Sites: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia
topic: Climate Change Politics
Social media activity version | Lean version
Global warming hits hardest for those who can’t escape it
- The world’s most vulnerable people, including refugees, migrants and the poor, increasingly face threats related to climate change.
- Many lack the ability to move away from impacts like heat, flooding and landslides.
- A new study reveals a lack of data showing the causes of this involuntary immobility.
- Experts say governments and organizations can invest in low-cost interventions aimed at reducing suffering.
Remembering Pope Francis and his visit to typhoon-hit Philippines
Pope Francis was well known for his environmental activism. Time called him the “Climate Pope” for his prominent role in the global climate movement. He consistently talked about the consequences of human action on the planet and described the destruction of the environment as a “structural sin,” calling on people to act with urgency. As […]
Church pressure spurs scrutiny of Indonesian geothermal projects
- In early April, the governor of Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province said his administration would review all geothermal development on Flores Island.
- The statement followed a campaign by the Catholic Church, led by the Archdiocese of Ende, which advocated for local residents concerned about environmental damage.
- Indonesia has the world’s largest potential for geothermal energy, and use of the technology has grown in recent years as the country seeks to expand renewables to meet its international climate commitments.
- The Vatican assumed a leadership role on climate change under the late Pope Francis, who died over Easter at the age of 88.
122 companies responsible for a third of present day sea-level rise: Study
What’s new: Almost half of global average temperature rise and a third of sea-level rise can be attributed to the “carbon majors,” the world’s 122 largest fossil fuel and cement producers, a recent paper shows. What the study says: Research from U.S.-based science advocacy NGO Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) used climate-carbon cycle models, and […]
What environmental history reveals about our current ‘planetary risk’
Recent and major shifts in international environmental policies and programs have precedent in history, but the scale and urgency of their potential impacts present a planetary risk that’s new, podcast guest Sunil Amrith says. A professor of history at Yale University, he joins the show to discuss the current political moment and draw comparisons across […]
Will Brazil’s President Lula wake up to the climate crisis? (commentary)
- The global climate system is even nearer than we thought to a tipping point where global warming escapes from human control. Emissions from both fossil fuel combustion and the loss and degradation of forests must be drastically reduced, beginning immediately.
- Brazil would be one of the greatest victims if global warming escapes from control, but, excepting the Ministry of Environment and Climate change, virtually the entire Brazilian government is promoting projects that will increase emissions for decades to come.
- Brazil’s President Lula so far shows no signs of waking up to the climate crisis, to its implications for Brazil, and to the climatic consequences of his current policies.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
US set to lose out as Trump retreats from climate agreement, NGOs warn
U.S. President Donald Trump kicked off his second term in office by issuing an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accords, a historic agreement to limit global warming to below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The order states that it’s the policy of the new administration to put U.S. […]
Former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres remains optimistic despite disappointing COP process
The 29th United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, ended late and with a massive finance shortfall of pledged climate finance for countries in the Global South, roughly $1 trillion less than what was sought. Many delegates were already on flights home when the final agreement was reached, while other […]
World’s top court starts hearing historic climate change case
A group of small island nations led by Vanuatu is urging the world’s top court to hold the major greenhouse gas-emitting countries accountable for failing to tackle climate change. The case involves nearly 100 countries and is being heard by 15 judges at the U.N.’s International Court of Justice in the Netherlands. “These ICJ proceedings […]
Land use change impacting seven planetary boundaries, solutions urgent, say scientists
- A new scientific report lays bare the stark impacts of land-system change and land degradation on planetary health, while also offering solutions to these problems. The report was published on the eve of the 16th session of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, running Dec. 2-13 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
- Seven of nine planetary boundaries are now adversely impacted by unsustainable land use and other land practices, the report finds. Six of those boundaries are already transgressed, having moved beyond their safe operating space for humanity and into the high-risk zone.
- Scientists warn that the seriously degraded land use boundary, interacting with the other transgressed planetary boundaries, could result in a domino-effect that may rapidly push Earth systems past dangerous and irreversible tipping points, threatening life as we know it.
- Unsustainable agricultural practices are a leading driver of land use degradation globally, responsible for vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, the majority of deforestation and freshwater use. Urgent measures are needed to restore ecosystems, shift to sustainable agriculture, and prevent further degradation.
With COP29 letdown, climate activists pin their hopes on Brazil
After the recently concluded COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan failed to raise the amount of funds sought by developing countries for climate initiatives, civil society groups are calling on Brazil, the next host for the conference in 2025, to step up and lead. “Rich countries have failed to honor their responsibilities, and shown up with […]
COP29 ends in $300 billion deal, widespread dismay — and eyes toward COP30
- COP29 will be remembered for delivering a controversial deal of $300 billion when most delegates at the talks were already on flights back home; the agreement is far less than the more than $1 trillion developing nations sought.
- As expected, the outcome has prompted furious condemnation: Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think tank, called it a “betrayal,” while Chandni Raina, an adviser with India’s finance ministry, said the outcome is “too little,” “too distant” and “shall not solve anything for us.”
- • “Developed countries have been shamefully unwilling to listen to the science and commit to a needs-based climate finance goal,” wrote Matilde Angeltveit, a climate policy adviser at Norwegian Church Aid.
- Still, others found slivers of hope; UNFCCC’s Grenadian executive secretary, Simon Stiell, called the deal “an insurance policy for humanity” that will keep clean energy booming.
Growing fossil fuel presence at COP concerns many
The increasing presence of lobbyists for coal, oil and gas at the global climate talks is raising concerns about the United Nations’ ability to adequately design policies aimed at phasing out fossil fuels. The number of fossil fuel lobbyists at the United Nations annual climate summit has significantly increased over the past four years. In […]
‘We are not asking for handouts,’ Rwandan President Kagame says at COP29
BAKU, Azerbaijan – The debate around international climate finance is often interpreted to mean developing countries demand wealthier nations cover the growing climate bill. However, at the ongoing U.N. Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, African leaders argue they are not seeking free money. Instead, they want the world to recognize the true value of […]
At COP29, US envoy upbeat despite looming climate policy changes
Baku, Azerbaijan The outcome of the recent elections in the United States looms large on the United Nations Climate Change Summit, which opened in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. As thousands of delegates gathered at the Olympic Stadium in Baku, the venue of this year’s meeting, questions lingered regarding the role and leadership […]
COP29: With public climate finance shortfall, is investment capital a way forward?
- The many years of international delay on climate action — paralleled by year-after-year of rising emissions and record climate disasters — has greatly increased the price tag on preventing a global climate catastrophe. Today, experts estimate addressing the climate emergency will cost trillions of dollars.
- But who should pay, and how much? This question is expected to top the agenda at COP29, the climate summit, starting Nov. 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan, possibly leading to a new, more ambitious financial target to provide crucial funds to developing countries.
- While wealthy nations are known for pledging large sums to support the alternative energy transition, climate adaptation, and loss and damage, those nations controversially are also known for falling far short on fulfilling those pledges. Wealthy countries reportedly mobilized $115.9 billion for climate action in 2022, still not close to enough.
- Now stepping up are The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, regional development banks, and private financial institutions, who say they stand ready to invest far more (with significant caveats) than G-20 nations ever contributed. How this investing will work, and how fast, remains to be seen, with some distrustful of investment capital’s profit motives.
U.S. policy experts confident of future climate action despite Trump election
- In 2015, the world came together to achieve the landmark Paris climate agreement. But in 2016, Donald Trump’s ascendency to the U.S. presidency stunned the world, as he promised to withdrew the U.S. from the Paris accord and moved to disrupt action on climate change.
- The Biden administration worked to reverse that damage, with the U.S. again taking a leadership role in global climate summits and passing the Inflation Reduction Act, one of the most ambitious U.S. laws ever to combat global warming and boost the post-carbon economy.
- Now, with Trump elected again, the world stands ready for his climate denialism, and his likely withdrawal of the U.S. for a second time from the Paris Agreement. Global momentum is expected to continue unabated, with alternative energy thriving, Brazil hosting COP30 in 2025, and China and the EU doubling down on climate action.
- In the U.S., “Just as we did during the last Trump administration, we are going to put a focus on our work with cities and with states and many private-sector leaders who stood tall then and stand tall now,” said Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator during Barack Obama’s second term, and managing co-chair of America Is All In, an NGO.
Brazil minister rejects EU deforestation law despite postponement plans
Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Carlos Fávaro criticized the European Union’s anti-deforestation law, which bans the import of products linked to recently deforested land. This is the first response from Brazil since the European Council suggested postponing implementation of the regulation until December 2025. The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requires companies to prove […]
Calls for caution as enhanced rock weathering shows carbon capture promise
- Natural rock weathering is a fundamental part of Earth’s carbon cycle but occurs over thousands of years. Enhancing this cycle by spreading fine volcanic rock on agricultural land is a form of geoengineering that could speed up this process and permanently lock away carbon dioxide within decades.
- Startups and research programs are underway across the globe to explore the effectiveness and risks of this climate solution. Spreading rocks such as basalt can sequester carbon and benefit soils, with some studies showing crop yield increases.
- If scaled up, enhanced rock weathering could store gigaton levels of carbon in the future, according to early research. But myriad challenges and uncertainties remain, not least of which is how to accurately calculate and verify how much carbon is being stored, and for how long.
- Some companies are already pushing ahead with deployment, with the idea of profiting from carbon credits, but experts caution that long-term studies are needed to ensure the technique’s efficacy, sustainability and environmental safety.
New survey puts human face on pollution caused by U.S. wood pellet mills
- A new groundbreaking survey highlights the human toll from pollution and other quality of life impacts connected to those living near the forest biomass industry’s wood pellet mills in the U.S Southeast.
- Door-to-door interviews were conducted by a coalition of NGOs, with 312 households surveyed in five mostly poor, rural and minority communities located near pellet mills operated by Drax and Enviva, two of the world’s largest pellet makers.
- In four of the five newly surveyed communities, 86% of households reported at least one family member with diseases or ailments, which they say are related to, or made worse by, pellet mill pollution. 2023 research found that pellet mills emit 55 toxic pollutants that largely impact environmental justice communities.
- The wood pellet industry says the survey was not scientifically rigorous and that its members strive to control pollution and improve the local economies in communities where they work.
Delay of EU Deforestation Regulation may ‘be excuse to gut law,’ activists fear
- In a surprise move, the European Commission has proposed a 12-month delay in implementation of the EU’s groundbreaking deforestation law, which was slated to go into effect in January 2025.
- The European Parliament still needs to approve the delay, but is expected to do so. The law is meant to regulate global deforestation caused by a range of commodities from soy to coffee, cattle, cocoa, palm oil, rubber and wood products, including industrial-scale wood pellets burned to make energy.
- Commodity companies, including those in the pellet industry, say the law’s certification requirements are onerous and the 2025 start date is too soon for compliance. The industries are supported by commodities-producing nations such as Brazil, Indonesia and the United States (a primary source of wood pellets).
- Forest campaigners, including those opposing tree harvests for wood pellets, fear that delay of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will offer commodity companies and exporting nations time to water down the law meant to protect native forests, carbon storage and biodiversity, and delay the worst climate change impacts.
Tensions flare as Indonesian islanders resist China solar development
- A violent confrontation between local villagers and officers of a land developer on the island of Rempang resulted in injuries and a police complaint.
- At issue is the 7,000-hectare (17,000-acre) Rempang Eco-City development on a small island that requires the eviction of thousands of local people.
- The project comprises a vast glass factory operated by a Chinese firm that will also build solar panels.
- Indonesia’s human rights commission last year sided with local residents and recommended the government review the project for potential breach of land rights.
‘Thugs’ disrupt Jakarta climate march as attacks on civil liberties increase
- In Jakarta, an unidentified group disrupted, intimidated and behaved aggressively toward protesters in a Sept. 27 climate march, highlighting the increased challenges to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Indonesia.
- The following day, on Sept. 28, a mob ransacked a forum of experts in a South Jakarta hotel, tearing down the backdrop of the event, breaking a microphone stand and yelling at participants to “disperse”; in both cases, nearby police did not intervene.
- Activists note a growing trend of public discussions and peaceful assemblies being disrupted by unidentified groups or state forces in Indonesia, particularly when they address sensitive or controversial topics; data from the NGO Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (KontraS) shows there have been 75 violations of civic freedom in past year alone.
A future where we might ‘get climate right’: A conversation with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Solving our ecological and climate problems looks a lot less like a techno-utopia and more like a mosaic of actions both to protect and restore nature, and to increase and safeguard human equity in the face of climate change, marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson says on Mongabay’s latest podcast episode. In other words, flashy technology, […]
As waterbodies lose oxygen, are we breaching a potential planetary boundary?
- A new perspective piece argues that aquatic deoxygenation — the depletion of oxygen in marine and freshwater environments — should be considered its own “boundary” in the planetary boundary framework first proposed by scientists in 2009. Human-caused nitrogen pollution and climate change have greatly worsened aquatic deoxygenation worldwide.
- The planetary boundary framework defines nine natural biophysical and biochemical system processes that maintain the resilience of the Earth system, allowing life to thrive. But each boundary includes limits within which humanity needs to safely operate.
- The paper’s lead author says that increased scientific understanding of dissolved oxygen in marine and freshwater environments shows that it regulates, and is regulated by many of the other planetary processes, which in turn warrants the inclusion of aquatic deoxygenation in the planetary boundary framework.
- The framework is a rapidly evolving theory. Whether aquatic deoxygenation is already indirectly taken into account by the existing framework, as some argue, or whether it should be considered as its own planetary boundary remains to be determined.
‘Polycrisis’ threatens planetary health; UN calls for innovative solutions
- Rapidly converging environmental, technological and social changes at the global level indicate the world has entered a “polycrisis,” according to a new U.N. Environmental Programme (UNEP) report. The polycrisis has major implications for Earth’s climate, biodiversity, pollution and health, according to the authors.
- Eight major shifts — including competition for natural resources, the rapid advance of new technologies such as AI, mass forced displacement and growing inequalities — are overlapping and synchronizing, intensifying the polycrisis.
- The U.N. report also identifies 18 “signals of change” on the near horizon that need to be monitored closely, many of which could cause major disruptions that would impact planetary health.
- These looming issues include new infectious diseases linked to climate change, deployment of climate-altering geoengineering technologies and an increase in “uninhabitable places.” The report underlines the need for monitoring, rapid response and inclusive decision-making to deploy a range of innovative solutions.
Geoengineering gains momentum, but governance is lacking, critics say
- As the climate crisis advances, geoengineering — intentionally modifying Earth systems on a large scale to cool the planet or store additional carbon — is increasingly a hot topic. But an intense debate is raging as to how to govern research and deployment of these deeply contentious strategies.
- Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) — involving the release of sunlight-blocking particles such as sulfur dioxide into the lower atmosphere to block the sun’s rays — is at the forefront of a range of geoengineering technologies and approaches.
- Most SAI research to date involves modeling, while small-scale experimentation is foundering. SAI, though likely capable of cooling Earth’s climate, comes laden with governance challenges, myriad uncertainties and knock-on effects to the climate, ecosystems and human health.
- Projected deployment within a decade or two is cause for concern, say experts who warn that policy guidance and regulatory mechanisms at the national and international levels are now patchy at best, leaving huge gaps in oversight, transparency and monitoring of field research and potential deployment.
Biomass power grows in Japan despite new understanding of climate risks
- New biomass power plants continue to come online in Japan, requiring an ever-greater quantity of imported fuel. The government’s feed-in tariff scheme, which has been tweaked but not canceled, incentivized these projects.
- Although understanding of forest biomass’s negative environmental and climate impacts is growing in Japan, policy advocates say operators of existing biomass power plants need to pay back construction bank loans, and the government’s refusal to admit its mistake is keeping biomass plants running.
- A major biomass fuel type is wood pellets, which in Japan is presently primarily sourced from plantation forests in Vietnam and primary forests in British Columbia, Canada. While BC ecologists have spoken out against wood pellets, and found allies in Vietnam, the biomass issue has proved challenging for Japan’s forest advocates.
- Though historically a small source of wood pellets for Japan, the growing popularity in Indonesia of pellets for both export and domestic use risks tropical forests there being cleared to make way for biomass energy plantations, NGOs warn.
Conservationists look for new ways to fight oil pipelines in southern Mexico
- Pipelines currently under construction in southern Mexico have become controversial because of threats of chemical spills, their contribution to climate change and the alleged lack of consultation with local communities.
- The projects include the Southeast Gateway Gas pipeline and Tuxpan-Tula pipeline, both constructed by the Federal Electricity Commission and the Canadian company TC Energy.
- A 2018 injunction against the Southeast Gateway Gas Pipeline was struck down after a court ruled the project was a matter of national security. Now, local communities and conservation groups are working to develop alliances with international groups to come up with a different legal strategy.
“Game over” for the Amazon forest and global climate if Trump wins? (commentary)
- Both global climate and the Amazon Forest are near tipping points beyond which irreversible processes would lead to unprecedented catastrophes. A second Trump presidency would both boost greenhouse gas emissions and would risk a critical delay in global efforts to avert a runaway greenhouse.
