning in land-use decisions aimed at climate change mitigation is critical.

EU response to palm oil is opportunity, not threat (commentary)
- Policy moves by the EU to more closely scrutinize palm oil over its links to deforestation have been portrayed as a smear campaign in Indonesia and Malaysia, the top two producers of the commodity.
- But for Indonesia, this presents an opportunity to devise more careful and detailed definitions of criteria for sustainable palm oil, covering all relevant environmental, social, labor and human rights issues, argues Andre Barahamin, a forest campaigner at the NGO Kaoem Telapak.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

NGOs alert U.N. to furtive 2-million-hectare carbon deal in Malaysian Borneo
- Civil society organizations have complained to the United Nations about an opaque “natural capital” agreement in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.
- The agreement, signed behind closed doors in October 2021, involved representatives from the state government and Hoch Standard Pte. Ltd., a Singaporean firm. But it did not involve substantive input from the state’s numerous Indigenous communities, many of whom live in or near forests.
- The terms ostensibly give Hoch Standard the right to monetize carbon and other natural capital from Sabah’s forests for 100 years.
- Along with the recent letter to the U.N., the state’s attorney general has questioned whether the agreement is enforceable without changes to key provisions. An Indigenous leader is also suing the state over the agreement, and Hoch Standard may be investigated by the Singaporean government after rival political party leaders in Sabah reported the company to Singapore’s ambassador in Malaysia.

Climate-positive, high-tech metals are polluting Earth, but solutions await
- Green energy technology growth (especially wind, solar and hydropower, along with electric vehicles) is crucial if the world is to meet Paris climate agreement goals. But these green solutions rely on technology-critical elements (TCEs), whose production and disposal can be environmentally harmful.
- Mining and processing of TCEs requires huge amounts of energy. Mines use gigantic quantities of fresh water; can drive large-scale land-use change; and pollute air, soil and water — threatening biodiversity. TCEs may also become pollutants themselves when they are disposed of as waste.
- We know relatively little about what happens to TCEs after manufacture and disposal, but trace levels of many critical elements have been detected in urban air pollution, waterways and ice cores. Also of concern: Rare-earth elements have been detected in the urine of mine workers in China.
- Green mining technologies and new recycling methods may reduce the impacts of TCE production. Plant- and microbe-based remediation can extract TCEs from waste and contaminated soil. But experts say a circular economy and changes at the product design stage could be key solutions.

Aerosol pollution: Destabilizing Earth’s climate and a threat to health
- Aerosols are fine particulates that float in the atmosphere. Many are natural, but those haven’t increased or decreased much over the centuries. But human-caused aerosols — emitted from smokestacks, car exhausts, wildfires, and even clothes dryers — have increased rapidly, largely in step with greenhouse gases responsible for climate change.
- Aerosol pollution kills 4.2 million people annually, 200,000 in the U.S. alone. So curbing them rapidly makes sense. However, there’s a problem with that: The aerosols humanity sends into the atmosphere presently help cool the climate. So they protect us from some of the warming that is being produced by continually emitted greenhouse gases.
- But scientists still don’t know how big this cooling effect is, or whether rapidly reducing aerosols would lead to a disastrous increase in warming. That uncertainty is caused by aerosol complexity. Atmospheric particulates vary in size, shape and color, in their interactions with other particles, and most importantly, in their impacts.
- Scientists say that accurately modeling the intensity of aerosol effects on climate change is vital to humanity’s future. But aerosols are very difficult to model, and so are likely the least understood of the nine planetary boundaries whose destabilization could threaten Earth’s operating systems.

Banning high-deforestation palm oil has limited impact on saving forests: Study
- Import bans on palm oil produced through deforestation haven’t had as strong an effect in preventing forest loss as might be expected, according to a new study.
- The paper’s modeling looked at what impact restrictions in Europe on imports of high-deforestation palm oil from Indonesia would have had from 2000-2015.
- They found these restrictions would have reduced deforestation by just 1.6% per year, and emissions by 1.91% per year compared to what actually occurred.
- The study authors and other researchers say the findings underscore the point that demand-side restrictions are only one tool in addressing commodity-driven deforestation, and should be part of a wider suite of incentives and disincentives.

At a plantation in Central Africa, Big Oil tries to go net-zero
- In March 2021, French oil giant TotalEnergies announced that it would be developing a 40,000-hectare (99.000-acre) forest in the Republic of Congo that will sequester 500,000 tons of carbon per year.
- The project is part of a renewed global push for governments and corporations to hit their emissions targets partially by the use of carbon credits, also known as offsets.
- But advocates say what TotalEnergies describes as a “forest” is a commercial acacia plantation that will produce timber for sale, with little detail on who stands to profit or lose access to land.

Oil production or carbon neutrality? Why not both, Guyana says
- The government of Guyana says the South American country has already achieved net-zero carbon emissions, and adds it will further cut emissions by 70% by 2030.
- The declaration comes on the heels of Guyana becoming the world’s newest oil-producing country; it began pumping crude at the end of 2019.
- The government has played down the dissonance between its oil-producing status and its emissions reduction goals, saying that oil revenue can be directed to the green economy.
- The question, says Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, “is whether we can become an oil producer and still maintain our environmental credentials, and continue to advocate globally for a zero-carbon economy. And we believe the answer is yes.”

China’s pivot from funding coal plants to gasification slammed as more of the same
- China has promised to stop funding new coal-fired power plants abroad, but appears intent on investing in other coal projects, including gasification plants in Indonesia.
- A state-owned Chinese company announced in October that it would build a $560 million gasification plant in Indonesia’s Aceh province, turning the fossil fuel into methanol.
- Energy experts warn that this pivot away from coal-fired power plants to gasification plants “may be a loophole in the commitment to ending coal financing.”
- At the same time Indonesian President Joko Widodo has promised billions of dollars of support for gasification while also seeking foreign investment to expand the industry.

$1.5 billion Congo Basin pledge a good start but not enough, experts say
- At last month’s COP26 climate summit, a group of 12 international donors pledged at least $1.5 billion over the next four years to support protection and sustainable management of the Congo Basin forests.
- The pledge is part of a broader $12 billion commitment to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation worldwide by 2030.
- The 200 million hectares (500 million acres) of forests in the Congo Basin may be the last significant land-based tropical carbon sink in the world, making the forests vitally important in the global fight against climate change.
- So far, detail of the pledge remain limited, and reaction from regional experts has been mixed; but all agree that $1.5 billion is far from enough to resolve the region’s issues.

Podcast: Bill McKibben and Trebbe Johnson on action and ‘radical joy’ after COP26 climate summit failure
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we talk with Bill McKibben about how the climate movement will continue to push for real change in spite of the dithering by world leaders at COP26, and we discuss how to stay sane, happy, and engaged even as the impacts of climate chaos increase around the world with author Trebbe Johnson.
- Noted environmental activist, author, and founder of 350.org as well as the newly created Third Act initiative, Bill McKibben tells us about his response to COP26, why he was inspired by the activism he saw at the COP, and how he sees climate activism evolving to counter the outsized influence of the industries that rely on burning fossil fuels and clearing the world’s forests for profit.
- Trebbe Johnson, author of Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty In Earth’s Broken Places and founder of an organization with the same name, Radical Joy for Hard Times, tells us about ecological grief, how it can affect people concerned about climate change and the future of our planet, and how to deal with that grief and stay committed to working towards a better future for all life on Earth.