- The various interrelated tipping points represent thresholds where the annual probability of a catastrophic change increases sharply, after which the risk of a disaster at some point in time increases constantly.
- Climate change threatens the Amazon Forest, and if the rainforest collapses it would push global warming past a tipping point in the climate system. This risk would be greatly increased by a second Trump presidency.
- This is a commentary and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.
Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is?
- Burning wood to generate electricity — “biomass energy” — is increasingly being pursued as a renewable replacement for burning coal in nations like the U.K., Japan, and South Korea — even though its emissions aren’t carbon neutral in practice.
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, reporter Justin Catanoso speaks with Rachel Donald about the single largest emitter of CO2 in the U.K., biomass firm Drax, which is trying to open two wood pellet plants in the state of California.
- Catanoso explains how years of investigation helped him uncover a complicated web of public relations messaging that obscures the fact that replanting trees after cutting them down and burning them is not in practice carbon neutral or renewable and severely harms global biodiversity and forests.
- “When those trees get ripped out, that carbon gets released. And that comes before we process this wood and ship it … then we burn it and don't count those emissions. This is just [an] imponderable policy,” he says on this episode.
Indigenous communities make clean energy drive work for, not against, them
- Indigenous peoples have been steadily warning about the impacts of renewable energy development on their lands and communities, but some see a way to harness this trend for the positive.
- Experts say Indigenous communities can play a leading role in the clean energy transition through partnerships that allow them to produce and benefit from renewable energy projects.
- In Canada, policy initiatives like the feed-in tariff program in Ontario province have encouraged Indigenous participation in renewable energy by providing incentives for Indigenous ownership in projects, making them a growing shareholder in Canada’s clean energy transition.
- While there are examples to be taken from Canada’s approach, barriers remain, including limited capacity within communities, access to capital, and governance structures supporting such partnerships.
‘Non-market’ solutions to deforestation need more support, advocates say
- In a report released May 29, three environmental groups called for a shift away from carbon markets and toward “non-market” solutions to deforestation.
- The Paris Agreement has a clause calling for such solutions, which the groups said could include financing for Indigenous groups, payment for ecosystem services, and debt relief.
- The report criticized carbon markets, saying incentives for brokers and project developers are misaligned with global environmental priorities.
In Brazil’s Cerrado, aquifers are losing more water than they can replace
- A new monitoring model combining satellite images with artificial intelligence can identify variations in the volume of Brazilian aquifers.
- The Urucuia, one of the largest aquifers in the Cerrado biome, saw its water volume decrease by 31 cubic kilometers (7.43 cubic miles) over two decades; most of it is in western Bahia, where monoculture plantations are gaining ground.
- According to researchers, Brazil’s groundwaters—which cover 2.84 million square kilometers (1 million square miles) — remain “an unknown resource,” and few tools exist to monitor them.
Are carbon credits another resource-for-cash grab? Interview with Alondra Cerdes Morales & Samuel Nguiffo
- Indigenous and traditional communities around the world are increasingly being recognized for their stewardship of forests.
- That’s led to their lands being seen as prime targets for carbon credit projects, the idea being that the carbon sequestered here can be sold to offset emissions elsewhere.
- While some Indigenous communities have welcomed these projects and the funds they bring in, others say they’re just another example of the monetization of natural resources that’s driving the climate crisis in the first place.
- Mongabay interviewed two leading Indigenous voices on both sides of the debate, who say the issue is a deeply nuanced one that carries implications for Indigenous land rights, culture and sustainability.
Indonesia civil society groups raise concerns over proposed Borneo nuclear reactor
- Indonesia’s largest environmental advocacy group, Walhi, staged demonstrations in Jakarta and West Kalimantan province to raise awareness about a proposed nuclear power plant in West Kalimantan’s Bengkayang district.
- In 2021, a U.S. agency signed a partnership agreement with Indonesia’s state-owned power utility to explore possibilities for a reactor in the province. Survey work is currently being conducted to determine the project’s viability and safety.
- Some environmental groups have questioned the merit of the plan on safety grounds and the availability of alternative renewable sources.
Experts highlight importance of ‘prebunking’ to combat climate disinformation
- For journalists covering climate change and other complex issues, battling disinformation is a major challenge.
- Disinformation experts use a method called “prebunking” to reveal deceptive techniques and guard against manipulation; it’s a proactive approach, rooted in inoculation theory in psychology, which encourages critical thinking in the face of false information.
- However, the method faces cultural obstacles in some countries such as Bhutan; communication professionals say journalists and local communities should receive training so they are informed about climate science and other relevant subjects in order to fight disinformation.
From polling stations to weather stations, the heat is on in India (commentary)
- Parts of India are facing a heatwave, for which the heat in the state of Kerala is a curtain raiser. Kerala experienced its first recorded heatwave amid the ongoing election campaign.
- Heatwaves, droughts and floods do not distinguish along political lines. If the destruction is across board, the mitigating action also has to be across political lines, writes Mongabay-India’s Managing Editor, S. Gopikrishna Warrier, in this commentary.
- Climate change poses economic, social and political challenges, influencing election discourse and policy agendas.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
In largest ever study, Indigenous and local communities report the impacts of climate change
- Indigenous peoples and local communities are reporting a series of tangible and nuanced impacts of climate change, according to a new study.
- The study collected 1,661 firsthand reports of change in sites across all inhabited continents and aggregated the reports into 369 indicators of climate change impacts, including changes in precipitation, plant cultivation and marine ecosystems.
- Existing measures to track climate change impacts are barely able to relate to the diverse and complex ways in which local people experience and observe environmental changes, according to the authors. For instance, instrumental measurements might capture changes in rainfall patterns but miss crucial relationships between climate change awareness, sensitivity and vulnerability.
- This research constitutes the largest global effort by Indigenous peoples and local communities to compile and categorize local observations of climate change and its impacts.
Resource wars and the geopolitics behind climate-fueled conflicts
- Journalist Dahr Jamail joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss the history and present context of resource wars, which he says are putting pressure on the planet's ecological limits.
- Noted for his work as an unembedded journalist during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Jamail says resource-based motives are behind many if not most conflicts today.
- Scientists have warned governments this risks wasting time and money that could otherwise be spent on addressing the looming threats of climate change.
- One estimate puts the total cost of all post-9/11 wars at $8 trillion to the U.S. alone, and the death toll at between 4.5 million and 4.7 million people.
Enviva bankruptcy fallout ripples through biomass industry, U.S. and EU
- In March, Enviva, the world’s largest woody biomass producer for industrial energy, declared bankruptcy. That cataclysmic collapse triggered a rush of political and economic maneuvering in the U.S. (a key wood pellet producing nation), and in Europe (a primary industrial biomass energy user in converted coal plants).
- While Enviva publicly claims it will survive the bankruptcy, a whistleblower in touch with sources inside the company says it will continue failing to meet its wood pellet contract obligations, and that its production facilities — plagued by chronic systemic manufacturing problems — will continue underperforming.
- Enviva and the forestry industry appear now to be lobbying the Biden administration, hoping to tap into millions in renewable energy credits under the Inflation Reduction Act — a move environmentalists are resisting. In March, federal officials made a fact-finding trip to an Enviva facility and local communities who say the firm is a major polluter.
- Meanwhile, some EU nations are scrambling to find new sources of wood pellets to meet their sustainable energy pledges under the Paris agreement. The UK’s Drax, an Enviva pellet user (and also a major pellet producer), is positioning itself to greatly increase its pellet production in the U.S. South and maybe benefit from IRA subsidies.
We need rapid response support for Indigenous peoples in the face of growing extreme weather events (commentary)
- Climate change can sometimes feel distant and intangible, but the increasingly frequent extreme weather events in tropical forest regions like the Amazon and Congo Basin are already having very real-world impacts on Indigenous and other local communities in these areas.
- While Indigenous and grassroots organizations are often the first responders and are best placed to know the needs of their communities, they face huge challenges in accessing heavily bureaucratic disaster response funding.
- This is why we are calling for the establishment of a dedicated fit-for-purpose rapid response fund for them to be able to respond and recover from such events.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Critics fear catastrophic energy crisis as AI is outsourced to Latin America
- AI use is surging astronomically around the globe, requiring vastly more energy to make AI-friendly semiconductor chips and causing a gigantic explosion in data center construction. So large and rapid is this expansion that Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has warned that AI is driving humanity toward a “catastrophic energy crisis.”
- Altman’s solution is an audacious plan to spend up to $7 trillion to produce energy from nuclear fusion. But even if this investment, the biggest in all of history, occurred, its impact wouldn’t be felt until mid-century, and do little to end the energy and water crises triggered by AI manufacture and use, while having huge mining and toxic waste impacts.
- Data centers are mushrooming worldwide to meet AI demand, but particularly in Latin America, seen as strategically located by Big Tech. One of the largest data center hubs is in Querétaro, a Mexican state with high risk of intensifying climate change-induced drought. Farmers are already protesting their risk of losing water access.
- As Latin American protests rise over the environmental and social harm done by AI, activists and academics are calling for a halt to government rubber-stamping of approvals for new data centers, for a full assessment of AI life-cycle impacts, and for new regulations to curb the growing social harm caused by AI.
UN probes controversial forest carbon agreement in Malaysian Borneo
- The government of Sabah state in Malaysian Borneo will continue to move forward with an opaque nature conservation agreement despite concerns raised by the United Nations.
- In a letter, the U.N. calls in question the transparency of the agreement and the state’s approach to the human rights law principle of free, prior and informed consent.
- The agreement was signed by state officials and a representative of a Singaporean company in 2021. Shortly after news of the deal became public, some Indigenous groups in the state said they hadn’t been consulted or informed about the deal covering 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of the state’s forests.
- The U.N. letter was written by a group of “special procedures experts” with mandates established by the U.N. Human Rights Council, including the special rapporteurs on the rights of Indigenous peoples, on human rights and the environment, and on the right to development.
Study on Brazilian heat wave deaths shows gender & racial disparities
- A new study estimates that the deaths of nearly 50,000 people in Brazil in recent decades could be attributed to the occurrence of heat waves, and it points out that these extreme events have become increasingly frequent.
- The paper reveals that Blacks, Browns, females, older adults and those with lower educational levels are the most affected population subgroups, suggesting that the impacts of heat waves are felt unevenly, thus exposing socioeconomic inequalities.
- The researchers analyzed data from 14 metropolitan regions with a population of 74 million people, representing nearly one-third of Brazil’s population.
- This research is important because it joins others in analyzing racial and gender dimensions of the populations most vulnerable to extreme events, the scientific coordinator at Iyaleta Research Association says.
Forest and climate scientists fear Biden delay on mature forest protection
- More than 200 forest ecologists and top climate scientists, including Jim Hansen and Michael Mann, have written the Biden administration urging it to quickly move forward on the president’s commitment to protect old-growth and mature forests on federal lands.
- The scientists made an urgent plea for an immediate moratorium on logging federal forests with trees 100 years old or older, many of which remain vulnerable to logging and dozens of timber sales nationally. They also asked for the establishment of substantive federal management standards to protect those forests.
- Federally owned old-growth and mature forests play an outsized role in storing carbon, offering a vital hedge against escalating climate change.
- At stake are 112.8 million acres (45.6 million hectares) of old-growth and mature forest on federal lands, according to a 2023 U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management inventory — an area larger than California. Less than a quarter of those forests are currently protected against logging.
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.
Climate change, extreme weather & conflict exacerbate global food crisis
- Global food insecurity has risen substantially since pre-pandemic times, exacerbated by extreme weather, climate change, war and conflict.
- What the U.N. World Food Program calls “a hunger crisis of unprecedented proportions” plays out differently around the world.
- In this story, three of Mongabay’s Y. Eva Tan Conservation Reporting Fellows detail the local situation in their region – from rising inflation and flooding in Nigeria to diminished local food production in Suriname and the environmental and socioeconomic effects of commercial food production in Brazil.
- “If we do not redouble and better target our efforts, our goal of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030 will remain out of reach,” write the authors of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 2023 report on global food security and nutrition.
Can ‘degrowth’ solve our ecological, social & economic problems?
- Economist Tim Parrique speaks with co-host Rachel Donald on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast about the economic model known as “degrowth.”
- According to the Lund University researcher, degrowth originated in France in 2002 to address the current “limitless growth” economic model that stretches the ecological limits of the planet — the so-called Planetary Boundaries — unsustainably.
- The degrowth concept seeks to provide sustainable development pathways for low- and middle-income countries while stabilizing quality of life in wealthy nations, via producing and consuming less in the latter.
- Recent research indicates that the United States wastes 65% of its economic output on things that do not provide essential or quality-of-life needs, bolstering the argument that the economy could be strongly scaled back to decrease its impact on the environment.
Study: Burning wood pellets for energy endangers local communities’ health
- A new peer-reviewed study quantifies broadly for the first time the air pollution and public health impacts across the United States from both manufacturing wood pellets and burning them for energy.
- The study, said to be far more extensive than any research by the US Environmental Protection Agency, finds that U.S. biomass-burning facilities emit on average 2.8 times the amount of pollution of power plants that burn coal, oil or natural gas.
- Wood pellet manufacturers maintain that the harvest of forest wood for the purpose of making wood pellets to burn for energy remains a climate-friendly solution. But a host of studies undermine those claims.
- The Southern Environmental Law Center says the study provides new and rigorous science that could become a useful tool in arguing against the expansion of the wood pellet industry in the United States.
Markets and forests: 7 takeaways from our series on the forest carbon trade
This is the wrap-up article for our five-part series on forest carbon credits and the voluntary market. Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and Part Five. Mongabay recently published a five-part series on the carbon trade and its use as a tool to address climate change. The exchange of carbon credits, typically […]
The future of forest carbon credits and voluntary markets
- Observers predicted that 2023 would be a “make-or-break” year for voluntary carbon markets and “an inflection point” for their role in addressing climate change and global deforestation.
- Amid criticisms around carbon accounting, carbon neutrality claims, and issues with forest communities, governance bodies say they’ve worked to increase consistency and “integrity” for the voluntary carbon market and specifically the forest conservation strategy known as REDD+.
- Concerns remain from a variety of observers, including those who say the focus of credit-buying companies should be on eliminating their carbon emissions from across their entire suite of operations.
- But proponents of markets say that while decarbonizing is absolutely necessary to minimize the rise in global temperatures, the carbon trade allows for the mitigation of pesky residual emissions that it’s either impossible or too expensive to get rid of at this point.
Leveraging the hypothetical: The uncertain world of carbon credit calculations
- Criticisms of the voluntary carbon trade and forest conservation strategies like REDD+ have centered largely on the carbon accounting methods used to calculate credits.
- Each credit traded on voluntary markets is supposed to represent the reduction, avoidance or removal of 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
- But recent science has raised questions about how REDD+ and other types of project figure out the number of tons of emissions saved.
- The process relies on establishing a baseline rate of deforestation against which a project’s emissions-reducing or -removing success is measured. But critics say the process can be faulty and that the conflicts of interest of the parties involved in setting the baseline have not been addressed until recently.
‘Cowboys’ and intermediaries thrive in Wild West of the carbon market
- A host of different players have crowded into the voluntary carbon trade as its value has grown.
- Motivated by the potential for profit, a concern for climate change or some combination of the two, these companies and organizations link the credits generated by projects, such as those that fit in the forest conservation scheme known as REDD+, with buyers, often companies and individuals in the Global North looking to compensate for their climate impacts.
- Some groups say they help shoulder the burden of tasks like marketing so that the communities and project staff on the ground can focus on the “change-making work.”
- But others, sometimes called “carbon cowboys,” seem interested in the money to be made from trading carbon. Some have faced allegations that they don’t bring the necessary expertise to their work, or that they don’t adequately inform local communities about the intended projects and the potential pitfalls.
Do carbon credits really help communities that keep forests standing?
- Communities play a critical role in REDD+, a forest conservation strategy that aims to reduce emissions that can be sold as credits to raise money for forest protection.
- REDD+ projects often include components for the benefit of the communities, such as a focus on alternative livelihoods and provision of health care and education.
- But reports that REDD+ communities have faced abuses and rights violations have emerged recently in connection with high-profile REDD+ projects.
- Several Indigenous-led organizations have voiced their support for REDD+ because, they say, it provides an avenue to fund their climate-related conservation work, while other groups say it’s not the answer.
‘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.”
Forest carbon credits and the voluntary market: A solution or a distraction?
- Voluntary carbon markets and forest carbon credits have faced widespread criticism that reached a zenith in 2023.
- Media reports detailed concerns about their dubious climate benefits, respect for communities and land rights, and their use by Global North companies to avoid the difficult task of decarbonizing their operations.
- Supporters of forest conservation strategies like REDD+ say that they can and should play a role, as healthy forests can absorb a significant amount of atmospheric carbon. They also say REDD+ brings much-needed funding to protect and restore forests, not only for their carbon, but because of the biodiversity and communities they support.