Hope old and new: COP26 focused on two largely unsung climate solutions
- COP26 ended with wide disagreement as to its degree of success. But two major climate solution discussions that happened at COP could yield important results if nations and the international community commit to them.
- A great deal of attention at COP26 focused on the key role Indigenous communities living in tropical nations could play in protecting and sustaining carbon-sequestering forests on their ancestral lands. But Indigenous peoples can only play that role if fully supported by tropical countries and the international community.
- A new study found that Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) now hold and use tropical lands nearly equivalent in size to the continental U.S., but have legally recognized rights to less than half that area. To curb climate change, these ancestral lands need to be fully restored to the IPLCs, with land rights vigorously protected by governments.
- Another potential solution, atmospheric methane removal, was well discussed at COP26 and has resulted in plans for upcoming meetings between scientists and U.S. and Canadian policymakers. Methane removal is still in the experimental stage, and needs significant government funding to take it to the next level: field testing.

Climate change means hunger in our communities, African women leaders at COP26
- Activists and delegates from developing countries, including many African nations, have strained but so far failed to define the debate at COP26 as one of climate justice. They emphasize that developed nations have largely caused the climate crisis, while developing nations often suffer the worst consequences.
- In 2015 when countries signed the Paris climate agreement, the per capita emissions of Madagascar, which is facing the world’s first climate change-induced famine, stood at 0.12 tons/person, compared to 16 tons/person for the United States.
- At a COP session organized by the British philanthropy Campaign for Female Education (CEMFED) this week, delegates from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa underlined the link between climate change and hunger.
- The climate talks have come under scrutiny for poor representation from African nations, some of the most vulnerable to climate impacts.

Bornean communities locked into 2-million-hectare carbon deal they don’t know about
- Leaders in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, signed a nature conservation agreement on Oct. 28 with a group of foreign companies — apparently without the meaningful participation of Indigenous communities.
- The agreement, with the consultancy Tierra Australia and a private equity-backed funder from Singapore, calls for the marketing of carbon and other ecosystem services to companies looking, for example, to buy credits to offset their emissions.
- The deal involves more than 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of forest, which would be restored and protected from mining, logging and industrial agriculture for the next 100-200 years.
- But land rights experts have raised concerns about the lack of consultation with communities living in and around these forests in the negotiations to this point.

Behind grand declarations at COP26, a long track record of failure
- On Nov. 2, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson released the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, with more than 100 countries promising to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030.
- The declaration includes signatories like Brazil, Indonesia and China, but advocates warn the near-total failure of 2014’s similar New York Declaration on Forests should throw cold water over premature celebrations.
- Heavyweights of finance and commodity production also pledged to protect forests and move toward net-zero emissions at COP26 this week, but similar pledges made over the past decade have had little impact.

COP26: “Work with nature in forest restoration,” says respected journalist
- Some large top-down reforestation projects are failing because governments aren’t taking their cue from nature, says renowned environmental science journalist and author Fred Pearce.
- In his new book, “A Trillion Trees,” Pearce argues that it is better to hand over control over forest restoration efforts to local communities who have been working in tune with nature for centuries.
- Pearce’s book offers numerous proofs that despite humanity’s missteps, nature is quietly rebounding in many places, with forests regrowing in parts of the world, and with much maligned alien species at times helping in the process. These are reasons for hope, he says.
- In this exclusive interview, Pearce tells Mongabay that COP-26 climate negotiators in Glasgow, Scotland, need to listen to and empower Indigenous and traditional community leaders, and not “degenerate into an orgy of tree planting” which may well be counterproductive.

The ‘net zero’ bridge to saving the Amazon (commentary)
- Nature cleans up half of humanity’s carbon pollution each year; securing and expanding natural carbon stocks and sinks is a key piece in the effort to manage the climate crisis, right alongside emissions reductions.
- Well-designed natural climate solutions also enhance food security, alleviate poverty, secure freshwater supplies, and protect biodiversity. Companies’ “net-zero” commitments have the potential to provide critical finance for natural climate solutions while at the same time reducing harmful emissions.
- Amazon states have strategies in place to protect forests and support a transition to low-emission development; what they lack is financing. Support for these strategies would help to prevent an Amazon “tipping point” and the loss of one of the world’s most critical carbon sinks.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

COP-26: Amazonia’s Indigenous peoples are vital to fighting global warming (commentary)
- The United Nations Climate Change summit, the 26th conference of the parties (COP-26), held in Glasgow Scotland through November 12, is important both for the future of the global climate and for Amazonian Indigenous peoples.
- Uncontrolled climate change threatens the Amazon forest on which Indigenous peoples depend, and Indigenous peoples in turn have an important role as guardians of the forest.
- Decisions on how international funds intended to avoid greenhouse gas emissions are used represent both opportunities and risks for the climate, for the forest, and for Indigenous peoples.
- Indigenous voices need to be heard at COP-26, as empowered stakeholders threatened by climate change, and for the invaluable traditional wisdom these peoples can contribute to global warming solutions. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As fossil fuel use surges, will COP26 protect forests to slow climate change?
- Despite the world’s commitment in Paris in 2015 to hold back the tide of global warming, carbon emissions continue rising, while impacts are rapidly escalating as heat waves, drought and extreme storms stalk the world’s poorest and richest nations — bringing intensified human misery and massive economic impacts.
- Once viewed optimistically, nature-based climate solutions enshrined in Article 5 of the Paris Agreement (calling for protections of carbon-storing forests, peat bogs, wetlands, savannas and other ecosystems) is now threatened by politics as usual, and by the unabated expansion of agribusiness and extraction industries.
- As world leaders gather in Scotland for the COP26 climate summit, scientists and advocates are urging negotiators to at last finalize comprehensive effective rules for Article 5, which will help assure “action to conserve and enhance, as appropriate, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases … including forests.”
- Over the first two weeks in November at COP26, the vision and rules set at Paris are to be settled on and fully implemented; John Kerry, co-architect of the Paris accord and President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, calls this vital COP the world’s “last best chance” to finally move beyond mostly empty political promises into climate action.

Forest finance expected to advance under new TREES standard and LEAF Coalition
- The latest edition of the TREES standard for forest carbon crediting attempts to bring together the best of what the private sector can do and the best of what governments can do to protect forests. It is explicit about how projects can be integrated into jurisdiction-level accounting.
- While effectively directing capital to forest communities on the ground, REDD+ projects have been dogged by methodological problems and what in some cases appear to be spurious claims of climate impact.
- The designers of TREES say that with its jurisdictional scale and transparent carbon accounting guidelines, it will better address the main credibility risks so far associated with REDD+ carbon credits.
- Almost 15 years after the original REDD framework, many regard TREES and the LEAF Coalition announced in April 2021 as the first real attempt at credible REDD+ implementation at scale.

Amazon, meet Amazon: Tech giant rolls out rainforest carbon offset project
- Tech giant Amazon has announced a nature-based carbon removal project in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest in partnership with The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
- The project will help small farmers produce sustainable agricultural produce through reforestation and regenerative agroforestry programs, in exchange for carbon credits that will go to the internet company.
- Called the Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator, the initiative is expected to support 3,000 small farmers in Pará state and restore an area the size of Seattle in the first three years, and in the process remove up to 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through 2050.
- In addition to addressing climate and social issues, the partners say the project intends to address the shortcomings of the carbon credit market by creating new standards for the industry.

Reforestation holds promise for Europe’s increasingly drier summers
- A new study in Nature Geoscience suggests that if all land suitable for reforestation was forested in Europe, average summer rainfall would increase by 7.6%, partially ameliorating drier summers predicted as a result of climate change.
- While the study is based on all the potentially reforestable land in Europe after accounting for food security and biodiversity, the amount of land people are willing and able to reforest is likely to be lower in practice.
- As a statistical model, the study helps scientists and policymakers understand the relationship between forests and precipitation and highlight the benefits beyond carbon sequestration.

Record heat waves are a taste of what’s to come under a changing climate
- A new study suggests that record-shattering heat events will become more frequent and more intense as the world continues to warm due to human-induced climate change.
- In a high-emissions scenario, the study suggests extreme heat waves will be two to seven times more probable between 2021 and 2050, and 21 times more probable between 2051 and 2080.
- If emissions can be curbed, however, and global temperatures do not exceed 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels, this would help reduce extreme heat events.

Study puts 2050 deadline on tipping point for Mekong Delta salinity
- The increasing salinity in Mekong Delta is currently being driven by the building of dams upstream and sand mining downstream, but climate change will likely be the predominant factor by 2050, a new study shows.
- The Mekong Delta is a key farming region, and already more frequent and extensive saltwater intrusion is killing off large swaths of crops with greater frequency.
- The study’s authors say regional stakeholders need to address the anthropogenic drivers of saltwater intrusion in the delta now, before climate change makes it a global problem.
- The study also has implications for other delta systems across Asia, which face similar pressures, both anthropogenic and climate change-driven.

Ever-evolving Montreal Protocol a model for environmental treaties
- Since the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, countries have been phasing out most ozone-damaging chemicals, helping protect the Earth’s protective shield. In this exclusive Mongabay interview, Megumi Seki, Acting Executive Secretary of the UN Environment Programme’s Ozone Secretariat, reviews the history and future of the landmark treaty.
- The Montreal Protocol phase-down has also helped prevent further climate warming. But the HFCs — replacement gases employed by industry as refrigerants and for other uses — while not harmful to the ozone layer, have been found to be powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
- In 2016, national delegates agreed on the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which calls for cutting the production and use of HFCs by 80–85% by the late 2040s. The amendment entered into force at the start of 2019, with the goal of avoiding additional warming by up to 0.4°C (0.72 °F) by the end of the century.
- The early steps of the Montreal Protocol, and its ongoing adjustments including the Kigali Amendment, provide vital clues as to how to effectively negotiate, implement, update, and succeed in moving forward with other future environmental treaties.

New paper urges shift to ‘nature positivity’ to restore Earth
- A new paper, published by leading conservationists and the heads of various global institutions, argues for adopting a “nature-positive” goal.
- This would require restoring the Earth from 2020, placing the world on a nature positive path by 2030 to mount a full recovery by 2050.
- According to the authors, nature positivity would provide an overarching goal for nature that would coincide with the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) mission and streamline agreements for climate, biodiversity, and sustainable development into one common vision.
- The paper was released a few days before the start of the meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA), where parties will provide advice on the CBD’s post-2020 global biodiversity framework.

The HFC challenge: Can the Montreal Protocol continue its winning streak?
- Since the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, countries have phased out most of the ozone-damaging gases, but their replacements, the HFCs, are powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.
- In 2016, national delegates agreed on the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which calls for cutting the production and use of HFCs by 80–85% by the late 2040s. The amendment entered into force at the start of 2019, with the goal of avoiding additional warming by up to 0.4°C (0.72 °F) by the end of the century.
- The future success of the Kigali Amendment faces several challenges, including countries inaccurately estimating their emissions of HFCs, the need for affordable alternatives, and the fact that the major producers of HFCs (China, the United States and India) have not yet signed the treaty.
- Scientists and policymakers continue to address these challenges, with the U.S. and China having recently announced their intent to ratify the treaty. Also, the U.S. this week signaled its commitment to aggressively cutting the use and production of HFCs via a new, proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule.

Bolsonaro abandons enhanced Amazon commitment same day he makes it
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro offered up Amazon conservation promises during the April 22 virtual Climate Leaders Summit hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden and attended by heads of state from more than forty nations.
- That same day, Bolsonaro approved Brazil’s 2021 budget that includes a R$240 million ($44 million) annual reduction for the Ministry of the Environment. Conservationists say that the cuts will be utterly devastating for the nation’s deforestation monitoring program.
- The reductions will also impact the monitoring of pollution levels, pesticide contamination (Brazil under Bolsonaro is the biggest user of pesticides in the world), illegal mining, and wildlife trafficking. ICMbio, which oversees 334 of Brazil’s protected areas, also saw cuts.
- While environmentalists were enraged by the slashed ministry budget, the agricultural sector remains largely happy with Bolsonaro whose policies continue to benefit them. However, if Brazil continues along an anti-environmental path, it risks global boycotts of its commodities.

Leaders make bold climate pledges, but is it ‘all just smoke and mirrors?’: Critics
- Forty nations — producers of 80% of annual carbon emissions — made pledges of heightened climate ambition this week at U.S. President Joe Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate. But as each head of state took to the podium, climate activists responded by pointing to the abysmal lack of action by those nations.
- As the U.S. promised to halve its emissions by 2030, advocates noted the lack of policies in place to achieve that goal, and the likelihood of intense Republican political resistance. China promised at the summit to eliminate coal plants, but 247 gigawatts of coal power is currently in planning or development stages there.
- The UK, EU, Japan, and South Korea all pledged to do more, but all are committed to burning forest biomass to replace coal — a solution relying on a longstanding carbon accounting error that counts forest biomass as carbon neutral, though scientists say it produces more emissions than coal per unit of electricity made.
- “This summit could be a critical turning point in our fight against climate change, but we have seen ambitious goals before and we have seen them fall flat. Today’s commitments must be followed with effective implementation, and with transparent reporting and accurate carbon accounting,” said one environmental advocate.

As climate summit unfolds, no Biden-Bolsonaro Amazon deal forthcoming
- The United States and Brazil have been conducting closed door negotiations to broker an Amazon rainforest protection agreement — with the U.S. and other nations tentatively to provide significant funding, and Brazil possibly agreeing to pragmatic measures to end deforestation.
- However, as the global Climate Leaders Summit progressed today, it became apparent that those talks are likely stalemated, with no deal announced, nor likely anytime soon.
- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has made it clear that Amazon conservation is dependent on a big financial investment by the United States. However, Amazon deforestation continued soaring through March, even as critics offered substantial proof Brazil is insincere in its environmental commitments.
- For example, new federal rules make it nearly impossible to collect fines for environmental crimes. Also, Brazil has made suspect adjustments to its Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction targets, allowing it to meet its goals on paper, even as it continues cutting down forests and releasing greenhouse gases.

‘A better world is within reach’: Q&A with Greenpeace’s Jennifer Morgan
- Founded more than 50 years ago to protest nuclear testing, Greenpeace has grown to become one of the world’s most influential environmental groups. Greenpeace is best known for its attention-grabbing, non-violent direct actions to pressure companies and governments, but the organization also employs a variety of other tactics, from in-depth research to strategic engagement, to drive change.
- Greenpeace’s power is such that when it mobilizes a campaign against a target around a specific issue, even the mightiest of companies finds it difficult to ignore. This approach has pushed a number of Fortune 500 companies to enact a range of policies, from how they source commodities to how they produce energy. Greenpeace campaigns have pressured governments to disclose data on deforestation, carbon emissions, and fishing practices.
- In an interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan discussed Greenpeace’s approach, including when it decides to pursue broader cultural change instead of corporate and government targets.
- “While politics and leaders certainly can influence culture and norms, we believe culture has much more influence on politics and leaders,” she said. “Where culture goes, politicians either follow or lose elections, and companies either change or go bankrupt.”

‘There is no vaccine for climate change,’ U.N. environment chief says
- The planet is set to warm by 3°C (5.4°F) above pre-industrial levels just this century, but the world remains unprepared for climate change, a U.N. report says.
- More than a quarter of countries still don’t have a single national-level adaptation plan, and financing for adaptation measures falls far short of what is needed.
- By mid-century, adaptation costs could total up to $500 billion for developing countries, which will be disproportionately impacted by climate change despite contributing least to it.
- Less than 5% of adaptation projects have yielded any real benefits in terms of boosting resilience to date, according to a survey of 1,700 projects cited in the report.