- As 2023 draws to a close, and with it the U.N. climate conference in Dubai (COP28), proponents of the voluntary carbon trade are working to increase the “integrity” of markets in ways they hope make them a viable tool to deal with climate change.
Detailed NASA analysis finds Earth and Amazon in deep climate trouble
- A NASA study analyzed the future action of six climate variables in all the world’s regions — air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, short- and long wave solar radiation and wind speed — if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, which could occur by 2040 if emissions keep rising at current rates.
- The authors used advanced statistical techniques to downscale climate models at a resolution eight times greater than most previous models. This allows for identification of climate variations on a daily basis across the world, something essential since climate impacts unfold gradually, rather than as upheavals.
- The study found that the Amazon will be the area with the greatest reduction in relative humidity. An analysis by the Brazilian space agency INPE showed that some parts of this rainforest biome have already reached maximum temperatures of more than 3°C (5.4°F) over 1960 levels.
- Regardless of warnings from science and Indigenous peoples of the existential threat posed by climate change, the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, largely with government consent, plan to further expand fossil fuel exploration, says a U.N. report. That’s despite a COP28 climate summit deal “transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
Suriname preparing to clear Amazon for agriculture, documents suggest
- The government of Suriname is weighing a series of land deals that would allow the Ministry of Agriculture and a group of private entities to carry out agriculture, livestock and aquaculture activities on hundreds of thousands of hectares of land, most of it Amazon Rainforest.
- The Amazon covers 93% of Suriname’s total land area, making agricultural development an especially sensitive issue in the country.
- Five private entities are involved in the deals, with an interest in commodities like soy and cashews.
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.
Earth on ‘devastating trajectory’ to global tipping points. But there’s hope.
- A new report on global tipping points warns of imminent serious disruptions in major Earth systems if global temperatures continue rising due to human-induced climate change.
- It suggests that current levels of warming will likely push five major Earth systems past their tipping points, and another three will follow if global temperatures exceed 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) of warming above preindustrial levels.
- However, along with these dire warnings, the report also notes the launch of positive tipping points within society, such as the rollout of renewable energy technologies.
- Other reports also describe the urgency to enact positive change as humanity continues pumping carbon into the atmosphere, wreaking havoc on the environment.
A lithium ‘gold mine’ is buried under one of Europe’s last heritage farming systems
- The hilly Barroso region of northern Portugal has been recognized for its centuries-old and “globally important” farming system that combines agricultural biodiversity, resilient ecosystems and a valuable cultural heritage.
- But the region is also home to what’s believed to be one of Europe’s largest deposits of lithium, an element that will be critical in the ongoing clean energy transition, with EU and Portuguese officials saying mining projects in Barroso will be key to securing domestic supplies of the metal.
- Residents and environmental activists, however, warn the mines will scar the landscape, contaminate the water, erode the soil, disrupt local livelihoods, and deprive them of communal lands.
- Yet even as they continue to oppose the planned mines, the state can declare lithium projects to be of strategic public interest to force residents to lease the lands needed for the mining projects.
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.
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.
Can impermanent carbon credits really offset forever emissions?
- A team of researchers has put forth a method that they say makes it possible to compare credits for carbon from forests projects against more permanent storage solutions.
- The carbon emissions that these credits are meant to offset can last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the atmosphere. Forests, by comparison, are subject to fires, disease and deforestation, meaning that their climate benefits can be more temporary than longer-term solutions, such as direct air carbon capture.
- By “discounting” the credits from forest carbon projects based on conservative upfront estimates of how long a forest will safeguard or sequester carbon, the authors say that “like-for-like” comparisons would be possible.
- The team published their work Oct. 30 in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Enviva, the world’s largest biomass energy company, is near collapse
- The forest biomass energy industry took a major hit this month, as Enviva, the world’s largest producer of wood pellets — burned in former coal power plants to make energy on an industrial scale — saw catastrophic third quarter losses. Enviva’s stock tanked, its CEO was replaced and the company seems near collapse.
- Founded in 2004, Enviva harvests forests in the U.S. Southeast, with its 10 plants key providers of wood pellets to large power plants in the EU, U.K., Japan and South Korea — nations that use a scientifically suspect carbon accounting loophole to count the burning of forest wood as a renewable resource.
- A former manager and whistleblower at Enviva told Mongabay in 2022 that the company’s green claims were fraudulent. Last week, he said that much of Enviva’s downfall is based on its cheaply built factories equipped with faulty machinery and on large-scale fiscal miscalculations regarding wood-procurement costs.
- How the firm’s downfall will impact the global biomass for energy market, and worldwide pellet supply, is unknown. European and Asian nations rely on Enviva pellets to supply their power plants and to meet climate change goals, with the burning of forests to make energy erroneously claimed as producing zero emissions.
Carbon counting without the guesswork: Q&A with FCL proponent Jerry Toth
- REDD+ projects aim to incentivize efforts that maintain standing forests, rather than cutting them down, by providing payments based on the carbon emissions kept out of the atmosphere.
- But REDD+, which is short for “reducing deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries,” has been widely criticized lately, in part because skeptics say that the accounting methods are open to manipulation by developers aiming to sell more credits — credits that many not represent a verifiable climate benefit.
- One alternative is the forest carbon ledger (FCL). FCL seeks to value the total amount of carbon in a forest and would provide payments based on how well that storage is maintained over time.
- Mongabay spoke with Jerry Toth, co-founder of a conservation group working to protect and restore the last remaining remnants of the Pacific Forest of Ecuador called the Third Millennium Alliance (TMA). Toth said FCL may provide a more robust alternative to REDD+ carbon accounting.
Forests hold massive carbon storage potential — if we cut emissions
- A new study finds forests could potentially store 226 billion metric tons of carbon if protected and restored, or about one-third of excess emissions since industrialization.
- Nearly two-thirds of this potential lies in conserving and letting existing forests mature.
- The authors say that restoring deforested areas through community-driven approaches such as agroforestry and payments for ecosystem services is essential.
- Planting trees can’t replace cutting fossil fuel emissions, as climate change threatens forests’ carbon uptake.
The Cloud vs. drought: Water hog data centers threaten Latin America, critics say
- Droughts in Uruguay and Chile have led residents to question the wisdom of their governments allowing transnational internet technology companies to build water-hungry mega-data centers there.
- As servers process data, they need lot of water to keep them cool. But if demand grows as expected, the world will need 10-20 times more data centers by 2035, and they’ll be using far more water. Many will likely be built in economically and water-challenged nations already facing climate change-intensified droughts.
- Latin American communities fear that this “data colonialism” will consume water they desperately need for drinking and agriculture, and are critical of their governments for giving priority treatment to transnational tech giants like Google and Microsoft, while putting people’s access to a basic human necessity at risk.
- Surging digital data use by 2030 may cause each of us in the developed world to have a “digital doppelganger,” with our internet use consuming as much water as our physical bodies. But much of the stored data is “junk.” Critics urge that nations insist on tougher regulations for transnational companies, easing the crisis.
Critical questions remain as carbon credit deal in Sabah presses forward
- Details around a secretive “nature conservation agreement” signed in 2021 between a Singaporean company and the government of Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, remain elusive.
- Several internationally known companies that work in climate mitigation have said they’re not affiliated with the agreement, despite implications by Jeffrey Kitingan, a deputy chief minister and the deal’s primary backer, that they are involved.
- Kitingan also revealed that Hoch Standard, the Singaporean company, is controlled by a single director through another company registered in the British Virgin Islands.
- Kitingan said the project is moving forward, leading to renewed calls from civil society, Indigenous and research organizations for the release of more details about the agreement.
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.
How nonprofit journalism revealed many problems with the UN’s climate neutrality claims
- Despite claiming to be 95% “climate neutral,” the United Nations — a long-standing and vocal proponent of climate action — isn’t, a new report has found.
- Mongabay teamed up with reporters at The New Humanitarian in a yearlong investigation spanning multiple countries to investigate the U.N.’s claims.
- The investigation found that many projects that issue carbon credits to the U.N. were linked to environmental damage or displacement, and 2.7 million out of 6.6 million credits were linked to wind or hydropower — which experts say don’t represent true emissions reductions.
- Investigative reporter Jacob Goldberg from The New Humanitarian joins the podcast to explain how the team arrived at these surprising findings.
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.
On Jakarta’s vanishing shoreline, climate change seen abetting child marriages
- Marriage before the age of 18 is classified as a form of gender-based violence by the United Nations, but is commonly practiced in low-income communities to mitigate household economic pressures.
- On Jakarta’s northern coastline, child marriage is common in fishing communities responding to inflationary pressures and declining stocks of fish in near-shore waters.
- Janah, now 23, fears she lacks the agency to break a cycle that saw her married at the age of 16.
Indigenous peoples undersupported on frontline of hotter, drier, fiery world
- It’s official: This has been the warmest June-July-August on record, and much attention has focused on the urgent need to achieve climate resilience in impacted urban areas. But how are rural Indigenous communities around the world living with these new extremes?
- Indigenous peoples — from Africa to the Arctic to Central America — report unprecedented heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfires, extremes that are impacting the wildlife they hunt, the plants they gather, crops they grow, livestock they raise, and their very survival.
- Given that many Indigenous peoples live close to the land and depend directly on local resources, they’re especially vulnerable to the massive changes now sweeping our planet.
- But while Indigenous peoples are considered by many researchers and activists to be Earth’s best land stewards, their communities aren’t receiving the funding or resources necessary to adapt to a hotter, drier, stormier, fiery world, often due to the lack of access to their traditional lands.
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.
REDD+ projects falling far short of claimed carbon cuts, study finds
- New research reveals that forest carbon credits are not offsetting the vast majority of emissions that providers claim.
- A team of scientists looked at 26 REDD+ deforestation-prevention project sites on three continents, leading to questions about how the developers calculate the impact of their projects.
- The researchers found that about 94% of the credits from these projects don’t represent real reductions in carbon emissions.
- Verra, the world’s largest carbon credit certifier, said the methods the team used to arrive at that conclusion were flawed, but also added it was in the process of overhauling its own REDD+ standards.
A tale of two biomes as deforestation surges in Cerrado but wanes in Amazon
- Brazil has managed to bring down spiraling rates of deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest in the first half of this year, but the neighboring Cerrado savanna has seen a wave of environmental destruction during the same period.
- The country’s second largest biome, the Cerrado is seeing its highest deforestation figure since 2018; satellite data show 3,281 hectares (8,107 acres) per day have been cleared since the start of the year through Aug. 4.
- The leading causes of the rising deforestation rates in the Cerrado are a disparity in conservation efforts across Brazil’s biomes, an unsustainable economic model that prioritizes monocultures, and escalating levels of illegal native vegetation clearing.
- Given the importance of the Cerrado to replenish watersheds across the continent, its destruction would affect not just Brazil but South America too, experts warn, adding that the region’s water, food and energy security are at stake.
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.
‘The deep sea is vital to protect the ocean’: Q&A with France’s Hervé Berville
- In November, France took a strong position on deep-sea mining by declaring that this future activity should be banned in international waters. The nation has also banned it from its national waters.
- Berville also said he wants to make sure there is a “coalition in favor of a principle of precaution or moratorium.”
- Member states of the International Seabed Authority, the UN-associated mining regulator, recently agreed to push back its timeline for finalizing rules that would enable deep-sea mining to start.
- Mongabay’s Elizabeth Claire Alberts interviewed Berville at the French Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica, during the meeting of the ISA assembly in July.
Nuclear pioneers press ahead with plans for Indonesia island frontier
- PT ThorCon Power Indonesia is moving closer toward building an experimental nuclear reactor on a remote island in a strait bisecting the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.
- The company says the electricity generated by a thorium-powered reactor could generate electricity at 3 cents per kilowatt hour while emitting close to zero greenhouse gases.
- Some worry the project could threaten delicate marine ecosystems on an island that was, until recently, protected as a conservation area.
Drought cycles erode tropics’ ability to absorb CO₂, study finds
- A recent study finds that tropical carbon sinks have become increasingly vulnerable to water scarcity since 1960, and are consequently less able to absorb carbon dioxide.
- These findings suggest that tropical ecosystems are less resilient to climate change than previously thought.
- While the study doesn’t necessarily make projections for the future, the findings suggest that an acceleration of climate change, which is very likely to bring more drought, could further limit the ability of tropical ecosystems to absorb carbon dioxide, which, in turn, would worsen climate change.
Can Spain keep the rising sea from washing away a critical delta?
- One of Europe’s most important deltas, a vital wildlife sanctuary and economic engine, is facing a myriad of threats stemming from climate change and water management.
- Rising sea levels and stronger storms are washing away the very sediment that constitutes the Ebro Delta and sending saltwater far inland.
- The government plan to bolster the delta relies heavily on trucking sediment to its exposed outer banks, but it’s a stop-gap measure until researchers can develop a more sustainable long-term solution.
- The question is: Can they find one in time?
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.
Financial downturn at Enviva could mean trouble for biomass energy
- Enviva harvests trees to manufacture millions of tons of wood pellets annually in the U.S. Southeast to supply the biomass energy demands of nations in the EU, U.K., Japan and South Korea. But a host of operational, legal and public relations problems have led to greater-than-expected revenue losses and a drastic fall in stock price.
- These concerns (some of which Mongabay has reported on in the past) raise questions as to whether Enviva can double its projected pellet production from 6 million metric tons annually today to 13 million metric tons by 2027 to meet its contract obligations. Enviva says its problems pose only short-term setbacks.
- While it isn’t possible to connect Enviva’s stock decline, or the company’s downgrading by a top credit ratings agency, with any specific cause, some analysts say that investors may be getting educated as to the financial risk they could face if the EU or other large-scale biomass users eliminate their subsidies to the industry.
- “The financial risk is there, maybe not today, but in the future, where countries may say, ‘This massive [biomass carbon accounting] loophole is making the climate crisis worse. Let’s close it.’ When that happens, Enviva and all other pellet manufacturers are out of business,” and investors would suffer, according to one industry expert.
Climate change is no joke for Australians, says award-winning comedian Dan Ilic
- Despite citizens voting out the Scott Morrison-led government of Australia in 2022, Dan Ilic says there’s still a lot of talk around climate change policy with not enough action to meet national climate targets.
- Known widely for his epic billboards appearing in New York’s Times Square during the COP26 climate summit satirizing Australia’s lack of seriousness at the conference, Ilic is host of the award-winning Australian comedy/climate-focused podcast “A Rational Fear” and spoke with the Mongabay Newscast in Sydney about the landscape surrounding climate policy in the country today.
- He also shares his thoughts on victories for Indigenous communities in the Tiwi Islands and the Galilee Basin, both in Australia, where massive fossil fuel proposals were recently blocked.
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.
The U.S. has cataloged its forests. Now comes the hard part: Protecting them
- In April 2022, President Biden instructed the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to do a thorough inventory of forested public lands as a part of his climate mitigation strategies to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 50% by 2030.
- The new study, released April 20, identifies a total of 112.8 million acres of mature and old-growth forests on federal lands across all 50 states, an area larger than the state of California.
- Forest advocates largely heralded the new inventory, so long as it serves as a road map for putting those millions of acres off-limits to logging so the forests and their biodiversity can remain intact to fight climate change.
- The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have long supported logging for timber and other wood products on the majority of lands they oversee. During a 60-day public comment period, forest advocates will argue that all forests in the inventory be fully protected from logging.
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.
EU parliament passes historic law forcing companies to track deforestation
- A law passed by the European Parliament requires companies working in cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy and wood to demonstrate their products aren’t sourced to deforested land or land with forest degradation, or else risk heavy fines.
- Companies will have to submit “due diligence” reports showing they took proper steps to verify the origins of their products while also complying with countries’ local regulations on human rights and impacts on Indigenous people.
- Critics say the legislation may still lack the teeth to prevent deforestation, especially if political pressure from traders forces EU countries to overlook their noncompliance with the new regulations.
Mexico kills climate change fund, casting doubt on future environmental spending
- Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled against an injunction that was filed to revive the country’s Climate Change Fund, which was designed to channel public and private funding into actions to fight climate change.
- The fund helped support local and national projects for reducing deforestation rates, restoring degraded landscapes, developing sustainable agricultural practices and investing in renewable energy, among other things.
- Without the fund, it’s unclear how much of Mexico’s national budget will be allocated to climate-related issues, since spending is discretionary.
CAPS, new gas megaproject, aims to power Central Africa, but at what cost, critics ask
- The Central Africa Business Energy Forum proposes to build 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) of pipelines linking oil and gas resources across 11 countries in Central Africa.
- The forum says gas in particular should play a key role in developing the region’s economy.
- Seven countries have so far signed a memorandum of understanding, and a feasibility study for a first phase is expected by the end of 2023
- Environmentalists say the project is a mistake that will exacerbate the climate crisis and fail to benefit local populations.
EU woody biomass final policy continues threatening forests and climate: Critics
- The final revisions to the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) were reached March 30, with nearly all environmental activists (who had lobbied intensely for changes for years), responding negatively to RED policies in support of forest biomass.
- The policy revisions will continue allowing the burning of the world’s forests to make energy, with emissions from EU powerplant smokestacks not counted. Wood pellets will still be classified as renewable energy on par with zero-carbon wind and solar, even though biomass releases more CO2 than coal, per unit of energy produced.
- While most forest advocates agree that the RED revisions made some small concessions to the environment, they say the biomass regulations include gaping loopholes that will allow the EU to heavily subsidize wood pellets made from trees harvested in Europe, the U.S. and Canada.
- Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet producer, wrote that it “welcomes [the] REDIII agreement and continued recognition of biomass as 100% renewable.” Forest advocates say they will now shift their campaign strategy against biomass burning from focusing on the EU as a whole to efforts made in individual European nations.
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.
Japan, EU & UK biomass emissions standards fall short and are full of loopholes, critics say
- A global biomass boom continues unabated with Japan, the European Union and United Kingdom among those governments providing large subsidies for the burning of wood to make energy.
- All three governments have developed life cycle greenhouse gas emission standards for biomass power plants, but forest advocates say those standards rely on multiple loopholes to avoid any real carbon savings.
- Those loopholes include not counting carbon discharged from power plant smokestacks, the biggest source of emissions in the biomass life cycle, while continuing to erroneously count biomass as carbon neutral, according to industry critics.
- Another loophole grandfathers in existing biomass power plants, not requiring them to meet new greenhouse gas life cycle emission standards and, in Japan’s case, asking those plants to count but not reduce emissions.
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.
Young Indonesian climate leaders demand safe future in new book
- “Menjalin Ikhtiar Merawat Bumi: Memoirs by Climate Reality Leaders,” is edited by Amanda Katili Niode, who served as a special adviser to Indonesia’s environment minister in the 2000s.
- Those who have written essays for the book are “climate reality leaders,” meaning they participated in one of the three-day workshops organized by global nonprofit The Climate Reality Project on finding solutions to the climate crisis.
- More than 45,000 climate reality leaders are spread across 190 countries and territories. Indonesia has more than 1,000.
The EU banned Russian wood pellet imports; South Korea took them all
- In July 2022, the European Union responded to the war in Ukraine by banning the import of Russian woody biomass used to make energy. At roughly the same time, South Korea drastically upped its Russian woody biomass imports, becoming the sole official importer of Russian wood pellets for industrial energy use.
- The EU has reportedly replaced its Russian supplies of woody biomass by importing wood pellets from the U.S. and Eastern Europe. But others say that trade data and paper trails indicate a violation of the EU ban, with laundered Russian wood pellets possibly flowing through Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to multiple EU nations.
- EU pellet imports from Turkey grew from 2,200 tons monthly last spring to 16,000 tons in September. Imports from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan reportedly rose too, even though neither has a forest industry. A large body of scientific evidence shows that woody biomass adds significantly to climate change and biodiversity loss.
- Enviva, the world’s largest woody biomass producer, which operates chiefly in the Southeast U.S., may be the big winner in the Russian biomass ban. Since the war began, Enviva has upped EU shipments, and also announced a 10-year contract with an unnamed European customer to deliver 800,000 metric tons of pellets annually by 2027.
Biodiversity, human rights safeguards crucial to nature-based solutions: Critics
- Nature-based solutions (NbS), a hotly debated concept, gained significant political traction throughout 2022, even as challenges and concerns over the failure to implement biodiversity and human rights safeguards in current and future NbS projects have increased among Indigenous peoples and NGOs.
- Recent global policy instruments have recognized NbS, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted in December 2022, and the U.N. climate summit cover decision agreed to in November. In March 2022, the U.N. Environment Assembly adopted a multilaterally agreed definition of NbS.
- Despite NbS policy advances, skepticism continues to swirl around the potential for misuse and abuse of nature-based solutions as a greenwashing mechanism by businesses to offset their ongoing carbon emissions, but without curbing them, and as a market mechanism to commodify and put a price tag on nature.
- Experts emphasize that there can be no successful nature-based solutions without the preservation of biodiversity and human rights. Therefore, projects that are a detriment to conservation, and involve monocultures, land grabs or human rights abuses, should be disqualified and rejected for not meeting the NbS definition.
From declining deforestation to quitting coal, Indonesia marks a pivotal 2022
- 2022 saw a continued decline in deforestation in Indonesia, as well as financing deals for forest conservation and phasing out fossil fuels, and a scramble to keep up with changing EU timber regulations.
- The year also saw the passage of controversial amendments to Indonesia’s criminal code, friction between the government and researchers, and increasing concerns about the environmental cost of the country’s nickel boom for electric vehicle batteries.
- Here are some of the top environment stories and trends of 2022 from one of the world’s most important tropical forest countries.
The Netherlands to stop paying subsidies to ‘untruthful’ biomass firms
- On December 5, 2022, Mongabay featured a story by journalist Justin Catanoso in which the first ever biomass industry insider came forward as a whistleblower and discredited the green sustainability claims made by Enviva — the world’s largest maker of wood pellets for energy.
- On December 15, citing that article and recent scientific evidence that Enviva contributes to deforestation in the U.S. Southeast, The Netherlands decided it will stop paying subsidies to any biomass company found to be untruthful in its wood pellet production methods. The Netherlands currently offers sizable subsidies to Enviva.
- Precisely how The Netherlands decision will impact biomass subsidies in the long run is unclear. Nor is it known how this decision may impact the EU’s Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) certification process, which critics say is inherently weak and unreliable.
- Also in December, Australia became the first major nation to reverse its designation of forest biomass as a renewable energy source, raising questions about how parties to the UN Paris agreement can support opposing renewable energy policies, especially regarding biomass — a problem for COP28 negotiators to resolve in 2023.
Australia rejects forest biomass in first blow to wood pellet industry
- On December 15, Australia became the first major economy worldwide to reverse itself on its renewable classification for woody biomass burned to make energy. Under the nation’s new policy, wood harvested from native forests and burned to produce energy cannot be classified as a renewable energy source.
- That decision comes as the U.S., Canada, Eastern Europe, Vietnam and other forest nations continue gearing up to harvest their woodlands to make massive amounts of wood pellets, in order to supply biomass-fired power plants in the UK, EU, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.
- In the EU, forest advocates continue with last-ditch lobbying efforts to have woody biomass stripped of its renewable energy designation, and end the ongoing practice of providing large subsidies to the biomass industry for wood pellets.
- Science has found that biomass burning releases more carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy produced than coal. Australia’s decision, and the EU’s continued commitment to biomass, creates a conundrum for policymakers: How can major economies have different definitions of renewable energy when it comes to biomass?
Brazil’s Pantanal is at risk of collapse, scientists say
- Though the Pantanal is 93% privately owned, this vast Brazilian tropical wetland remains a stronghold for jaguars and untold other species, and connects animals with the Amazon, Cerrado and other biomes.
- A confluence of human activities in Brazil and worldwide — including deforestation and climate change — are heating and drying this watery landscape, threatening the entire ecosystem with drought, wildfires and habitat loss.
- Now, a plan to dredge and straighten the Paraguay River that feeds the Pantanal could serve as the death knell for this vast wetland ecosystem.
- There’s hope that president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who campaigned on an environmental platform, will initiate stewardship that stops Pantanal deforestation and the waterway project, helping curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Protecting wetlands is key to Indonesia hitting its climate goals, study says
- Fully protecting Indonesia’s remaining peatlands and mangroves is crucial in meeting its greenhouse gas reduction goals under the Paris climate agreement, a new study says.
- Protecting these existing wetland ecosystems, including extending prevailing protections to secondary forests, has a greater climate mitigation potential than restoring degraded ecosystems, the study authors say.
- Under its Paris Agreement commitment, Indonesia has pledged to cut emissions by 31.8% by 2030 against the business-as-usual trajectory, or 43.2% with support from the international community.
- Most of the country’s emissions come from the forestry and other land use sector, but this sector receives scant climate funding for decarbonization compared to the transportation and electricity sectors.
Indonesia’s mangrove revival hindered by conflicting policies
- Indonesia’s president showcased a new conservation area to G20 leaders as an example of the country’s efforts to combat climate change.
- The country aims to add 33 more sites next year and rehabilitate 600,000 hectares of mangroves by 2024.
- Only about one-third of the country’s mangroves are in good condition, and conflicting development policies stand in the way of future conservation efforts, according to the nation’s largest environmental group.
As EU finalizes renewable energy plan, forest advocates condemn biomass
- The EU hopes to finalize its revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED) soon, even as forest advocates urge last minute changes to significantly cut the use of woody biomass for energy and make deep reductions in EU subsidies to the wood pellet industry.
- Forest advocates are citing a new commentary published in Nature that argues that the EU’s continued expansive commitment to burning forest biomass for energy will endanger forests in the EU, the U.S. and elsewhere — resulting in a major loss in global carbon storage and biodiversity.
- Changing RED to meet forest advocate recommendations seems unlikely at this point, with some policymakers arguing that woody biomass use is the only way the EU can achieve its 2030 coal reduction target. The woody biomass industry is pressing for sustained biomass use and for continued subsidies.
- Russia’s threat of reducing or cutting off its supply of natural gas to the EU this winter is also at issue. In the EU today, 60% of energy classified as renewable comes from burning biomass. If RED is approved as drafted, bioenergy use is projected to double between 2015 and 2050, according to the just published Nature commentary.
Whistleblower: Enviva claim of ‘being good for the planet… all nonsense’
- Enviva is the largest maker of wood pellets burned for energy in the world. The company has, from its inception, touted its green credentials.
- It says it doesn’t use big, whole trees, but only uses wood waste, “tops, limbs, thinnings, and/or low-value smaller trees” in the production of woody biomass burned in former coal power plants in the U.K., EU and Asia. It says it only sources wood from areas where trees will be regrown, and that it doesn’t contribute to deforestation.
- However, in first-ever interviews with a whistleblower who worked within Enviva plant management, Mongabay contributor Justin Catanoso has been told that all of these Enviva claims are false. In addition, a major recent scientific study finds that Enviva is contributing to deforestation in the U.S. Southeast.
- Statements by the whistleblower have been confirmed by Mongabay’s own observations at a November 2022 forest clear-cut in North Carolina, and by NGO photo documentation. These findings are especially important now, as the EU considers the future of forest biomass burning as a “sustainable” form of renewable energy.
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.
France’s Macron joins growing chorus calling for deep-sea mining ban
- On Nov. 8, French President Emmanuel Macron became the first head of state to call for a complete ban on deep-sea mining, an activity that would extract industrial quantities of minerals from the seabed in international waters in the near future.
- Delegates of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) are currently meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, to discuss deep-sea mining regulations, and many member states are using this forum to express their concerns about mining going ahead.
- In June 2021, the Pacific island nation of Nauru, which sponsors Nauru Ocean Resources Inc. (NORI), a subsidiary of Canadian firm The Metals Company (TMC), triggered a “two-year rule” that could force the ISA to allow mining to go ahead in two years with whatever regulations are in place.
Is natural gas the solution to Africa’s energy needs? New research says no.
- Three reports released by the African Climate Foundation analyzed the potential impact of natural gas extraction on the economies of a series of countries in Africa.
- Research for the reports was carried out in partnership with Willis Towers Watson, a British-American insurance risk adviser.
- The groups found that a global transition away from fossil fuels could lead LNG investments in Mozambique, Tanzania and elsewhere to become a drain on public finances in the long term.
- The reports suggested that as the cost of renewable energy declines, LNG-producing governments will also come under pressure to pay expensive, inefficient subsidies for domestic gas consumption.
There is not enough land to meet many of the world’s climate pledges, says new study
- National climate pledges would collectively require 1.2 billion hectares (about 3 billion acres) of land, researchers have found in a new study, The Land Gap Report.
- More than half of this land is already currently used for something else. This demand for land will put pressure on ecosystems, Indigenous lands, smallholder farmers and food security.
- Protecting existing forests and securing Indigenous and community land rights are more effective than carbon capture plans requiring land-use change, including reforestation.
- Indigenous leaders are calling for updates and transparency at the upcoming U.N. climate conference, COP27, concerning funding pledges at last year’s conference.
Conservatives tighten grip on Brazil Congress, hampering environmental agenda
- Brazilians elected a more conservative Congress in the Oct. 2 ballot, with supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro and the agribusiness lobby winning seats in both the lower and upper houses.
- Experts say that if former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wins the runoff presidential vote on Oct. 30, he could curtail some of the pressure from the agribusiness caucus and reverse the past four years of destructive policies for the Amazon.
- Two Indigenous women and former environment minister Marina Silva are expected to lead the opposition against the agribusiness, mining and logging agenda in Congress, after winning seats in the lower house.
Cleaning up our own backyard: Racism, speciesism and the environmental crises (commentary)
- While environmental crises are predominantly caused by the West and industrialized countries, vulnerable groups across the whole world are carrying a disproportionately large burden while they lack the power over decisions that affect their lives. This has been coined environmental racism.
- Entangled with racism is the problem of speciesism, as there’s a clear classification of animals. Exotic and charismatic wild animals are given a higher precedence, and both humans and other animals make way for their conservation.
- The speciesist and racist tendencies get intertwined and become apparent in our dealing with environmental issues. These have been influencing policies, laws, conservation efforts, and funds.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
EU votes to keep woody biomass as renewable energy, ignores climate risk
- Despite growing public opposition, the European Parliament voted this week not to declassify woody biomass as renewable energy. The forest biomass industry quickly declared victory, while supporters of native forests announced their plan to continue the fight — even in court.
- The EU likely renewed its commitment to burning wood as a source of energy largely to help meet its target of cutting EU carbon emissions by 55% by 2030, something it likely couldn’t achieve without woody biomass (which a carbon accounting loophole counts as carbon neutral, equivalent to wind and solar power).
- Scientific evidence shows that burning wood pellets is a major source of carbon at the smokestack. The European Union also likely continued its embrace of biomass this week as it looks down the barrel of Russian threats to cut off natural gas supplies this winter over the EU’s opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- While the EU decision maintains that whole trees won’t be subsidized for burning, that natural forests will be protected, and that there will be limits to logging old growth and primary forests, these provisions include legal loopholes and were not backed with monitoring or enforcement commitments. No dates were set for biomass burning phase down.
British Columbia delays promised protections as old growth keeps falling
- Two years after British Columbia’s majority party promised a logging “paradigm shift” to conserve what’s left of the province’s tall old growth forests, Mongabay observed dramatic clear cutting on Vancouver Island in forests slated for protection. Old growth harvesting continues across British Columbia (BC) today.
- The BC minister of land management told Mongabay that the government, in partnership with First Nations, has deferred logging on 1.7 million hectares of old growth forests. But critics contest those numbers and note that much of these deferrals are for scubby alpine forests that aren’t in danger of being logged.
- First Nation leaders have been tasked by the government to determine which old growth forests to protect. This presents Indigenous communities with an economic conundrum, as many tribes will lose much-needed logging revenue if they choose conservation.
- Today, BC has many second-growth tree plantations that give the appearance of vast wooded expanses. But as Mongabay observed in July, these tree farms are “ecological deserts” that store less carbon than tall tree old growth and harbor little biodiversity as BC experiences intensifying climate impacts partly due to decades of overlogging.
Warming has set off ‘dangerous’ tipping points. More will fall with the heat
- A new study warns that multiple tipping points will be triggered if global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F) above pre-industrial levels.
- The researchers say humanity is already at risk of passing five tipping points, including the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets and the mass die-off of coral reefs, at the current levels of warming, and that the risk will increase with each 0.1°C (0.18°F) of warming.
- While many nations have committed to the 2015 Paris Agreement, which stipulates that warming should be limited to 1.5°C, it’s unclear whether this goal will be achieved.
Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in Asia
- Over the past 10 years, some of Asia’s coal-dependent, high-emitting nations have turned to biomass cofiring (burning coal and biomass together to make electricity) to reduce CO2 emissions on paper and reach energy targets. But biomass still generates high levels of CO2 at the smokestack and adds to dangerous global warming.
- In South Korea, renewable energy credits given for biomass cofiring flooded the market and made other renewables like wind and solar less profitable. Although subsides for imported biomass for cofiring have decreased in recent years, increased domestic biomass production is likely to continue fueling cofiring projects.
- In Japan, renewable energy subsidies initially prompted the construction of new cofired power plants. Currently, biomass cofiring is used to make coal plants seem less polluting in the near term as utilities prepare to cofire and eventually convert the nation’s coal fleet to ammonia, another “carbon-neutral” fuel.
- In Indonesia, the government and state utility, encouraged by Japanese industry actors, plan to implement cofiring at 52 coal plants across the country by 2025. The initiative will require “nothing less than the creation of a large-scale biomass [production] industry,” according to experts.
As Europe eyes Africa’s gas reserves, environmentalists sound the alarm
- In the wake of an energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European countries are turning to Africa for its natural gas reserves.
- The move is a turnaround from recent years, when many of the same countries vowed to stop financing fossil fuel projects on the continent.