COP25: Self-serving G20 spites youth, humanity, world at climate talks
- With 500,000 mostly young climate activists rallying in Madrid streets, COP25 delegates agreed to disagree on nearly everything, with smaller nations striving to pave the way for implementation of a strong Paris Agreement at COP26 in 2020, while G20 nations dragged their feet, obfuscated, and stopped forward progress.
- The climate conference failed to increase national Paris Agreement carbon reduction pledges, likely dooming the world to catastrophic temperature increases above 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 unless dramatic advances are implemented next year at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
- The G20 and corporate allies kept the closing of carbon accounting loopholes off the agenda: tree plantations will be counted as forests; the burning of wood pellets (as carbon-polluting as coal) will be counted as carbon neutral; and tropical dams now known to produce major methane releases, will be counted as zero carbon sources.
- The U.S., blocked already promised “loss and damage” financial pledges made to the developing world. Double counting of emissions wasn’t banned. No carbon market mechanism was approved. Paris Agreement language assuring “human rights, the right to health, [and] rights of indigenous peoples” was stripped from COP25 official documents.

Indonesian dam raises questions about UN hydropower carbon loophole
- North Samatera Hydro Energy (PT NSHE) wants to build the Batang Toru dam, a 510-megawatt project, in Indonesia. But, the discovery of a new primate species, the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), with under 800 individuals mostly inhabiting the project site, has alarmed activists and put the dam’s funding at risk.
- PT NSHE is at the COP25 climate summit this month extolling the project’s contribution to curbing global warming: company reps say the dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions by 4 percent. In fact, the nation is already counting the proposed project as part of its 2015 Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction pledge.
- However, while the United Nations and Paris Agreement count most new hydroelectric dams as carbon neutral, recent science shows that tropical dams can emit high levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide; this especially occurs when reservoirs are first filled.
- Dams built over the next decade will be adding their greenhouse gas emission load to the atmosphere when the world can least afford it — as the world rushes to cut emissions to prevent a 2 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures. PT NSHE argues its dam will have a small reservoir, so will not produce significant emissions.

COP25: Laura Vargas inspires with power of faith in defense of forests
- While the Madrid United Nations climate summit (COP25) isn’t expected to yield major strides forward in the effort to curb the climate crisis, that hasn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of environmental activists from being there in the remote hope of influencing negotiators to act decisively.
- One such person is Laura Vargas, born in the Peruvian Andes, who saw her native home polluted and desecrated by the giant La Oroya copper smelting plant. At age 71, the former nun and socioenvironmental activist is in Madrid as part of the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI).
- The IRI hopes to leverage the voices and votes of millions of people of faith in five tropical nations — Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Colombia and Peru — in order to slow rapidly spreading deforestation, the destruction of biodiversity, and oppression of indigenous peoples.
- Vargas’ passion and energy is devoted to “caring for God’s creation” which encompasses all of nature, including humanity, and especially children. Her presence in Madrid, and the presence of half a million others like her protesting in the streets, could be the most hopeful news and potent force coming out of the COP25 summit.

Hopes dim as COP25 delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics
- Even as half a million protesters demonstrate outside, UN climate summit negotiators inside Madrid’s COP25 seem blind to the urgency of the climate crisis. In fact, instead of making effective progress, the rules they’re shaping to carry out the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 could worsen carbon emissions, not staunch them.
- For example, Article 6 doesn’t include rules to protect native forests. Instead it could promote turning forests into monoculture tree plantations — providing minimal carbon sequestration and no ecosystem services, while devastating biodiversity. Some critics think the policy may have been shaped by logging interests.
- The so-called biomass carbon accounting loophole is also not up for discussion. Its continuance will allow the burning of biomass wood pellets at power plants, energy production classified by the UN as carbon neutral. However, establised science has found that industrial biomass burning will add significantly to carbon emissions.
- According to activists at COP25, delegates are working to hide emissions and allow UN carbon accounting loopholes. One key aspect of Article 6 found in the original Paris Agreement which guaranteed “the protection of human rights” was deleted from a revised draft Saturday night, as was verbiage assuring civil society and indigenous consultations.

Latest UN Emissions Gap Report finds world must ramp up climate ambitions at least threefold to meet Paris goals
- The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its latest Emissions Gap Report on the eve of the climate negotiations that kicked off Monday in Madrid, Spain. According to the report, the nearly 200 countries that signed the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015 must boost their emissions-reduction ambitions by at least threefold to meet the targets adopted in the agreement.
- The Emissions Gap Report 2019 finds that total greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 1.5 percent per year over the past decade, and that even if all current commitments made under the Paris Agreement were implemented, global temperatures would rise by 3.2°C.
- Global greenhouse gas emissions would have to be reduced by some 32 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030, or 7.6 percent every year between 2020 and 2030, in order to reach the 1.5°C target, the Emissions Gap Report states. That would require a five-fold increase in countries’ emissions reduction commitments. Even limiting global warming to 2°C would require a 15-gigatonnes reduction in emissions, or 2.7 percent per year, by 2030. Countries would have to ratchet up their emissions reductions commitments threefold to meet the 2°C target.

World is fast losing its cool: Polar regions in deep trouble, say scientists
- As representatives of the world’s nations gather in Madrid at COP 25 this week to discuss global warming policy, a comprehensive new report shows how climate change is disproportionately affecting the Arctic and Antarctic — the Arctic especially is warming tremendously faster than the rest of the world.
- If the planet sees a rise in average temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, the polar regions will be the hardest hit ecosystems on earth, according to researchers, bringing drastic changes to the region. By the time the lower latitudes hit that mark, it’s projected the Arctic will see temperature increases of 4 degrees Celsius.
- In fact, polar regions are already seeing quickening sea ice melt, permafrost thaws, record wildfires, ice shelves calving, and impacts on cold-adapted species — ranging from Arctic polar bears to Antarctic penguins. What starts in cold areas doesn’t stay there: sea level rise and temperate extreme weather are both linked to polar events.
- The only way out of the trends escalating toward a climate catastrophe at the poles, say scientists, is for nations to begin aggressively reducing greenhouse gas emissions now and embracing sustainable green energy technologies and policies. It remains to be seen whether the negotiators at COP 25 will embrace such solutions.

COP25 may put climate at greater risk by failing to address forests
- COP25, originally slated for Brazil, then Chile, but starting today in Madrid comes as global temperatures, sea level rise, wildfires, coral bleaching, extreme drought and storms break new planetary records.
- But delegates have set a relatively low bar for the summit, with COP25’s primary goal to determine rules under Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement for creating carbon markets among nations, cities and corporations as a means of incentivizing emission-reduction strategies.
- Policy experts warn that global forest conservation is not yet being actively incentivized as part of carbon market discussions, a possible lapse apparently backed by Brazil and the government of Jair Bolsonaro which has declared its plan to develop the Amazon basin — the world’s largest remaining rainforest and vital to sequestering carbon to curb climate change.
- COP25 also seems unlikely to address the UN biomass carbon accounting loophole, which allows nations to convert obsolete coal plants to burn wood pellets to produce energy, with the carbon emitted counted as “zero emissions” equivalent to solar and wind. Scientists warn that biomass burning, far from being carbon neutral, is actually worse than burning coal.

UN and policymakers, wake up! Burning trees for energy is not carbon neutral (commentary)
- On September 23, the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement will gather at the United Nations for a Climate Action Summit to step up their carbon reduction pledges in order to prevent catastrophic climate change, while also kicking off Climate Week events in New York City.
- However, the policymakers, financiers, and big green groups organizing these events will almost certainly turn a blind eye toward renewable energy policies that subsidize forest wood burned for energy as if it is a zero emissions technology like wind or solar.
- Scientists have repeatedly warned that burning forests is not in fact carbon neutral, and that doing so puts the world at risk of overshooting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
- But that message has fallen on deaf ears, as lucrative renewable energy subsidies have driven exponential growth in use of forest wood as fuel. The world’s nations must stop subsidizing burning forest biomass now to protect forests, the climate, and our future. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author.