- Some African heads of state, along with their allies in industry, have welcomed the change, saying gas extraction will help finance the transition to renewables.
- But environmental advocates on the continent are pushing back, saying that a new era of fossil fuel extraction will create more misery and harm the climate.
Are Bangladesh’s development measures leading to climate change readiness or maladaptation? (commentary)
- Bangladesh is trying to mainstream climate change adaptation into development measures to address climate change vulnerability and challenges.
- However, the socio-economic context and environmental consequences must be considered while implementing development programs.
- Failure to address local context might result in maladaptive trajectories, but Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) and Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are potential options for effective adaptation to climate change.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Building Indonesia’s ‘green’ new capital could see coal use surge (analysis)
- Indonesia is planning to construct a new capital city, known as Nusantara, in the Bornean province of East Kalimantan.
- Authorities promote Nusantara as a “green city,” but discussions of the city’s carbon footprint overlook key factors, notably the use of coal to manufacture the building materials required to construct a completely new city.
- With the new city being built in the country’s coal-mining heartland, coal is the most likely energy source for such manufacturing, putting Indonesia’s emissions reduction targets at risk, as well as casting doubt on the green commitments of funders like Japan and China.
Turkey’s authoritarian development ignores planetary boundaries
- Turkey, an increasingly autocratic country since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP political party came to power in 2002, was the very last G20 nation to ratify the Paris climate agreement, doing so in October 2021. It has failed so far to take meaningful action against the steady increase of its greenhouse gas emissions.
- Turkey may also be exceeding limits to many of the nine planetary boundaries critical to the survival of civilization. In addition to unregulated carbon emissions, experts are concerned over the nation’s worsening air and plastic pollution, altered land use due to new mega-infrastructure projects, and biodiversity harm.
- For the past two decades, Turkey’s economic growth has been based on carbon-intensive sectors — including fossil fuel energy, transportation, construction, mining and heavy industry — all heavily supported by the state via subsidies, questionable public-private partnerships, and lax environmental laws.
- Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s authoritarianism has undermined checks and balances which might otherwise enhance environmental governance. As activists and academics criticize the lack of transparency regarding environmental data, they face rising governmental pressures and repression.
‘That’s a scam’: Indian firm’s REDD+ carbon deal in the DRC raises concern
- Environmental and human rights advocacy organizations say an Indian company has misled communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, convincing them to sign away the rights to sell carbon credits from the restoration, reforestation or avoided deforestation of locally managed forests.
- These forests, managed under a structure known by the French acronym CFCL, provide communities with control over how land is managed while giving them access to the resources the forests provide, proponents of the initiative say.
- But the contracts, the implications of which were not fairly or adequately explained to community members, may restrict their access to the forests for generations to come, the advocacy groups say.
- These organizations and the communities are now calling on the Congolese government to cancel the contracts.
End old-growth logging in carbon-rich ‘crown jewel’ of U.S. forests: Study
- A recent study of the Tongass National Forest, the largest in the United States, found that it contains 20% of the carbon held in the entire national forest system.
- In addition to keeping the equivalent of about a year and a half of the U.S.’s greenhouse gas emissions out of the atmosphere, the forest is also home to an array of wildlife, including bald eagles, brown bears and six species of salmon and trout.
- Scientists and conservationists argue that the forest’s old-growth trees that are hundreds of years old should be protected from logging.
- They are also hoping that efforts by the administration of President Joe Biden are successful in banning the construction of new roads in the Tongass.
As biomass burning surges in Japan and South Korea, where will Asia get its wood?
- In 2021, Japan and South Korea imported a combined 6 million metric tons of wood pellets for what proponents claim is carbon-neutral energy.
- Large subsidies for biomass have led Japan to import massive amounts of wood pellets from Vietnam and Canada; two pellet giants, Drax and Enviva, are now eyeing Japan for growth, even as the country may be cooling to the industry.
- South Korea imports most of its pellets from Vietnamese acacia plantations, which environmentalists fear may eventually pressure natural forests; South Korea wants to grow its native production sixfold, including logging areas with high conservation value.
- Vietnam may soon follow Japan and South Korea’s path as it phases out coal, and experts fear all this could add massive pressure on Southeast Asian forests, which are already among the most endangered in the world.
EU Parliament’s Environment Committee urges scale back of biomass burning
- The European Parliament’s Environment Committee this week made strong, but nonbinding, recommendations to put a brake on the EU’s total commitment to burning forest biomass to produce energy. While environmentalists cautiously hailed the decision, the forestry industry condemned it.
- A key recommendation urges that primary woody biomass (that made from whole trees) to produce energy and heat no longer receive government subsidies under the EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED).
- Another recommendation called for primary woody biomass to no longer be counted toward EU member states’ renewable energy targets. Currently, biomass accounts for 60% of the EU’s renewable energy portfolio, far more than zero-carbon wind and solar.
- The Environment Committee recommendations mark the first time any part of the EU government has questioned the aggressive use of biomass by the EU to meet its Paris Agreement goals. A final decision by the EU on its biomass burning policies is expected in September as part of its revised Renewable Energy Directive.
Geoengineering Earth’s climate future: Straight talk with Wake Smith
- A new book, “Pandora’s Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention,” explores a number of ideas for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere or artificially cooling the planet, known collectively as geoengineering.
- The book argues that such dire actions may need to be taken by future generations to combat climate change, and if so, those generations deserve to inherit research done now to understand the potential impacts and feasibility of geoengineering.
- One tool whose implementation is likely inevitable, according to the book, is pulling carbon from smokestacks and the air and then sequestering it deep in the Earth, a technology currently happening at a very small scale. Another approach, far more controversial, would be to inject aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the Earth.
- None of these methods precludes the need to decarbonize now and fast. But given the dangerous trajectory of climate change, author Wake Smith argues that suffering future generations may decide to pull the geoengineering trigger.
Missing the emissions for the trees: Biomass burning booms in East Asia
- Over the past decade, Japan and South Korea have increasingly turned to burning wood pellets for energy, leaning on a U.N. loophole that dubs biomass burning as carbon neutral.
- While Japan recently instituted a new rule requiring life cycle greenhouse gas emissions accounting, this doesn’t apply to its existing 34 biomass energy plants; Japanese officials say biomass will play an expanding role in achieving Japan’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 46% by 2030.
- South Korea included biomass burning in its renewable energy portfolio standard, leading to 17 biomass energy plants currently operating, and at least four more on the way.
- Experts say these booms in Asia — the first major expansion of biomass burning outside Europe — could lead to a large undercounting of actual carbon emissions and worsening climate change, while putting pressure on already-beleaguered forests.
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.
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.
Tropical deforestation emitting far more carbon than previously thought: Study
- Carbon emissions due to tropical deforestation are accelerating, a new study has found.
- Using detailed maps of forest change as well as aboveground and soil carbon deposits, the researchers demonstrate that annual emission more than doubled between 2015-2019, compared with 2001-2005.
- Though the study reveals that the world has not met its commitments to stem deforestation, the authors say it also reveals that investments in forest protection and restoration are critical to addressing climate change.
Activists vow to take EU to court to fight its forest biomass policies
- The European Union continues burning forest biomass to produce energy, a policy science has shown to be climate destabilizing, destructive to forests and biodiversity. International NGOs and their lawyers — to stop the EU going further down what they see as a path of planetary endangerment — is ready to take the EU to court.
- The plaintiffs contend that the European Union is violating its own rules dictating that European Commission policies be based in “environmentally sustainable economic practices” for companies, investors and policymakers.
- Activists argue that the EU, in creating its current bioenergy and forestry policies, has disregarded numerous scientific studies demonstrating the environmental harm done by forest biomass — the harvesting and burning of wood pellets to make electricity. Some legal experts say the activists’ bid to be heard in court is a long shot.
- A November study adds data and urgency to the ongoing battle. Researchers found that unless current policies change, global demand for biomass-for-energy will triple by 2050, further impacting intact forests ability to act as carbon sinks and undermining emissions-reduction requirements under the Paris Agreement.
Climate change a threat to human well-being and health of the planet: New IPCC report
- The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on the impacts of climate change on people, detailing areas of vulnerability and steps for adaptation to the changes brought about by Earth’s warming temperatures.
- The report, the second of three that will be part of the IPCC’s sixth assessment, highlights the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge in grappling with climate change and its effects on weather, water availability and food sources.
- It also notes that some segments of society, especially the most vulnerable, will bear a disproportionate burden as a result of climate change.
- The authors of the report and other climate researchers emphasize that urgent action is needed, both to address the causes of climate change and improve the capability of people to adapt to it.
At a disputed Native massacre site, tribes brace for a new, lithium-driven rush
- The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved an open-pit lithium ore mine in northern Nevada, despite protests by Native tribes to protect the disputed sacred site.
- Lithium is in high demand as the key component in batteries that fuel electric vehicles and cellphones, raising environmental concerns about its extraction.
- The U.S. government is ramping up production of lithium all along the domestic supply chain to meet its clean energy goals.
Malaysian officials dampen prospects for giant, secret carbon deal in Sabah
- The attorney general of the Malaysian state of Sabah has said that a contentious deal for the right to sell credits for carbon and other natural capital will not come into force unless certain provisions are met.
- Mongabay first reported that the 100-year agreement, which involves the protection of some 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) from activities such as logging, was signed in October 2021 between the state and a Singapore-based firm called Hoch Standard.
- Several leaders in the state, including the attorney general, have called for more due diligence on the companies involved in the transaction.
- Civil society representatives say that a technical review of the agreement is necessary to vet claims about its financial value to the state and its feasibility.
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.”
Indonesia’s clean energy transition must start with clean rivers (commentary)
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo has touted hydropower as key to the country’s transition away from coal, which currently dominates the national energy mix.
- But while Indonesia has a wealth of major rivers with the potential to high power-generating capacity, more than half are degraded and polluted.
- With Indonesia set to showcase its clean energy transition when it hosts the G20 summit later this year, this is the time to start cleaning up the country’s rivers, writes Warief Djajanto Basorie.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Community project helps Kenya aim for climate goals one mangrove tree at a time
- Along Kenya’s southeastern coast, three communities are restoring 460 hectares (1,137 acres) of the Vanga mangrove forest to meet the country’s emission reduction targets, provide a buffer against natural disasters, and support fishing livelihoods.
- The Vanga Blue Forest project has planted more than 1,000 native mangrove trees since it started in 2019, and aims to work with neighboring communities in Tanzania to restore mangrove forests along 140 kilometers (87 miles) of the East African coastline.
- The early stages of the project were a series of trial and error to achieve successful reforestation, as previous efforts a decade earlier had only a 10% survival rate among the 750,000 trees planted.
- The project is involved in the international carbon trade market and has so far sold $44,433 of carbon credits by accumulating 5,023 metric tons of carbon above ground.
Mali’s centuries-old pastoralist traditions wilt as the climate changes
- As the world rediscovers the ingenuity of nature-based solutions, a detailed FAO report published this year highlights the traditions of nomadic pastoralists in Mali who have sustained an eco-friendly lifestyle over centuries.
- The Kel Tamasheq people, living amid the Saharan sands near Timbuktu, eat primarily local produce, generate little waste, and boast a negligible carbon footprint.
- The community’s world revolves around a transhumance tradition that follows seasonal movement; during the dry season, which lasts for more than six months of the year, the pastoralists migrate south with their livestock in search of grazing land and water.
- Climate change and increasing desertification have heavily impacted the food system of the Kel Tamasheq, especially the withering of Lake Faguibine, intensifying the community’s dependence on markets.
Indigenous leader sues over Borneo natural capital deal
- An Indigenous leader in Sabah is suing the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo over an agreement signing away the rights to monetize the natural capital coming from the state’s forests to a foreign company.
- Civil society and Indigenous organizations say local communities were not consulted or asked to provide input prior to the agreement’s signing on Oct. 28.
- Further questions have arisen about whether the company, Hoch Standard, that secured the rights under the agreement has the required experience or expertise necessary to implement the terms of the agreement.
Exports of threatened species’ timber boomed under Bolsonaro, probe finds
- An investigation begun in May this year by the Brazilian Federal Police highlighted “a major scheme facilitating the smuggling of rainforest products.”
- Between February 2020 and May 2021, close to 100,000 metric tons of wood was exported to the United States, France, Japan, Germany and Belgium, an eighth of which came from rainforest species considered threatened by the Brazilian Forestry Service (SFB).
- These details have been unearthed in an unprecedented report by Brazilian investigative journalism outlet Agência Pública working with the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP).
- The fallout of the police investigation has already seen Brazil’s environment minister resign and other officials and timber companies come under scrutiny.
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.
Indigenous communities in South Africa sue, protest off-shore oil and gas exploration
- Thousands of South Africans, including Indigenous communities, mobilized in a national protest last Sunday against Shell’s planned seismic survey in search for oil and gas reserves off the country’s eastern Wild Coast – with more protests planned this weekend.
- Two court applications were submitted last week challenging the government’s license for oil and gas exploration, and demanded their constitutional right to a safe and healthy environment, as well as their Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
- Activists and communities fear the surveys and possible oil extraction will impact marine life and pollute coastal ecosystems which the Indigenous Xhosa rely on for their livelihood and traditional rituals.
- On Thursday, the Minister of Minerals Resources and Energy underlined the government’s support for oil exploration, criticizing environmental protesters for actions seen as “apartheid and colonialism of a special type.”
Indigenous groups unveil plan to protect 80% of the Amazon in Peru and Ecuador
- A new plan called the Amazon Sacred Headwaters initiative proposes the protection of 80% of the Amazon in Peru and Ecuador by 2025, consisting of 35 million hectares (86 million acres) of rainforest.
- The Amazonian Indigenous organizations leading the plan aim to center Indigenous-led forest management and land tenure to protect endemic species and prevent approximately 2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
- The proposal has received positive responses from Ecuadoran and Peruvian government officials, but faces a stumbling block in the fact that both countries rely heavily on extractive industries operating within the Amazon to help pay off foreign debt.
Is colonial history repeating itself with Sabah forest carbon deal? (commentary)
- To the surprise of Indigenous and local communities, a huge forest carbon conservation agreement was recently signed in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo.
- Granting rights to foreign entities on more than two million hectares of the state’s tropical forests for the next 100-200 years, civil society groups have called for more transparency.
- “Is history repeating itself? Are we not yet free or healed from our colonial and wartime histories?” wonders a Sabahan civil society leader who authored this opinion piece calling for more information, more time, and a say.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Conflict and climate change are big barriers for Africa’s Great Green Wall
- Fourteen years since the launch of Africa’s Great Green Wall project, only 4% of the 100 million hectares (247 million acres) of land targeted for restoration in the Sahel region has actually been restored.
- Billions of dollars in new funding announced this year have raised hopes that the initiative to combat desertification will gain momentum, but experts and the reality on the ground point to money being far from the only hurdle.
- Funding restoration activities will cost $44 billion, with every dollar invested generating $1.20 in returns, a recent study in Nature Sustainability calculates.
- But experts have echoed concerns captured in the research that conflict and climate change are complicating efforts on the ground, with nearly half of the area identified as viable for restoration falling within the orbit of conflict zones.
Details emerge around closed-door carbon deal in Malaysian Borneo
- Leaders in Sabah have begun to reveal information about a nature conservation agreement signed in the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo for the rights to carbon and other natural capital.
- The deal allegedly covers rights to more than 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of the state’s tropical forests for the next 100-200 years.
- Indigenous and civil society groups have called for more transparency.
- In response to the public reaction to news of the agreement, its primary proponent, Deputy Chief Minister Jeffrey Kitingan, held a public meeting but has declined to make the agreement public yet.
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.
Indigenous people get less than 1% of climate funding? It’s actually worse (commentary)
- The lead author of a Rainforest Foundation Norway report showing how little funding goes to Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) for tenure and forest management writes that the reality is even worse than the “less than 1%” soundbite often shared.
- Over 10 years, $2.7 billion was given to support IPLCs’ tenure rights and forest management, which equals 0.74% of total development aid allocated to address climate change.
- Researchers further discovered that 17% of the funding to IPLC tenure and management went to projects that specifically included an IPLC organization, thus representing 0.13% of aid designated to climate change.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
‘Standing with your feet in the water’: COP26 struggles to succeed
- As at every COP before it, negotiators at COP26 are struggling against time to reach an accord, with negotiators at Glasgow clashing over seemingly irreconcilable differences. With the science of climate change now dire, vulnerable nations are demanding strong specific language, while other nations seek to water it down.
- The group of nations dubbed the “Carbon Club” as long ago as the Kyoto Agreement negotiations in the 1990s, continues to offer the primary stumbling block. Those oil and/or coal producing nations include Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, Australia, Norway, the U.K. and often the U.S.
- The United States, while it has made a major sea change since the denialism of the Trump administration, continues to be cautious about any language that would threaten oil, gas and coal industry subsidies, or antagonize Republican members of Congress or coal company baron and West Virginia Dem. Sen. Joe Manchin.
- As the clock ticks, and the last hours of COP26 slip away, with street protestors increasingly frustrated at the lack of significant movement by the negotiators, the scene remains tense in Glasgow. With the summit now gone into overtime, the outcome of COP26 remains in the balance.
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.
COP26: Are climate declarations and emission reduction pledges legally binding?
- The 2015 Paris Agreement is not a treaty between nations, but rather a voluntary accord between 194 nations signed by their legal representatives. As such, it is not deemed legally binding — preventing nations and corporations from being sued to force them to take legal responsibility for harmful carbon emissions and policies.
- Or at least, that was the accepted legal precedent regarding the Paris accord, as well as declarations and agreements made since 2015 at annual COP summits. This includes this year’s Glasgow U.K. climate conference where major declarations to end global deforestation and sharply curb methane emissions were made.
- However, some 1,800 lawsuits seeking to hold nations and corporations responsible for their climate change pledges and emissions are moving through the worlds’ legal systems. At least one major case has borne fruit: In May 2021, a court in The Netherlands ordered Royal Dutch Shell to slash carbon emissions far faster than pledged.
- It wasn’t international law that decided the case, but basic tort law: a legal obligation to not knowingly injure others. “Rights-based climate litigation is not some kind of scholarly fantasy; rather, it is turning out to be one of the most important tools civil society has to force governments to move more quickly,” says one legal expert.
COP26: E.U. is committed to forest biomass burning to cut fossil fuel use
- At COP26, Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s executive vice president, made clear that the E.U. is committed to ending its addiction to oil, gas and coal, but only if it can use the bridge of burning forest biomass to get to an eventual goal of fully utilizing truly renewable energy sources, like wind and solar.
- Timmermans maintains that the E.U. is committed to only burning “the right kind of biomass: You can collect dead wood, you can collect those elements of the forests that are no longer alive, fallen down, etc. That constitutes a serious amount of biomass.… As long as your definition is sustainable… we can work with biomass.”
- A forestry industry representative agrees: “The biomass we are currently using in Europe is about 95% based on local resources — that is residues from forestry and wood processing originating from Europe… We are currently harvesting significantly less than is regrowing annually in Europe.”
- But critics say whole trees are being burned to make wood pellets and ask how the E.U. can commit to both biomass burning and protecting carbon-storing forests. “No amount of allegedly nicer forest management can overcome the basic problem of large, immediate emissions from burning tons of biomass daily,” said one activist.
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.
COP26: Surging wood pellet industry threatens climate, say experts
- With the U.N. climate summit (COP26) in its second week, Earth is on track to warm by 2.7° Celsius (4.86° Fahrenheit) by 2100, a catastrophic forecast based on projected carbon emissions. However, analysts say that those projections exclude major emissions currently escaping from biomass-burning power plants.
- A carbon accounting loophole in global climate change policy classifies burning woody biomass for energy as “carbon neutral,” and is accepted by the U.N. and many of the world’s nations. But scientists have proven otherwise, even as the forestry industry gets massive subsidies to produce millions of tons of wood pellets annually.
- Those subsidies are fueling rapid growth of the biomass industry, as forests are cut in the U.S., Canada, Eastern Europe, Russia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The E.U. and U.K. are the largest biomass energy market, but with rapid expansion now occurring in Japan and South Korea, the biomass boom is just beginning.
- Scientists and activists say that to avoid disastrous global warming impacts, forest large biomass subsidies must end, which will make the industry unprofitable and free up funding for real climate solutions. But the topic is not even on the COP26 agenda, and action on the biomass burning issue anytime soon seems unlikely.
New restoration “Playbook” calls for political, economic, and social change
- Leading forest and climate experts have come up with a “playbook” for ecosystem restoration that accounts for climate change and forest loss as not just biophysical and environmental problems, but also deeply political, economic and social issues.
- It defines 10 principles for effective, equitable, and transformative landscapes that its authors say could be game-changing if followed.
- The playbook discusses the importance of ending fossil fuel subsidies and shifting those resources toward ecosystem restoration, renewable energy, and supporting the land rights of local and Indigenous communities that are protecting forests.
- The authors invite IUCN members and leaders at COP26 in Glasgow to consider adopting the Playbook to guide biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation in forests and, more broadly, call for structural changes from local to international scale.
Scientists urge Biden to remove logging, fossil fuels, biomass from budget bills
- More than 100 scientists have issued an open letter urging U.S. President Joe Biden and members of Congress to remove provisions promoting logging, forest biomass and fossil fuels from the multitrillion-dollar infrastructure and reconciliation (Build Back Better) bills.
- Both bills contain provisions for logging for lumber and for forest biomass energy, with the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 5.
- Although the infrastructure bill promises $570 billion in tax credits and investments to combat climate change, it also includes a mandate for 12 million hectares (30 million acres) of “additional logging on federal public lands over the next 15 years.”
- “The logging and fossil fuel subsidies and policies in the Reconciliation and Infrastructure Bills will only intensify the rate and intensity of our changing climate,” the letter states.
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 deforestation-ending commitment must hold leaders accountable (commentary)
- Yesterday at COP26 world leaders announced an agreement to reverse and end deforestation within a decade.
- But lacking language on transparency, regular milestones, a binding legal framework, and a focus on human rights, this commitment may fail as others have before it.
- The New York Declaration on Forests of 2014 pledged to halve deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030, yet rates of forest loss have been 41% higher in the years since. If world leaders are sincere about ending deforestation this time, there is one simple message: prove it.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
COP26 Glasgow Declaration: Salvation or threat to Earth’s forests?
- The U.N. climate summit underway in Glasgow, Scotland, served as a venue this week to announce the Glasgow Declaration on Forests and Land Use to the world. Signed by 100 countries representing 85% of the globe’s forested land, it pledges to end or reduce deforestation by 2030.
- The declaration comes on the heels of the failed 2014 New York Declaration for Forests–which had more than 200 national, private and civil service supporters–that promised to cut deforestation by 50% by 2020 and end it by 2030. Since then, deforestation has risen, contributing an estimated 23% of total carbon emissions.
- While some hailed this week’s Declaration, others warned that it’s $19.2 billion could be used to convert natural forests to plantations, which under current U.N. rules are counted as “forests.” Plantations to produce palm oil, paper or wood pellets (burnt to make energy), lack biodiversity and are less efficient at storing carbon.
- Said one NGO critical of the Glasgow Declaration: “Just as we must wind down use of fossil fuels, it’s also time for the industrial logging development model to be retired. Countries should apply an absolute moratorium on any further conversion of [natural] forests [to industrial plantations] — whether technically ‘legal’ or ‘illegal.’“
$1.7 billion pledged in support of Indigenous and local communities’ land tenure
- Several governments and private funders have pledged US $1.7 billion in support of Indigenous and local communities’ tenure rights in recognition of their global contributions to climate change mitigation.
- Funds will be used to support activities that will aid Indigenous and local communities to improve capacity building and secure, strengthen, and protect their land and resource rights.
- COICA, a leading Amazonian Indigenous rights organization, remains skeptical of the fund’s promise to reach Indigenous territories and support communities but says it will monitor the actualization of these new commitments.
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.
Indigenous leaders to push for land tenure rights as climate solution at COP26
- Indigenous leaders from around the world will join government officials, scientists, activists, and NGO representatives at the U.N. climate summit in Scotland to highlight the role of Indigenous peoples in providing climate mitigation and adaptation solutions.
- New reports released ahead of the conference by the World Resources Institute and PRISMA Foundation emphasize the integral role of Indigenous land rights and access to climate funding in combating the climate crisis.
- Indigenous communities on the ground receive only a small fraction of climate funding directed toward Indigenous land tenure and forest management, with international NGOs, development agencies and consulting firms receiving the lion’s share, the PRISMA report says.
Forest biomass-burning supply chain is producing major carbon emissions: Studies
- U.S., U.K., and E.U. policymakers are failing to count the carbon emissions cost of the forest biomass industry, according to two new first-of-their-kind studies. Though biomass burning is legally classified as carbon neutral, the research found that none of the parties involved is counting emissions generated along the supply chain.
- One study estimated that wood pellets made in the U.S. and burned in the U.K. led to 13-16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2019 alone, equal to the emissions of up to 7 million cars. Should biomass burning be instituted by other nations in the near future, a process already underway, the result could be climatically catastrophic.
- The findings should be carefully considered as representatives of the world’s nations prepare to meet for the COP26 climate summit in Scotland, said experts. “These studies make clear that current energy policy doesn’t match the overwhelming science on the impacts of biomass,” said a member of the U.K.’s House of Lords.
- However, there are presently no official plans to address the forest biomass carbon accounting issue at COP26, though NGOs are investigating inroads to negotiations.
Children born in 2020 will see spike in climate disasters, study says
- The study used climate modeling to determine specialized impacts by region, finding that at the current level of carbon reduction pledges, people born in 2020 will experience many more extreme climate events in comparison to those born in 1960.
- On the world’s current course, those children will experience twice as many wildfires overall, three times as many crop failures, and seven times as many heat waves.
- At a geographical scale, children born in low-income countries that are least responsible for the climate crisis will confront significantly higher spikes in extreme events than in wealthier countries.
- If the world takes a more aggressive approach to limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) by 2100, the number of climate disasters experienced by younger generations would drop substantially, with the model predicting 45% fewer heat waves, 39% fewer droughts, and 28% fewer crop failures.
Old-growth forests of Pacific Northwest could be key to climate action
- Coastal temperate rainforests are among the rarest ecosystems on Earth, with more than a third of their total remaining global area located in a narrow band in the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest. These are some of the most biodiverse, carbon-dense forests outside the tropics, thus crucial to carbon sequestration.
- “The diversity of life that is all around us is incredibly rare,” a forest ecologist tells Mongabay on a hike in Olympic National Park. “It’s all working together. And there’s not much left here on the Olympic Peninsula or just north of us in British Columbia.”
- British Columbia did the unexpected in 2016 by establishing the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, protecting 6.4 million hectares (15.8 million acres) of coastal old-growth forest. But elsewhere in the province, 97% of all tall, old-growth forest has been felled for timber and wood pellets. In the U.S., protection outside Olympic National Park is scant.
- New protections are promised, but old-growth logging continues apace. The U.N. says the world must aggressively reduce carbon emissions now, as scientists press the Biden administration to create a national Strategic Carbon Reserve to protect a further 20 million hectares (50 million acres) of mature forested federal lands from logging to help meet U.S. carbon-reduction goals by 2030.
Burning forests to make energy: EU and world wrestle with biomass science
- A major political and environmental dispute is coming to a boil in the run-up to COP26 in Scotland this November, as the EU and the forestry industry push forest biomass (turning trees into wood pellets and burning them to make electricity), claiming the science shows biomass is sustainable and produces zero emissions.
- Forest advocates and many scientists sit squarely on the other side of the argument, providing evidence that biomass burning is destructive to forests and biodiversity, is dirtier than coal, and destabilizing for the climate. Moreover, they say, the carbon neutrality claim is an accounting error that will greatly increase carbon emissions.
- These views collided in July when the European Commission called for only minor revisions to its legally binding Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) in regard to biomass policy as part of the EU Green Deal. Critics say the plan, if approved by the EU Parliament in 2022, will fail to protect global forests from the wood pellet industry.
- Here, Mongabay offers a review of the science on both sides of the biomass debate, summarizing key studies and reports, and providing links to primary sources for enhanced insight into these complex issues. The EU decision to include wood pellets as part of its clean energy mix could help shape global biomass policy at COP26.
Ending Amazon deforestation a top priority on Colombian minister’s D.C. visit
- In an interview with Mongabay, Colombian environment minister Carlos Eduardo Correa provided insights about his recent visit to Washington, D.C., where he held meetings with U.S. government officials and conservation organizations.
- On his first international trip amid the pandemic, the minister reiterated his commitment to protect forests in one of the most biodiverse countries in the world.
- Colombia’s climate goals include reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 51% and achieving zero deforestation by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
Eight of the 10 nations most at risk from climate and toxic pollution in Africa: study
- Of 176 nations considered, the top 10 found to be most vulnerable to both climate change impacts and environmental pollution are in Africa and South Asia, with the Democratic Republic of Congo being the worst off, according to a new study.
- Toxic pollution in the environment, be it dirty air, contaminated water or unhealthy soils, and climatic shifts resulting in warmer temperatures, extreme weather or land degradation, can all endanger human health.
- The study shows that tackling both kinds of risk together might be a good strategy for some countries like Singapore, Rwanda, China and India.
- It also highlighted the unequal toll of environmental destruction among nations: the 60 most vulnerable countries are home to two-thirds of the planet’s population.
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.
Amazon and Cerrado deforestation, warming spark record drought in urban Brazil
- Southern and central Brazil are in the midst of the worst drought in nearly 100 years, with agribusiness exports of coffee and sugar, and the production of hydroelectric power, at grave risk.
- According to researchers, the drought, now in its second year, likely has two main causes: climate change, which tends to make continental interiors both hotter and drier, and the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna biomes.
- Deforestation has caused the loss of almost half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation, which helps hold vast amounts of water underground, maintaining aquifers that supply the nation’s rivers with water. In the Amazon, rainforest loss is preventing billions of tons of water vapor from reaching the atmosphere.
- President Jair Bolsonaro acknowledges neither climate change nor deforestation as sources of the drought, but attributes it instead to the country and himself being “unlucky.” The administration’s drought response so far is to reactivate fossil-fuel power plants, which pollute heavily and are costly to operate.
The science of forest biomass: Conflicting studies map the controversy
- A major political and environmental dispute is heating up as the forestry industry and governments promote forest biomass — cutting trees, turning them into wood pellets, and burning them to make electricity. They claim the science shows biomass to be sustainable, with the energy produced resulting in zero emissions.
- Forest advocates and many researchers sit squarely on the other side of the argument, providing evidence that forest biomass is destructive to forests and biodiversity, is dirtier than coal, and destabilizing for the climate. Moreover, they say, the carbon neutrality claim is an error that will greatly increase carbon emissions.
- These diverging viewpoints are colliding this week as the European Commission wrangles with revisions to its legally binding Renewable Energy Directive (REDII), with recommendations to the European parliament due this Wednesday, July 14, Analysts say the EU rules counting biomass as carbon neutral are unlikely to change.
- In this exclusive story, Mongabay provides a review of the science on both sides of the forest biomass debate, summarizing key studies and reports, and providing links to these primary sources to help readers decide for themselves.
‘Red-carded’ Australian miner signals intention to play on in Greenland
- The advancement of a huge rare earths and uranium mining project in Greenland sparked a snap election in April that saw a green party elected and a new government formed that is opposed to the mine.
- The Kvanefjeld project, developed by small Australian mining company Greenland Minerals Limited, with Chinese partner Shenghe Resources, would exploit one of the world’s largest deposits of rare earth metals and uranium near the small township of Narsaq and increase Greenland’s greenhouse gas emissions by 45%.
- While new coalition partners Inuit Ataqatigiit (Party for the People) and Naleraq campaigned against the mine and have a written agreement opposing any uranium mining in Greenland, the consultation process for Kvanefjeld is continuing, and NGOs are concerned that Greenland Minerals will try to pressure the new government to agree to the project in some form.
- In early July, Greenland’s Ministry of Mineral Resources released a draft bill banning uranium mining and exploration and limiting the amount of uranium present as a by-product in any mining operations to 100 parts per million — which would prevent the Kvanefjeld operation going ahead.
Timber troubles fell Ricardo Salles, Brazil’s environment minister
- Three weeks after being named in a second probe into alleged illegal exports of Amazon timber and facing growing opposition, Brazil’s controversial environment minister, Ricardo Salles, was ousted on June 23 “upon request,” as announced in the country’s official gazette.
- Despite his controversial remarks and heavily criticized policies that fueled deforestation rates in the Amazon, Salles enjoyed relative stability in the government, until a month ago when the legal troubles flared up.
- In a press conference in Brasília, Salles said he was resigning to allow the facilitation of the country’s environmental negotiations on the international stage and in the national agenda, which will require Brazil to “have a strong union of interests.”
- Salles has been replaced by Joaquim Alves Pereira Leite, who has been in the environment ministry since 2019 and held a board seat for more than 20 years at an agribusiness lobbying institute. While some politicians have welcomed his appointment, others have called for a shift in Brazil’s environmental policies.
Forest advocates press EU leader to rethink views on biomass and energy
- EU officials are currently working to finalize REDII renewable energy policy revisions and amendments by mid-July for EU parliamentary review. One component of that review is to determine whether forest biomass burning will continue to be considered carbon neutral by the 27 EU member states.
- Current science is clear: burning forest biomass to make energy is not carbon neutral, and the burning of wood pellets is dirtier per unit of electricity than burning coal. But the forestry industry and EU continue defending biomass, prompting an open letter from forest advocates harpooning the policy.
- In the leadup to the updated REDII policy revision proposals, European Commission Exec. VP Frans Timmermans says he truly values forests, but simultaneously believes that cutting them down and burning them to make electricity remains viable climate policy. More than 50% of the EU’s current wood harvest is being burned for energy.