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.

Indonesia’s threat to exit Paris accord over palm oil seen as cynical ploy
- A top Indonesian minister says the country may consider pulling out of the Paris climate agreement in retaliation for a European policy to phase out palm oil from biofuels by 2030.
- Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime affairs, says Indonesia, the world’s biggest producer of palm oil, can follow in the footsteps of the United States, which has declared its withdrawal from the climate pact, and Brazil, which is considering doing the same.
- The threat is the latest escalation in a diplomatic spat that has also seen Indonesia and Malaysia, the No. 2 palm oil producer, threaten retaliatory trade measures against the European Union.
- The EU says its policy is driven by growing consumer concerns about the sustainability of palm oil, which in Indonesia is often grown on plantations for which vast swaths of rainforest have had to be cleared.

EU sued to stop burning trees for energy; it’s not carbon neutral: plaintiffs
- Plaintiffs in five European nations and the U.S. filed suit Monday, 4 March, in the European General Court in Luxembourg against the European Union. At issue is the EU’s rapid conversion of coal-burning powerplants to burn wood pellets and chips, a process known as bioenergy. Activists see the EUs bioenergy policies as reckless and endangering the climate.
- Bioenergy was classified as carbon neutral under the Kyoto Protocol, meaning that nations don’t need to count wood burning for energy among their Paris Agreement carbon emissions. However, studies over the last 20 years have found that bioenergy, while technically carbon neutral, is not neutral within the urgent timeframe in which the world must cut emissions.
- In essence, it takes many decades for new tree growth to re-absorb the amount of carbon released from burning mature trees in a single day. But the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change last October said that the world has just 12 years – not decades – to drastically cut emissions or face likely disastrous temperature rise and climate impacts.
- The activists filing suit face a difficult fight. Only EU member states and EU institutions are generally given standing to challenge legislative acts. To gain standing, they will have to prove that they are being impacted by the EU’s bioenergy policies. The activists say that ending bioenergy coal plant conversions is vital if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Our brains can lead us astray when making ‘eco-friendly’ decisions
- Humans rely on a set of cognitive tools, developed to help us sustain interpersonal relationships, to govern our choices that affect the global climate, a pair of psychologists suggests.
- People who purchase food with “eco-friendly” labeling might be apt to buy more of it thinking of it as an offset, when, in reality, all consumption has a climate cost.
- The team suggests that more accurate labeling could help consumers understand which choices are “less bad” rather than “good” for the environment.

COP24: Green groups warn of pitfalls in ‘forests for climate’ deal
- A declaration to protect and use forests as a tool to combat climate change has been lambasted by environmentalists.
- The declaration, initiated by the Polish government during the COP24 climate summit, could promote the burning of wood pellets for bioenergy, the environmentalists warn.
- Wood-based biomass is a controversial and hotly debated topic in climate discussions, with scientists finding it emits up to 50 percent more CO2 than coal. But its proponents, including the U.S. EPA, champion it as a “carbon neutral” source of energy.

COP24: Summit a step forward, but fails to address climate urgency
- COP24 ran into overtime over the weekend as delegates rushed to approve the Paris rulebook to set up a detailed mechanism for accomplishing and gauging the carbon reduction pledges made by the world’s nations in Paris at the end of 2015.
- But considering the urgency of action needed – with just 12 years left to act decisively to significantly cut emissions, according to an October IPCC science report – the COP24 summit proved to be less successful than many participants had hoped.
- On the negative side: the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia tried to undermine the gravity of the IPCC science report. Brazil successfully scuttled plans for an international carbon market. And COP24 failed to address the bioenergy carbon counting loophole, which incentivizes the harvesting and burning of trees to make energy by calling the process carbon neutral.
- On the positive side, “1,000 tiny steps” were made, including an improved transparency framework for reporting emissions; regular assessments called Global Stocktake to gauge emissions-reduction effectiveness at national levels starting in 2023; and an agreement to set new finance goals in 2020 to help vulnerable nations adapt to a warming world.

COP24: Will they stay or will they go? Brazil’s threat to leave Paris
- In October, Brazil elected far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency. During the campaign, he threatened to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, implement extreme environmental deregulation policies, and introduce mining into Amazon indigenous reserves, while also using incendiary language which may be inciting violence in remote rural areas.
- Just days before his election, Bolsonaro contradicted his past utterances, saying he won’t withdraw from the Paris accord. At COP24, the Brazilian delegation has fielded questions from concerned attendees, but it appears that no one there knows with certainty what the volatile leader will do once in office. He begins his presidency on the first of the year.
- Even if Bolsonaro doesn’t pull out of Paris, his plans to develop the Amazon, removing most regulatory impediments to mining and agribusiness, could have huge ramifications for the global climate. The Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, stores massive amounts of carbon. Deforestation rates are already going up there, and likely to grow under Bolsonaro.
- Some in Brazil hope that environmental and economic realities will prevent Bolsonaro from fully implementing his plans. Escalating deforestation is already reducing Amazon rainfall, putting aquifers and agribusiness at risk. Agricultural producers also fear global consumer perceptions of Brazil as being anti-environmental could lead to a backlash and boycotts.

COP24: Fossil Fuel Inc.’s outsize presence at talks reflects its influence
- A confrontation between activists and an oil executive at the U.N. climate talks has highlighted just how much influence fossil fuel producers continue to have over global climate policies.
- The confrontation involved the same Shell executive who, days earlier, boasted about the company influencing one of the key provisions in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
- Fossil fuel companies, from oil producers to coal operations, are enjoying a prominent presence at the climate talks in Poland, including as sponsors and as speakers at events throughout the summit.
- Activists have blasted the U.N. for giving the companies such an important platform, saying that it only confirms their long-held suspicions that the very corporations contributing to the climate crisis are the same ones pushing supposed solutions to the problem.

COP24: Nations complicit in ignoring bioenergy climate bomb, experts say
- Twenty years ago science told policymakers that bioenergy – the burning of woody biomass – was a sustainable form of energy that was carbon neutral. The current United Nations carbon accounting system follows that guidance. However, new science has found the hypothesis to be wrong: bioenergy has been found to add significantly to carbon emissions.
- However, national delegations at the UN climate summit in Poland, COP24, as they wordsmith the Paris Rulebook, are stonewalling on the matter, doing nothing to close the bioenergy carbon accounting loophole. But nature can’t be fooled, which means that the undercounting of emissions could push the world past a climate catastrophe tipping point.
- Still, with the problem unaddressed, developed nations in the European Union and elsewhere continue burning woody biomass as energy, with the U.S., Canada and other nations happy to profit from the accounting error. Tropical nations like Brazil and Peru are eager to jump on the bioenergy bandwagon, a potential disaster for rainforests and biodiversity.
- Meanwhile, NGOs and scientists at COP24 have sought earnestly to alert the media and COP delegations to the bioenergy climate bomb and its looming risks, even going so far as to write language closing the loophole that could be inserted into the Paris Rulebook now being negotiated, but to no avail.