- “Ecocide threatens the survivability of our forests. I certainly don’t underestimate the challenges we face, but still, I believe [burning forest] biomass can play a very useful role in the energy transition,” says Timmermans.
Protected areas now cover nearly 17% of Earth’s surface: U.N. report
- A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Union for Conservation of Nature reveals that countries are closing in on the target set in 2010 of protecting or conserving 17% of the Earth’s surface.
- Since 2010, the area of the marine environment that’s under protection has more than tripled, although global coverage is less than 8%, falling short of the 10% goal set in Aichi Target 11.
- While there has been some success, international leaders agree there should be more focus on quality as well as quantity in designating protected and conservation areas.
- As the U.N. Biodiversity Conference scheduled for October 2021 in Kunming, China, approaches, the report calls for a stronger emphasis on the contributions of Indigenous and local communities, while also ensuring that the world’s poorest don’t shoulder an outsize burden from these efforts.
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.
ADB declares coal exit in Asia Pacific, but gas remains in play
- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) plans to exit financing coal, oil and natural gas exploration and extraction activities, according to its draft energy policy released May 7.
- The bank says it also intends to deliver climate finance worth $80 billion between 2019 and 2030 to ensure that at least 75% of its projects address climate change issues.
- While green groups have welcomed the transition, they note that the draft energy policy has a loophole by potentially allowing fossil gas investments.
- ADB is set to release its final energy policy by October this year.
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.
‘Zero illegal deforestation’ – One more Bolsonaro distortion (commentary)
- At U.S. President Joe Biden’s virtual climate summit on Earth Day, 22 April, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro promised “zero illegal deforestation by 2030.”
- “Zero illegal deforestation” can be achieved in two ways: by stopping deforestation, and by legalizing the deforestation that is taking place. The second path is in full swing.
- A series of laws facilitating “land grabbing” (which in Brazil means large-scale illegal appropriation of government land) is being fast-tracked in the National Congress with support from Bolsonaro.
- Once grabbed land is legalized, the deforestation on it can be “amnestied” and subsequent deforestation legally permitted. The end result is more deforestation. All deforestation, legal or not, causes climate change. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
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.
With British Columbia’s last old-growth at risk, government falters: Critics
- British Columbia’s ruling New Democratic Party last autumn pledged to conserve 353,000 hectares (1,363 square miles) of old-growth forest. But so far, the NDP has largely failed to act on this pledge, even as forestry companies rush to procure and cut old-growth in the Canadian province.
- Unless the government acts quickly on its commitment, BC’s last old-growth could be gone in as little as 5-10 years say some forest ecologists. In addition, intense logging could mean that Canada is not going to meet its Paris Climate Agreement carbon-reduction goals.
- While the NDP promised a new policy boosting forest perseveration over forestry, critics say that — despite its rhetoric — the government continues to prop up an industry in decline to help rural communities in need of jobs.
- While it’s not now cutting BC old-growth, activists worry over the acquisition by U.K. Drax Group of BC’s largest wood pellet producer, Pinnacle Renewable Energy and its seven BC pellet mills. Drax provides up to 12% of the U.K.’s energy at the world’s largest pellet-burning plant. Its BC exports to Japan are also expected to grow.
‘We’re at a tipping point with coal’: Q&A with Bloomberg’s Antha Williams
- Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg was key in marshaling city and state governments across the U.S. to ramp up their climate action after the Trump administration pulled the country out of the Paris Agreement.
- With the climate-focused Biden administration now in office, Bloomberg Philanthropies is going “all-in toward climate solutions,” says Antha N. Williams, head of the foundation’s environment program.
- Among its main initiatives is the Beyond Coal campaign, which seeks to get OECD countries to transition away from coal by 2030 and the rest of the world by 2040.
- In this post-Trump follow-up interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler, Williams discusses a just energy transition, the role of finance in driving change, and the importance of ocean protection.
Dutch to limit forest biomass subsidies, possibly signaling EU sea change
- The Dutch Parliament in February voted to disallow the issuing of new subsidies for 50 planned forest biomass-for-heat plants, a small, but potentially key victory for researchers and activists who say that the burning of forests to make energy is not only not carbon neutral, but is dirtier than burning coal and bad climate policy.
- With public opinion opposing forest biomass as a climate solution now growing in the EU, the decision by the Netherlands could be a bellwether. In June, the EU will review its Renewable Energy Directive (RED II), whether to continue allowing biomass subsidies and not counting biomass emissions at the smokestack.
- Currently, forest biomass burning to make energy is ruled as carbon neutral in the EU, even though a growing body of scientific evidence has shown that it takes many decades until forests regrow for carbon neutrality to be achieved.
- The forestry industry, which continues to see increasing demand for wood pellets, argues that biomass burning is environmentally sustainable and a viable carbon cutting solution compared to coal.
500+ experts call on world’s nations to not burn forests to make energy
- Last week, more than 500 top scientists and economists issued a letter to leaders in the US, EU, Japan, South Korea, and the UK, urging them to stop harvesting and burning forests as a means of making energy in converted coal burning power plants.
- The burning of forest biomass to produce electricity has boomed due to this power source having been tolerated as carbon neutral by the United Nations, which enables nations to burn forest biomass instead of coal and not count the emissions in helping them meet their Paris Climate Agreement carbon reduction targets.
- However, current science says that burning forest biomass is dirtier than burning coal, and that one of the best ways to curb climate change and sequester carbon is to allow forests to keep growing. The EU and UK carbon neutrality designations for forest biomass are erroneous, say the 500 experts who urge a shift in global policy:
- “Governments must end subsidies… for the burning of wood…. The European Union needs to stop treating the burning of biomass as carbon neutral…. Japan needs to stop subsidizing power plants to burn wood. And the United States needs to avoid treating biomass as carbon neutral or low carbon,” says the letter.
Will new US EPA head continue his opposition to burning forests for energy?
- Under President Donald Trump the U.S. made moves toward legally enshrining the burning of forest biomass to make energy on an industrial scale as a national policy. That same policy has been embraced by the United Kingdom and European Union, helping them move toward a target of zero carbon emissions — at least on paper.
- However, the carbon neutrality label given to the burning of woody biomass to make energy, first proclaimed under the Kyoto Protocol, then grandfathered into the Paris Climate Agreement, has been found by science over the last decade to be more accurately characterized as a risky carbon accounting loophole.
- Current science says that carbon neutrality achieved from burning wood pellets would take 50-100 years to achieve, time the world doesn’t have to slash its emissions. Further, burning woody biomass is inefficient, and dirtier than coal.
- Michael S. Regan, President Biden’s choice for EPA head, wrestled with the problem of producing wood pellets for use as energy while leading North Carolina’s environmental agency. Now he’ll be contending with the issue on a national and possibly global scale. His past views on the topic are laid out in this story in detail.
In sweeping executive orders, Biden brings climate to the forefront of U.S. policy
- On Wednesday, the Biden administration issued a series of executive orders on climate change, proposing an expansive plan that it says is the most ambitious in U.S. history.
- The orders formalized promises made by Biden during his presidential campaign.
- Included in the orders are a moratorium on oil and gas drilling on federal lands as well as a proposal to conserve 30 percent of U.S. land and oceans.
How to turn climate ambitions into reality: Q&A with Nigel Topping
- 2020 was supposed to be a landmark year for taking stock on climate and biodiversity commitments and determining how societies move forward to address the world’s most pressing problems. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic intervened, leading to the postponement or cancellation of many events, including the 26th United Nations climate conference (COP26).
- But while COP26’s delay may have stalled government to government negotiations at national levels, it didn’t prevent the parties from advancing efforts to address climate change, including the push to connect government targets with initiatives by sub-national governments, cities, companies, and civil society groups.
- To lead on this latter front, Gonzalo Munoz and Nigel Topping were appointed as High Level Climate Action Champions for the upcoming conference: “Our role is quite literally to champion the ambition and actions taken by non-state actors in addressing climate change. This means that Gonzalo and I work with partners across the world – cities, states and regions, businesses, investors, and civil society groups – to raise the awareness of, ambition for, and levels of action being taken to address climate change.”
- Topping spoke about these issues and more during a January 2021 conversation with Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler.
Biden’s election is good news for the climate. But what comes next?
- U.S. president-elect Joe Biden’s climate agenda has been described as the most ambitious of any U.S. presidential candidate in history.
- If Republicans retain control of the U.S. Senate, it will be difficult to pass sweeping climate legislation, but analysts say there are opportunities for bipartisan cooperation.
- Biden has pledged to sign a series of climate-related executive orders, including a ban on fossil fuel extraction on public land.
- His administration will have wide leeway to align U.S. foreign policy with his climate goals, most prominently by immediately rejoining the Paris Agreement.
Public lands and parks are our common heritage: Bruce Babbitt
- Until recently, protecting the environment was a bipartisan issue for Americans. But in an era marked by bitter divides, this is no longer the case.
- Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and Secretary of the Interior in the Clinton Administration, believes that environmental protection can again be a unifying issue for Americans. But to get there, advocates will need to rebuild consensus around issues that have wide support, like public lands and the benefits afforded by a healthy environment, and engage stakeholders who have often been ignored.
- Babbitt’s views are grounded in his long career in public office where he had to consistently navigate political divides: first as a Democratic governor in a traditionally conservative state with a Republican legislature, then as a member of the cabinet in the Clinton Administration when Republicans controlled Congress from 1994 through 2000.
- Babbitt spoke about his work, his ideas on how to build constituencies to bridge political divides on environmental issues, and his concerns about climate change during an October 2020 interview with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Data drives Bloomberg’s support for climate solutions, says Antha N. Williams
- Bloomberg Philanthropies, the foundation launched by businessman and former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, is one of the world’s largest charitable organizations.
- One of Bloomberg’s priority focal areas is the environment: specifically combating climate change by accelerating the transition to clean energy, greening the world’s cities, and protecting the health and productivity of oceans.
- Heading up the foundation’s environment program is Antha N. Williams, who got her start as a campaigner and organizer before taking up leadership roles in the world of philanthropy. Williams says Bloomberg’s strategy is to develop programs that offer the highest leverage in terms of impact.
- Williams spoke about her background, Bloomberg’s programs, and opportunities to drive progress in addressing critical environmental challenges during an October 2020 conversation with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler.
Indian embassy in Madagascar becomes first to go fully solar
- A solar power plant was inaugurated at the Indian embassy in Antananarivo, Madagascar, to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2.
- It became the first Indian embassy in the world to be run entirely on solar power from the 8 KW plant.
- Madagascar has huge potential to develop solar energy, with almost all regions receiving 2800 hours of sunshine in a year.
- The environment minister acknowledged that with less than 15% of people having access to grid electricity embracing solar power was a way for Madagascar to develop and meet its climate goals.
Could disruptions in meat supply relieve pressure on the Amazon? (commentary)
- Ranching and beef production have put great pressure on the Brazilian Amazon, resulting in significant deforestation which harms biodiversity, could add to the destabilization of the global climate, and even lead to future pandemics. While much Brazilian meat is consumed domestically, a large portion is exported to China.
- With the pandemic raging out of control in Brazil, meat plants have become viral “hot spots” and helped to spread COVID-19 in several places around the country. Meanwhile, the global pandemic has, for a variety of reasons, now reduced meat consumption in both Brazil and China.
- Meat and dairy are responsible for public health problems and for 18% of global greenhouse emissions, so any reduction in consumption could be good for the health of the planet. Though the pandemic has led to untold human suffering, could cratering demand for meat lead to a new environmental consciousness?
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Can public lands unify divided Americans? An interview with John Leshy
- It might be hard to believe in the current political climate, but public lands were a unifying issue for Americans until quite recently. Most Americans have supported the idea of the government owning and managing large areas of land for public use, and that bipartisan consensus has culminated in the creation of vast network of national parks, forests and monuments which are collectively visited by tens of millions of people annually.
- Does that mean public lands could serve as an opportunity to bridge gaps in a polarized America? John Leshy, an emeritus professor of law at the University of California Hastings and general counsel at the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Clinton administration, thinks it’s possible.
- Leshy has spent much of the past five decades working on public lands issues. Leshy is now working on “Our Common Ground: A History of America’s Public Lands”, a forthcoming title from Yale University Press.
- During a September 2020 interview with Mongabay, Leshy spoke about how public lands could help a divided America find common ground and heal as it works to address the daunting new challenges posed by climate change.
Are forests the new coal? Global alarm sounds as biomass burning surges
- As climate change rapidly escalates with worsening impacts, and with standing forests vital to achieving global warming solutions, the forest biomass industry is booming. While the industry does utilize wood scraps, it also frequently cuts standing forests to supply wood pellets to be burned in converted coal power plants.
- Though current science has shown that burning the world’s forests to make electricity is disastrous for biodiversity, generates more emissions than coal, and isn’t carbon neutral, a UN policy established in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol erroneously counts energy produced from forest biomass as carbon neutral.
- As a result, nations pay power companies huge subsidies to burn wood pellets, propelling industry growth. While the industry does utilize tree residue, forests are being cut in the US, Canada, Russia, Eastern Europe and Vietnam to supply pellets to the UK, EU and other nations who can claim the energy creates zero emissions.
- So far, the UN has turned a blind eye to closing the climate destabilizing carbon accounting loophole. The Netherlands, which now gets 61% of its renewable energy from biomass, is being urged to wean itself off biomass for energy and heat. If the Dutch do so, advocates hope it could portend closure of Europe’s carbon loophole.
Analysis: Vietnam’s leadership flex shows how to drive electricity reform
- Vietnam’s Communist Party leadership has instituted a top-down reform of the country’s electricity sector in response to the need to shift away from coal and its growing list of associated problems.
- The country’s new energy strategy puts greater emphasis on renewables, including wind and solar, abandoning a decade-long commitment to investing in and subsidizing coal.
- The move is also helped by recent technological developments that have made generating renewable power at scale more economically feasible than ever.
Burning down the house? Enviva’s giant U.S. wood pellet plants gear up
- An outdated Kyoto Climate Agreement policy, grandfathered into the 2015 Paris Agreement, counts electrical energy produced by burning biomass — wood pellets — as carbon neutral. However, new science demonstrates that burning forests for energy is dirtier than coal and not carbon neutral in the short-term.
- But with the carbon accounting loophole still on the books, European Union nations and other countries are rushing to convert coal plants to burn wood pellets, and to count giant biomass energy facilities as carbon neutral — valid on paper even as they add new carbon emissions to the atmosphere. The forest industry argues otherwise.
- It too is capitalizing on the loophole, building large new wood pellet factories and logging operations in places like the U.S. Southeast — cutting down forests, pelletizing trees, and exporting biomass. A case in point are the two giant plants now being built by the Enviva Corporation in Lucedale, Mississippi and Epes, Alabama.
- Enviva and other firms can only make biomass profitable by relying on government subsidies. In the end, forests are lost, carbon neutrality takes decades to achieve, and while communities may see a short-term boost in jobs, they suffer air pollution and the risk of sudden economic collapse if and when the carbon loophole is closed.
Scientists launch ambitious conservation project to save the Amazon
- The Science Panel for the Amazon (SPA), an ambitious cooperative project to bring together the existing scientific research on the Amazon biome, has been launched with the support of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
- Modeled on the authoritative UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, the first Amazon report is planned for release in April 2021; that report will include an extensive section on Amazon conservation solutions and policy suggestions backed up by research findings.
- The Science Panel for the Amazon consists of 150 experts — including climate, ecological, and social scientists; economists; indigenous leaders and political strategists — primarily from the Amazon countries
- According to Carlos Nobre, one of the leading scientists on the project, the SPA’s reports will aim not only to curb deforestation, but to propose an ongoing economically feasible program to conserve the forest while advancing human development goals for the region, working in tandem with, and in support of, ecological systems.
Energy-guzzling McMansions make the American dream a climate nightmare
- A new study finds that wealthy Americans living in spacious houses in upscale neighborhoods are responsible for 25% more greenhouse gas emissions on average than those living in smaller homes in poorer areas.
- The U.S. has one of the highest per capita emissions of any country, and residential properties account for almost a quarter of the country’s total carbon footprint, larger than the total emissions for Germany.
- By looking at energy consumption patterns of nearly 100 million households from 2015, the researchers found out that Maine, Vermont and Wisconsin were the largest consumers of energy that year.
- Only if homes are smaller and more tightly packed together, the power grid is cleaner, and energy consumption is reduced, would the U.S. be able to achieve emissions reductions targets for homes laid down in the Paris Agreement, the study says.
Brazil’s past finance ministers defend environment against Bolsonaro
- In a surprise move, 17 former Brazilian Finance ministers and Central Bank presidents came out strongly this week against the environmental policies of President Jair Bolsonaro’s government.
- The letter signed by the 17 economic authorities presents four proposals for a green economy for the post-pandemic era: public and private investments in a low carbon economy; zero deforestation in the Amazon and the Cerrado; an increase in climate resilience; and a boost in new technology research and development.