COP24: Trumpers tout clean coal; protesters call it ‘climate suicide’
- As in 2017, the Trump administration delegation was again at COP, seriously praising coal as a climate solution in a public presentation Monday – but behind the scenes the U.S. delegation is reportedly less incendiary and more cooperative. The Polish government is also heavily promoting the dirtiest of fossil fuels at the two-week-long Katowice event.
- But protestors, subnationals and NGOs are having none of it. COP24 participants treated the Trump administration coal public presentation with outrage, as a freakish sideshow and a joke. They used the event to send the message that decarbonization is the only way forward – as a means of curbing climate change, while boosting local economies and creating jobs.
- “It’s ludicrous for Trump officials to claim that they want to clean up fossil fuels, while dismantling standards that would do just that,” said Dan Lashof, director, World Resources Institute US.
- “More and more companies are committing to renewable energy, reducing emissions, and striving for a just [energy] transition that protects the wellbeing of all workers,” said Aron Cramer, CEO of BSR, a sustainability consulting firm in San Francisco.

COP24: US, Russia, Saudis downplay IPCC report in display of disunity
- The U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait rejected language strongly affirming the severity of global warming at the COP24 summit in Poland on Saturday night. The United States is in the process of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, while Russia has failed so far to ratify the accord.
- Some fear this could signal further obstruction this week by major oil producing nations as national leaders arrive at COP24 to wrestle with resolving a host of difficult issues, including an upping of Paris carbon-reduction pledges, completion of the Paris Rulebook measuring energy production, transportation, agriculture, and deforestation to curb climate change.
- Also, to be worked out, transparency rules on emissions, and plans for wealthy nations to help support poor nations adapt to climate damage. This daunting agenda isn’t helped by the leadership void created when the U.S. pulled back from the Paris agreement after Democrat Barack Obama was replaced as president by Republican Donald Trump.
- At COP24, Tom Steyer, a prominent U.S. environmental activist, said that “nothing short of transformational politics” in the United States will get international climate action back on track. He sees U.S. leadership as essential to preventing the worst impacts of global warming. But such a sea change won’t likely come until after the 2020 presidential election.

COP24: Human rights concerns cast a shadow over U.N. climate summit
- A set of guidelines for putting the landmark Paris Climate Agreement into action has omitted references to human rights, a move that activists blame on the U.S. delegation at the ongoing climate summit in Katowice, Poland.
- A top U.N. official and activists have denounced the omission, warning that no meaningful climate action can be taken without due reference to and respect for human rights, particularly those of indigenous peoples.
- The Katowice talks have also been marred by reports that more than a dozen activists have either been denied entry into or deported from Poland, prompting concerns about who is allowed a voice at the discussions.

COP24: Coal casts a shadow over U.N. climate talks in Poland
- Activists have questioned the integrity and effectiveness of the U.N. climate talks in Poland, in light of its close associations with the coal industry.
- Among the event’s sponsors are three Polish coal companies, and in his opening speech, the Polish president said his country’s continued use of coal did not go against efforts to tackle climate change.
- Activists say the influence of the coal lobby at the conference amounts to greenwashing and could undermine the effectiveness of any outcome from the discussions.

COP24: World’s nations gather to grapple with looming climate disaster
- Representatives from nearly 200 nations gathered in Katowice, Poland on Sunday for COP24, the annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties, to move forward on climate action. The goal: keep global temperatures from rising less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
- Unfortunately for the planet, the COP mechanism has stalled since its 2015 triumph in Paris when the world’s nations agreed to work together to cut carbon emissions. To date, just seven nations, most of them tiny, are on track to reduce emissions to meet the 2 degree Celsius goal, while the U.S. is on track to withdraw from the accord by 2020.
- Today, subnationals – cities, states, regions, businesses, faith organizations, indigenous groups, and NGOs – are providing much of the initiative and impetus for cutting emissions. They are working together in a variety of ways, to reduce deforestation and improve agricultural land use, for example. They will have a major presence at COP24.
- But while subnational efforts are commendable and important, they are not near enough, experts say. With the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and other scientific organizations, publishing increasingly dire forecasts, urgently calling for climate action, it is vital that nations prioritize climate action and move quickly to decarbonize their economies.

Audio: Margaret Atwood on her conservation-themed graphic novel, dystopian futures, and how not to despair
- Today’s episode features best-selling author and environmental activist Margaret Atwood as well as the founder of a beverage company rooted in the Amazon whose new book details the lessons he’s learned from indigenous rainforest peoples.
- Margaret Atwood, whose novels and poetry have won everything from an Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction to the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction, recently tackled a medium she is not as well-known for: comic books. Not only that, but she has written a comic book series, called Angel Catbird, that “was a conservation project from the get-go,” she told Mongabay.
- Our second guest is Tyler Gage, co-founder of the beverage company Runa. “Runa” is the word the indigenous Kichwa people use to describe the effects of drinking guayusa; it translates to “fully alive” — which also happens to be the name of a new book that Gage has just published detailing the lessons he learned in the Amazon that led to the launch of Runa and its mission to partner with indigenous communities in business.

A reflection on COP23: Incremental progress but no industrialized country’s top priority (commentary)
- COP23 was not without incremental accomplishments. There were many, most boldly a coalition of US cities, states, and businesses pledging to do for climate mitigation what the Trump administration won’t.
- But where was the incitement to reduce carbon emissions beyond the modest Paris pledges, an absolute necessity if we are to contain temperature rise to 1.5 degree C by 2100, the Paris goal? Where are the billions in promised funding to help the victims of climate impacts adapt and recover their losses and damages?
- If I’ve learned anything from covering four consecutive climate summits, it’s that Paris was something of an anomaly. Most COPs, like COP23, produce progress around the edges of climate mitigation and promises to talk again next year. Always next year.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New research projects two percent increase in global emissions in 2017
- A new report from the Global Carbon Project and the University of East Anglia projects that emissions will have risen about two percent by the time 2017 draws to a close.
- According to the report, global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry will reach about 37 billion metric tons in 2017, setting a new record. Emissions from all human activities, including fossil fuel use, industry, and land-use change, is projected to be about 41 billion metric tons, close to the record set in 2015.
- Emissions growth in China and other developing countries is largely to blame for the overall increase in 2017, the report states.

COP23: Alliance pledges an end to coal; other key summit goals unmet
- As COP23 comes to a close in Bonn, 19 nations including Canada and the United Kingdom agreed to stop using coal to generate power by 2030.
- Major coal producing and using nations, including Australia, India, Germany and the United States, did not join in the new Global Alliance to Power Past Coal.
- Participants in COP23 find it to have largely been a disappointment, with developed nations failing to promise to ramp up their Paris carbon emission reduction targets – vital if the world is to stop a catastrophic rise in temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
- Likewise, efforts to find clear pathways by which developed nations will raise the tens of billions needed for vulnerable developing nations to deal with climate change were blocked – primarily by the United States. Now, policymakers are putting their hopes on COP24 in Katowice, Poland, in December 2018.

COP23: U.S., wealthy nations curtail climate aid for developing world
- The small U.S. delegation sent by President Trump to the COP23 climate summit in Bonn has apparently led a successful effort to obstruct significant, much needed, climate change adaptation financing and loss-and-damage financing for the developing world.
- Over the past two weeks in Bonn, the U.S. provided cover for the other developed countries, especially coal-producing Australia, tar sands-producer Canada, and the European Union, as they curtailed offering financial climate aid to the world’s developing nations, including island nations whose existence is at risk from rising oceans.
- One victory: delegates agreed to draft language for Pre-2020 Ambitions, a measure requiring that developed countries be transparent about their current emissions and describe voluntary steps they will take prior to 2020 to further reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
- It is now hoped by some that the issue of adaptation financing and loss-and-damage financing to the developing world will be finally effectively addressed at COP24 in Poland in December 2018.

Audio: Dr. Jane Goodall on being proven right about animals having personalities, plus updates direct from COP23
- On today’s episode, we speak with the legendary Jane Goodall, who truly needs no introduction, and will have a direct report from the United Nations’ climate talks happening now in Bonn, Germany.
- Just before Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler was scheduled to speak with Goodall recently, research came out that vindicated her contention, which she’s held for nearly 60 years, that animals have personalities just like people. So we decided to record her thoughts about that for the Mongabay Newscast.
- Our second guest today is Mongabay contributor and Wake Forest University journalism professor Justin Catanoso, who appears on the podcast direct from COP23 to tell us how the UN climate talks are going in Bonn, Germany, what the mood is like amongst delegates, and how the US delegation is factoring into the talks as the Trump Administration continues to pursue a pullout from the Paris Climate Agreement.

COP23: Trump team leads ‘surreal’ coal-gas-nuke climate summit panel
- The only U.S. presentation to be offered at the COP23 climate summit was led by Trump administration energy advisors, along with coal, natural gas and nuclear industry representatives.
- The panel argued that fossil fuel production at high, subsidized levels is vital to “energy security and economic development.” Panel members made only infrequent references to climate change, and they made no mention of the dire impacts from burning fossil fuels.
- The presentation was likely one of the most uproarious in the history of COP. Two U.S. state governors burst in at the start to give impromptu speeches, attacking Trump’s climate denialist policies.
- A memorable highlight occurred when a chorus of young people arose en masse during the panel’s opening remarks, and to the tune of Lee Greenwood’s patriotic hit “God Bless the USA” sang: “So you claim to be an American. But we see right through your greed.” Their song lasted seven minutes, after which they peacefully departed the hall.

COP23: Voices from America’s Pledge; in their own words
- A U.S. non-federal delegation led by Gov. Jerry Brown of California and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and including 15 U.S. states, 455 cities, 1,747 businesses and 325 universities, represents nearly half the United States economy.
- This U.S. subnational delegation is at COP23 in Bonn, Germany, to commit to keeping the U.S. Paris Agreement emissions reduction goal set by the Obama administration in Paris in 2015 – a commitment made in defiance of President Donald Trump.
- On Saturday, a standing-room-only event was held at COP23 where Bloomberg, Brown, Gore, and others spoke rousingly of emission cut achievements so far, and to come. Their words and photos are presented here.

U.S. subnationals shoulder climate role in Bonn, Trump sidelined
- The United States government under Donald Trump now stands alone, a rogue nation. Aligned against it at COP23 in Bonn, Germany, is every other nation in the world – all committed to meeting national emissions goals set in Paris in 2015.
- Completely bypassing Trump and the federal government at COP23 is the U.S. subnational delegation, led by Gov. Jerry Brown of California and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
- The U.S. subnational delegation in Bonn represents non-federal actors in 15 states, 455 cities, 1,747 businesses and 325 universities. Combined they represent nearly half the U.S. economy. It remains to be seen if the delegation will be formally seated at COP23 as negotiators – a potential slap in the face to Trump’s tiny U.S. State Department delegation.
- The U.S. subnationals are committed to keeping America’s Paris goal of a 28 percent reduction in carbon emissions (over 2005 levels) by 2025. Supporters of America’s Pledge say they’re nearly halfway there. But it will take a far bigger push, and deeper cuts, to avoid the threat of escalating climate change, as heatwaves, extreme storms, and sea levels surge.

‘Much deeper than we expected’: Huge peatland offers up more surprises
- Scientists recently discovered the world’s biggest tropical peatland in the Congo Basin rainforest of Central Africa. The peatland straddles the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.
- Roughly the size of England, the massive peatland is estimated to contain more than 30 billion metric tons of carbon — equivalent to three years of global fossil fuel emissions.
- When the scientists went back to investigate the peatland further, they discovered the peat along its edges is deeper than they thought. This means it may contain more peat — and, thus, more carbon — than they originally thought.
- The scientists are racing to learn more about the peatland as loggers move to fell and drain the forests above it to make way for roads and developments like palm oil plantations. Meanwhile, local communities are hoping for greater protection of the region as government officials try to drum up more support for conservation initiatives at this week’s UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

From carbon sink to source: Brazil puts Amazon, Paris goals at risk
- Brazil is committed to cutting carbon emissions by 37 percent from 2005 levels by 2025, to ending illegal deforestation, and restoring 120,000 square kilometers of forest by 2030. Scientists warn these Paris commitments are at risk due to a flood of anti-environmental and anti-indigenous measures forwarded by President Michel Temer.
- “If these initiatives succeed, Temer will go down in history with the ruralistas as the ones who put a stake in the beating heart of the Amazon.” — Thomas Lovejoy, conservation biologist and director of the Center for Biodiversity and Sustainability at George Mason University.
- “The Temer government’s reckless behavior flies in the face of Brazil’s commitments to the Paris Agreement.” — Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch.
- “There was, or maybe there still is, a very slim chance we can avoid a catastrophic desertification of South America. No doubt, there will be horrific damage if the Brazilian government initiatives move forward in the region.” — Antonio Donato Nobre, scientist at INPA, the Institute for Amazonian Research.

COP23: Trump, U.S. govt. seen as irrelevant to global climate action
- COP23, the 23rd United Nations Climate Summit got underway on Monday, with 196 nations attending, and only one, the United States publically reneging on its Paris Agreement commitments. Syria, the final holdout announced its plans to become a Paris signatory.
- Trump’s denialist position and the isolation of the U.S. federal government was underlined by two reports released as the Bonn summit got started: the Fourth National Climate Assessment, and a World Meteorological Organization report — both of which issued dire warnings about the ongoing impacts of rapidly escalating global warming.
- “Sub-nationals,” U.S. mayors, state governors and top corporate leaders are ready to step into the void Trump created. Representatives from fifteen U.S. states, 300+ cities, and 150+ businesses are at COP23 to show America’s continuing commitment to the Paris Agreement.
- “The Trump administration is a fossil fuel marionette show – it has no credibility in these talks and is here negotiating in bad faith.” – Jesse Bragg, spokesman with Corporate Accountability International, at COP23.

Indigenous forests could be a key to averting climate catastrophe
- A new study finds the world’s tropical forests may no longer be carbon sinks, with a net loss of 425 million tons of carbon from 2003 to 2014. Also, 1.1 billion metric tons of carbon is emitted globally from forested areas and land use annually — 4.4 billion metric tons are absorbed by standing forests on managed lands, but 5.5 billion metric tons are released via deforestation and degradation.
- As a result, curbing deforestation and degradation is now seen by scientists as a vital strategy for nations to meet the carbon reduction goals set in Paris in 2015, and of averting a catastrophic 2 degree Celsius rise in temperatures by the end of the century.
- Other new research finds that indigenous and traditional community management of forests could offer a key to curbing emissions, and give the world time to transition to a green energy economy. In a separate study, Amazon deforestation rates were found to be five times greater outside indigenous territories and conservation units than inside.
- “We are a proven solution to the long-term protection of forests, whose survival is vital for reaching our [planetary] climate change goals,” said an envoy of a global indigenous delegation in attendance at COP23 in Bonn, Germany. The delegation wants the world’s nations to protect indigenous forests from an invasion by global extraction industries.

Carbon sequestration role of savanna soils key to climate goals
- Savannas and grasslands cover a vast area, some 20 percent of the earth’s land surface — from sub-Saharan Africa, to the Cerrado in Brazil, to North America’s heartland. They also offer an enormous and underappreciated capacity for carbon sequestration.
- However, the role of forests in storing carbon has long been emphasized over the role of savannas (and savanna soils) by international climate negotiators, resulting in policies such as REDD+ for preserving and restoring forests, with no such incentives for protecting grasslands.
- Scientists warn that the planting of trees, such as nonnative eucalyptus in Africa and Brazil, could be counterproductive in the long term, potentially contributing to climate change emissions while harming grassland biodiversity and altering ecosystems.
- As participants prepare to meet for the COP23 climate summit in Bonn, Germany next week, grassland scientists are urging that policymakers turn an eye toward savannas, and begin to develop incentives for preserving them and their carbon storing soils. More research is also needed to fully understand the role savannas can play in carbon sequestration.