- The letter comes as pressure mounts on Bolsonaro to scrap his plan for Amazon economic development, which would allow mining and agribusiness on indigenous and conserved lands leading to massive deforestation. EU nations, international investors and companies have all condemned Bolsonaro’s environment record in recent days.
Forests are a solution to climate change. They’re also vulnerable to it
- Forest-based solutions play an important role in addressing climate change, but the risks to forests from climate change also need to be calculated, according to a newly published paper in Science.
- For forests to be good carbon-removal investments, they need to be relatively permanent, meaning that the plants and soil in a forest will absorb carbon and keep it locked away for decades or centuries. Climate change threatens that permanence.
- The authors lay out a road map for assessing permanence, which includes forest plot data, remote sensing, and vegetation modeling.
- The authors urge policymakers to be sure forest-based, natural climate solutions are done with the best available science. Likewise, scientists are urged to improve tools for sharing information across different groups outside of science.
British Columbia poised to lose ‘white rhino of old growth forests’
- In the public imagination, British Columbia is swathed in green and famous for its towering old growth forests. But while the provincial government says 23% of BC’s forests are old growth, a new study finds that a mere 1% remains with tall trees.
- Intense pressure is now being put on the remaining trees by a forestry industry eager to capitalize on nations desperate for new “carbon neutral” sources of energy, including the revamping of coal-fired power plants to burn wood pellets.
- But while the UN says burning biomass in the form of wood pellets is carbon neutral, ten years-worth of new data says that burning trees to make electricity could help put the world on a glide path to climate catastrophe — exceeding the maximum 2 degree Celsius temperature increase target set by the Paris Climate Agreement.
- A recently elected progressive government in BC is weighing its policy options as it negotiates a new provincial forest plan, trying to satisfy the dire need for forestry jobs and a growing economy, while conserving old growth forests which store large amounts of carbon as a hedge against climate disaster. The outcome is uncertain.
Scientists warn U.S. Congress against declaring biomass burning carbon neutral
- Some 200 U.S. environmental scientists have sent a letter to congressional committee chairs urging they reject new rules proposed in April under the Clean Air Act that would define biomass, when burned to produce energy, as being carbon neutral.
- The scientists say that biomass burning — using wood pellets to produce energy at converted coal-burning power plants — is not only destructive of native forests which store massive amounts of carbon, but also does not reduce carbon emissions.
- A long-standing UN policy, recognizing biomass burning as carbon neutral, has caused the U.S. forestry industry to gear up to produce wood pellets for power plants in Britain, the EU, South Korea and beyond. Scientists warn that the failure to count the emissions produced by such plants could help destabilize the global climate.
- The letter from environmental scientists concludes: “We are hopeful that a new and more scientifically sound direction will be considered by Members [of Congress] that emphasizes forest protections, and a shift away from consumption of wood products and forest biomass energy to help mitigate the climate crisis.”
Pope makes impassioned plea to save the Amazon — will the world listen?
- In a 94-page document entitled “Querida Amazonia” (Dear Amazon), Pope Francis has made an impassioned plea for world leaders, transnational companies, and people everywhere to step up and protect the Amazon rainforest along with the indigenous people who live there and are its best stewards.
- The Amazon is seeing rapid deforestation in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, while violence against indigenous people is rising. Scientists say climate change and deforestation are forcing a forest-to-savanna tipping point, which could lead to a massive tree die-off, the release of huge amounts of CO2, and global climate catastrophe.
- “We are water, air, earth and life of the environment created by God,” Pope Francis writes in Dear Amazon. “For this reason, we demand an end to the mistreatment and destruction of mother Earth. The land has blood, and it is bleeding; the multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth.”
- Faith leaders applauded the pope: “Care for creation and… social justice for indigenous peoples and forest communities are part of one moral fabric,” said Joe Corcoran of the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative. But most media ignored the pope’s message, focusing instead on his verdict disallowing Amazon priests from marrying.
Indigenous, protected lands in Amazon emit far less carbon than areas outside
- A new study calculates the gains and losses in carbon across the Amazon rainforest from deforestation as well as human-caused and naturally occurring degradation of the forest.
- The team found that around 70% of the total carbon emitted from the Amazon between 2003 and 2016 came from areas outside indigenous-held lands and protected areas, despite the fact that these outside areas made up less than half of the total land area.
- The researchers argue that their findings make the case for supporting indigenous communities with “political protection and financial support” to protect carbon stocks in the Amazon necessary to address climate change.
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.
COP25: EU officials say biomass burning policy to come under critical review
- At a COP25 climate summit press conference on Thursday, December 12, Frans Timmermans, executive vice president of the EU and a Dutch politician answered a Mongabay question concerning the UN biomass carbon accounting loophole.
- When asked if the EU would close the loophole, he said: “The issue of biofuels needs to be looked at very carefully. We have to make sure that what we do with biofuels is sustainable and does not do more harm than that it does good.” A second EU official expressed a similar view. The issue won’t likely be reviewed until after 2020.
- This is perhaps the first acknowledgement by a top developed world official that the biomass loophole is a potential problem. The loophole encourages power plants that burn coal (whose carbon emissions are counted) to be converted to biomass — the burning of wood pellets (whose carbon emissions are counted as carbon neutral).
- Recent science shows that burning wood pellets is worse than burning coal, since more pellets must be burned to produce equivalent energy levels to coal. Also replacing plantation forests to achieve carbon neutrality takes many decades, time not available to a world that needs to quickly cut emissions over the next 20 years.
COP25: Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science
- Research has conclusively shown that burning biomass for energy is not carbon neutral. However, a biomass carbon accounting loophole currently enforced by the UN and the Paris Agreement says that burning trees in the form of wood pellets produces zero emissions, and so is classified with solar and wind power.
- Mongabay gained an exclusive interview with Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax, the United Kingdom’s largest biomass energy plant. He dismisses the science and asserts that his firm and $7.6 billion industry are meeting “a responsibility to our community, our shareholders and our colleagues to be a part of the escalating climate crisis.”
- Bill Moomaw — an international researcher on biomass-for-energy, and author of forest reports for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — counters Gardiner’s arguments: “It’s all about the money. The wood pellet industry is a monster out of control,” he said when interviewed at COP25.
- Despite repeated pleas from scientists, COP25 climate summit negotiators in Madrid failed to address the biomass carbon accounting loophole, as they did at COP24 — a lapse that, if allowed to persist, could help push emissions above a 2 degree Celsius planetwide average increase that the UN says could bring climate catastrophe.
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.
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.
Nepal won its first climate grant; now comes the hard work of making it count
- Nepal is set to receive its first grant under the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund, a mechanism established under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to help developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change.
- The funds will go to support the people of Nepal’s Churia region cope with and recover from the shocks and stresses of a changing climate; the area is particularly vulnerable to floods, landslides and soil erosion.
- The proposal focuses on agroforestry and was developed by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Local interest groups were consulted during the process, but some activists argue that some perspectives were sidelined in what was essentially a top-down process.
Philippines freezes climate studies loan over scrutiny of Duterte drug war
- The Philippine government has suspended a $36 million loan from Germany to fund climate change studies in the Southeast Asian nation.
- The loan is one of several from foreign governments and agencies put on hold by the Philippines in retaliation over those countries’ support for a U.N. investigation into alleged human rights abuses in President Duterte’s war on drugs.
- The suspension of the climate studies loan comes at a critical time for the Philippines, which lacks such studies and is also one of the nations most at risk from climate change impacts.
- German grants from last year have not been affected; they fund, among other things, the creation of a National Climate Change Action Plan and assistance for local government units in developing climate-adaptive strategies and accessing climate financing facilities.
Vatican calls landmark meeting to conserve Amazon, protect indigenous peoples
- From October 6-27 Catholic Church bishops from nine Amazon nations, indigenous leaders and environmental activists will convene in Rome at the Vatican to develop a unified strategy for preserving the Amazon rainforest and protecting the region’s indigenous peoples.
- The event is an outgrowth of Pope Francis’ 2015 teaching document known as Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home — an indictment of capitalism’s excesses, global extraction industries, industrial agribusiness, and our consumer society, which the pope mostly holds responsible for climate change, deforestation and endangerment of indigenous cultures.
- The Vatican meeting to discuss the Amazon is seen as a direct threat to national sovereignty by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whose spokesperson earlier this year said of the Amazon synod that “it’s worrying and we want to neutralize it.”
- In a conference call this week, a few of those who will participate in the Amazon synod took a more positive view, saying that: “People are afraid that they’re going to have to change their own interests. But change has to come and the time is now.”
The climate crisis and the pain of losing what we love (commentary)
- World leaders came to the UN last week to decisively tackle climate change again. “This is not a negotiation summit because we don’t negotiate with nature. This is a Climate Action Summit!” declared the UN Secretary-General. But again, global leaders failed and committed to carbon cuts that fall far short of curbing catastrophe.
- In doing so, our leaders committed us to an escalating global environmental crisis that is already unleashing vast changes across Earth’s ecosystems — with many sweeping alterations charted by our scientists, but many other local shifts and absences only noted by those who observe and cherish wild things.
- The loss of familiar weather patterns, plants and animals (from monarchs to native bees) and an invasion of opportunistic living things (Japanese knotweed to Asian longhorned ticks) can foster feelings of vertigo — of being a stranger in a strange land — emotions, so personal and rubbing so raw, they can be hard to describe.
- So I’ve tried to express my own feelings for one place, Vermont, my home, that is today seeing rapid change. At the end of this piece, Mongabay invites you to tally your own natural losses. We’ll share your responses in a later story. This post is a commentary. Views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
Youth climate strikes sweep Asia ahead of UN Climate Action Summit
- When Super-Hurricane Haiyan descended on the Philippines in 2013, it not only left behind more than 7,400 casualties and nearly $5 billion in destruction. It also helped birth a strong youth climate justice movement.
- That movement is now surging across Southeast Asia, with major climate strikes by students in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia on September 20.
- Such acts of defiance are not easy in Asia, where deference and obedience to parents and elders is deeply ingrained. But with the whole world at risk, Asia’s young people are in the streets and determined to save the future for their nations and themselves.
Interfaith leaders step up to protect the world’s ‘sacred’ rainforests
- In June 2017 — in response to the planetary climate crisis — Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist religious leaders joined hands with indigenous peoples from five tropical countries to form the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative (IRI) — devoted to protecting the world’s last great rainforests.
- Since then, IRI has worked to engage congregations of all faiths around the globe in an effort to, through political pressure, protect the rainforests of Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Colombia and Peru — accounting for 70 percent of the world’s tropical forests.
- During Climate Week at the United Nations in New York City starting September 22, IRI will unveil its Faiths for Forests Declaration and action agenda, jumpstarting its global campaign to harness faith-based leadership and the faithful in recognizing tropical forests as “sacred” and humanity’s obligation to provide stewardship to these great bastions of biodiversity.
- IRI recognizes the staggering scope of the challenges that lay ahead — to create and energize a worldwide interfaith movement that will successfully pressure national governments to act on climate — national governments that have long backed industrial agribusiness, mining and timber extraction within the world’s last great rainforests.
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.
When rich economies cut emissions, poor ones stand to benefit, study says
- If higher and middle-income countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, reduced demand could lower oil costs and boost economic growth for low-income countries, according to a study published in the journal Climatic Change in April.
- To benefit from that cheaper oil, low-income countries would have to be exempted from emissions requirements until they reach middle-income status.
- However, emissions last year hit an all-time high, and without drastic emissions reductions, low-income countries currently face economic, social and environmental catastrophe.
As climate chaos escalates in Indian Country, feds abandon tribes
- South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Oglalla Sioux Indian Reservation is one of the most impoverished places in the U.S. But in 2018 and 2019, the reservation was struck by two horrific storms — with economic harm to their homes and livelihoods that the community’s low income residents have found it extraordinarily difficult to absorb.
- High Plains weather has been getting more variable, erratic and destructive: in 2011 came severe drought and wildfires, followed in 2012 by severe flooding. Sometimes these oscillations take the form of high-powered storms, with a rash of tornadoes in 2016, a destructive ice storm in 2018, and a bomb cyclone in 2019.
- According to the National Climate Assessment issued at the end of 2018, “Climate change is expected to exacerbate these [extreme weather] challenges.” But starting with Bill Clinton and continuing under Donald Trump, the federal government has severely slashed federal aid to Indian reservations and their low income residents.
- As a result, Pine Ridge is increasingly forced to rely on its own resources and on creative solutions, including crowdfunded local and national volunteer teams who have risen to the challenge and helped the communities repair storm damage. But as extreme weather intensifies on the High Plains, surviving there will get tougher.
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.
Chinese banks risk supporting soy-related deforestation, report finds
- Chinese financial institutions have little awareness about the risks of deforestation in the soy supply chain, according to a report released May 31 from the nonprofit disclosure platform CDP.
- China imports more than 60 percent of the world’s soy, meaning that the country could play a major role in halting deforestation and slowing climate change if companies and banks focus on stopping deforestation to grow the crop.
- Around 490 square kilometers (189 square miles) of land in Brazil was cleared for soy headed for China in 2017 — about 40 percent of all “converted” land in Brazil that year.
- As the trade war between the U.S. and China continues, China may increasingly look to Latin America for its soy, potentially increasing the chances that land will be cleared to make way for the crop.
’Green’ bonds finance industrial tree plantations in Brazil
- The Environmental Paper Network (EPN), a group of some 140 NGOs with the goal of making the pulp and paper industry more sustainable, released a briefing contending that green or climate bonds issued by Fibria, a pulp and paper company, went to maintaining and expanding plantations of eucalyptus trees.
- The report suggests that the Brazilian company inflated the amount of carbon that new planting would store.
- The author of the briefing also questions the environmental benefits of maintaining industrial monocultures of eucalyptus, a tree that requires a lot of water along with herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer that can impact local ecosystems and human communities.
’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.
Deforestation diminishes access to clean water, study finds
- A recent study compared deforestation data and information on household access to clean water in Malawi.
- The scientists found that the country lost 14 percent of its forest between 2000 and 2010, which had the same effect on access to safe drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall.
- With higher rainfall variability expected in today’s changing climate, the authors suggest that a larger area of forest in countries like Malawi could be a buffer against the impacts of climate change.
It’s Generation Climate (commentary)
- Last year, Greta Thunberg kick-started a movement of youth striking on Fridays for climate action.
- The youth today, those born after 1995, are already telling us their generations’ name: Generation Climate.
- Generation Climate will experience the large-scale impact of global warming after 30 years of inaction.
- This post is part of “Saving Life on Earth: Words on the Wild”, a monthly column by Jeremy Hance, one of Mongabay’s original staff writers.
Defending the Amazon’s uncontacted peoples: Q&A with Julio Cusurichi
- Julio Cusurichi, a Shipibo-Conibo leader, has been working to protect the peoples and forests of his native Madre de Dios region in southeastern Peru.
- Increasingly, illegal gold miners as well as illegal loggers and drug traffickers are proving to be an existential threat for the indigenous people of the region, which concentrates some of the Amazon’s greatest biodiversity.
- In recent years Cusurichi led a successful campaign to create a legally recognized indigenous territory and helped establish a network of indigenous forest monitors when the government abandoned the effort.
- Now, he is working to gain a greater role for indigenous peoples in governing their territories. “The goal is for indigenous people to be the protagonists,” he told Mongabay on a recent visit to Peru’s capital, Lima. “We have to administer the Amazon regions that are our ancestral territories and not just leave it to the government.”
European Parliament to vote on timber legality agreement with Vietnam
- The European Parliament begins debate March 11 on a resolution to consent to the recently signed Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with Vietnam on the trade of timber and timber products from the Southeast Asian country.
- The VPA is the result of nearly eight years of negotiations aimed at stopping the flow of illegally harvested timber into the EU.
- Members of parliament are expected to vote in favor of the resolution on March 12, though officials in the EU and outside observers have voiced concerns about the legality of the wood imported into Vietnam from other countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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.
The science of combating climate science misinformation
- Researchers are increasingly looking into how to counter the climate science misinformation being fed to the public, and a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change this month rounds up some of the key insights from this emerging field of research.
- Researchers identified a number of crucial advancements in the social sciences and used them as the basis of a coordinated set of strategies for confronting the institutional network that enables the spread of climate science misinformation.
- The researchers grouped those strategies into four inter-connected issue areas — public inoculation, legal strategies, political mechanisms, and financial transparency.
The case for forests’ prominent role in holding off climate change
- The authors of a new report argue that investment in forests as a climate change mitigation strategy is just as important as addressing emissions from the energy sector.
- Despite the recognized potential contributions of forests to slowing the warming of the earth, they aren’t typically seen as a permanent solution to climate change.
- The authors of the report contend that provisions in the Paris rulebook, approved at the UN climate conference in Poland, are designed to hold countries responsible for changes to their forests so that such ‘reversals’ won’t go unaccounted for.
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: 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.
Feeds: news | india | latam | brasil | indonesia