Trump failure to lead on climate doesn’t faze UN policymakers in Bonn
- Policymakers from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Bonn this week for climate change talks aimed at fulfilling the promise of the Paris Agreement. U.S. negotiators will be there too, despite President Trump’s denial of climate change and his signaled alliance with the fossil fuel industry.
- Under President Obama, the U.S. played a key leadership role in climate negotiations, bringing China fully on board, and helping broker the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. President Trump has threatened to withdraw from the pact — a four-year process — and claims he will make a final decision this month. It seems likely China would step into the leadership gap left by the U.S.
- Bonn negotiators remain unfazed by Trump’s climate change denialism or his threat to withdraw from Paris. Every signatory nation is going forward with meeting voluntary carbon reduction pledges. Some policymakers do worry how the parties to the Paris Agreement will make up the loss of billions of dollars in U.S. climate aid promised under Obama, but now denied by Trump.
- The feeling among Bonn participants is that the rest of the world will go forward briskly and effectively in combatting climate change by embracing alternative energy solutions that will bring jobs and prosperity to their countries, while the U.S. will play the role of a rogue nation that will share no part in the resulting economic boon.

Trump vows Paris Agreement pull out; world unites behind green economy
- Climate delegates and NGOs meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, responded to threats this week by Donald Trump to quickly renege on the US commitment to uphold the Paris Climate Agreement. While the US under Pres. Obama led the way to the accord, COP22 summit attendees say that China is now likely to fill the leadership vacuum created by Trump.
- COP22 participants also say that the world’s nations are now united in moving toward decarbonizing their economies with 21st century technologies to slow the rate of global warming, while creating millions of new green-energy jobs. Meanwhile, a US under Trump is on the path to re-embracing coal, a 19th century technology in rapid decline.
- Summit attendees have discussed repercussions for a US withdrawal from the accord reached in December 2015 by nearly 200 nations. Beyond the loss of US standing on the world stage, backlash could come in the form of faltering trade agreements, failed military cooperation, economic sanctions, or a carbon tax levied on the US for failing its carbon-reduction pledges.
- “Even though we are in a time of uncertainty because of the US election, there is no way to turn away from what [climate] scientists have shown us. Failure to act now will lead to catastrophic consequences,” said Peru’s Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, a key organizer of the Lima and Paris climate summits.

Mongabay Newscast episode 5: UN Climate talks and the impending Trump presidency, conserving salamanders in Mexico, and more
- Catanoso wrote a piece for Mongabay, published last Friday, about the response from delegates at the UN climate talks when they learned of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election. Delegates were “aghast and shaken, with emotions ranging from defiance to wishful encouragement,” Catanoso writes.
- Mongabay Newscast producer Erik Hoffner also joins us to answer a reader question about efforts to protect critically endangered Ambystoma salamanders in the state of Michoacan, Mexico.
- All that, plus the top news and inspiration from nature’s frontline!

Trump election leaves COP22 climate delegates aghast, shaken but firm
- President elect Donald Trump vowed on the campaign trail to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, a move that — if carried out — COP22 delegates and NGOs say would be a disaster for the world, as well as the US economy.
- The Paris Climate Agreement went into force in November and 195 nations, including the United States, are now obligated to meet their voluntary pledges to reduce carbon emissions and abide by the agreement for three years before they can seek to withdraw from it. Withdraw by Trump and the US would take another year — his entire presidential term.
- “Beyond national politics, modernization of the energy system and of basic infrastructure [as driven by the Paris Agreement] is good for the US economy, for jobs, for growth,” said Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary of recent UN climate summits.
- “The Paris Agreement was signed and ratified not by a president, but by the United States itself. As a matter of international law, and as a matter of human survival, the nations of the world can, must, and will hold the US to its climate commitments,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law.

Beyond Paris: COP22, a critical nuts-and-bolts carbon-cutting summit
- As we near the end of what scientists say will be the hottest year on record, representatives from the world’s nations are about to meet in Marrakesh, Morocco. And while COP22 isn’t getting near the media attention Paris did in 2015, it is crucial for putting nuts-and-bolts mechanisms in place to keep global temperatures from rising much higher.
- One meeting focus will be on global forest initiatives meant to store carbon, such as REDD+. Negotiators will look at ways in which to effectively engage tropical countries such as Indonesia, which continues clear-cutting its rainforests and replacing them with vast tracts of oil palm plantations.
- Another discussion will focus on “loss and damage,” and seek pragmatic ways in which the world’s nations can financially support countries suffering from major disruptive climate change disasters. The insurance industry questions whether projected gigantic climate change losses can be insured against.
- A major concern is that fossil fuel companies and transnational corporate lobbies, which wield tremendous influence at UN climate conferences, will be able to dull the teeth of any climate change-curbing mechanisms put in place. Environmental NGOs will be on hand to guard against such efforts.

Climate change pledges not nearly enough to save tropical ecosystems
- Last December, 178 nations pledged to cut their carbon emissions enough to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius — with an aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees. A study in the journal Nature has found that pledges so far are insufficient to keep the world from blasting past the 2 degree mark, even as scientists meet this week in Geneva to consider plans to reach the goal.
- While scientists have long known that extreme temperature rises in the Arctic presaged ecosystem devastation there, they believed that less extreme temperature rises in the tropics might have smaller, less serious impacts on biodiversity.
- Recent findings, however, show that major tropical ecosystems, ranging from coral reefs and mangroves to cloud forests and rainforests are already seriously threatened by climate change with likely dangerous repercussions for wildlife.
- While nations work to commit to, and achieve, their Paris commitments, scientists say it is vital that tropical countries continue to protect large core tracts of wild land linked by wild corridors in order to conserve maximum biodiversity — allowing for free, unhampered movement of species as climate change unfolds.

Climate negotiators focus on carbon credits, underplay human rights
- The climate talks in Bonn Germany this month are looking at reinvigorating the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) that provides carbon credits to industrialized nations that invest in clean energy or efficient energy projects in developing countries.
- Over 7,000 CDM-financed projects in more than 100 nations were done since 2006. Critics say some large-scale industrial CDM projects, including dams and more efficient coal burning power plants, have violated the human rights of local and indigenous people.
- Those critics have recommended that the revitalized CDM include protections for local populations, but most UN negotiators in Bonn have showed little interest in including such safeguards, asserting that the great majority of CDM projects don’t violate human rights.
- CDM detractors also question the wisdom of a UN mechanism that allows construction of new coal-fired power plants, which will add to fossil fuel emissions for decades to come. No final decisions will be made in Bonn; that must wait until the COP22 meeting in November.

Warming far outpacing climate action, as UN negotiators meet in Bonn
- The Bonn climate conference (running May 16-26) is hashing out the particulars of the Paris Agreement, including financing for REDD+ dealing with deforestation, but the real policy decision-making will happen Nov. 7-18 at COP22 in Marrakesh, Morocco.
- While national leaders spout optimistic platitudes celebrating the great achievement of the globally unifying Paris Agreement on climate, environmentalists note that there is little in the way of substantial action plans behind the many promises made last December.
- Meanwhile, the most intense El Niño in history is leaving in its wake a world gripped by 7 months of record high temperatures; drought, water shortages, and famine (especially in India and Africa); wildfires (Fort McMurray, Canada); record coral bleaching; and a fast shrinking Arctic ice cap that set stunning early melt records this winter and spring.
- Many scientists agree that limiting global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100 — the Paris Agreement goal — is nearly impossible, with the carbon cut commitments of all participating nations now putting us on a path to a 3 degree Celsius (5.4 degree Fahrenheit) increase, which could make parts of the planet uninhabitable.

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