In three vital and interrelated areas – climate, development and nature – the next UK government could play a significant role in driving progress at a critical time.

It needs to start office on day one with a plan that positions the UK ahead of key summits on those issues – summits that will have a critical bearing on people, planet, and future generations. The time to start preparing is now.

The NATO summit begins within days of the UK general election now planned for July 4. The year ends with G20 meetings in Brazil, a global biodiversity summit (COP16) in Colombia, and the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan. A new UK government could play an important role in rebuilding trust and make a positive contribution to the world by adopting far-sighted positions on climate, development and nature. 

On climate, the next government could immediately signal its intent by comprehensively stepping up its efforts to meet its own national climate commitments, after a period of drift and uncertainty. There is no more powerful message from the UK to the cause of global climate action than the country decisively implementing its own pledges, through concerted action on green energy, transport, infrastructure and land use.  

Progress at home needs to be matched in real time by leadership on the international stage in negotiating an appropriately ambitious and credible ‘new collective quantified goal’ on climate finance.

Rich nations meet $100bn climate finance goal – two years late

A strong finance outcome at COP29 would acknowledge the historic responsibility for climate change from some of the wealthiest nations, including the UK, while ensuring that all countries play their full part in mobilising the flows of public as well as private finance needed to transition to a 1.5 degree-aligned, resilient and nature-positive economy. Successful resolution of the finance negotiations this year in Baku would open up the possibility for a more ambitious round of climate action en route to COP30 in Belem, Brazil in November 2025. 

Development finance

On international development, the UK can move fast by upholding and restoring its development finance commitments, including to some of the world’s poorest people; by updating its toolkit to meet today’s interlinked development, climate and nature challenges; and by using all of the means at its disposal (including debt relief, multilateral development bank reform, and capital increases) to drive global financial architecture reform and a successful replenishment of the International Development Association 21 later this year.  

The UK can also lead the way in pressing for international support to be integrated and aligned behind countries’ own inclusive, green development plans; and by making the case for multilateral trade reform aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement.  

In addition, the UK has a particular responsibility to resume a global leadership role on debt relief, a role it last played in the early 2000s during the era of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It could take legal and other action to unstick debt cancellation processes for some of the most indebted countries, by bringing private creditors to the table and brokering concerted action on debt relief at the G20.  

Global billionaires tax to fight climate change, hunger rises up political agenda

The UK should lend its political support to the Brazilian government’s laudable G20 initiative on tax reform, as well as its important work on climate and hunger; and support other promising efforts to raise revenue for development, such as levies on shipping and aviation. The next finance minister should consider the UK’s global role on these issues as being as centrally important to their legacy as issues of national economics; and ensure that the UK drives global progress on new flows of finance for climate and development, at the scale set out by economists Nick Stern and Vera Songwe in their 2022 report.   

Protect and restore nature

On nature, the UK should redouble its actions to protect and restore nature and biodiversity at home, including through pursuing more sustainable farming and land management. At the same time, the UK should use its influence and finance to drive global progress on the nature agenda, both in terrestrial ecosystems as well as the ocean. The goal here is to protect at least 30% of the planet by 2030 and to mobilise major flows of public and private finance to support countries, local communities and Indigenous Peoples to protect their ecosystems.

At the UN biodiversity conference in Colombia in October, the UK could assume a critical role on the global stage by making the case for the protection and restoration of natural ecosystems as fundamental to human life, to addressing the climate crisis, and as one of the most effective forms of pro-poor development assistance.   

At a deeply troubling and fractured time in multilateral affairs, revitalised global leadership from the next UK government on climate, development and nature could make a very constructive contribution to securing the better, fairer, more sustainable and more peaceful world which is still within our grasp to secure.   

 Editor’s note: The latest BBC analysis of opinion polls ahead of the July 4 general election in the UK shows the opposition Labour Party with 45% of voter support, while the ruling Conservative Party trails with 24%.

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Eight years after, the Indonesian government claims to have made huge progress, with as much as 3.66 million hectares of peatland declared “restored” in areas managed by plantation companies. But these claims are not supported by data the government has made public, an analysis by The Gecko Project has found. 

The government’s statements appear to hinge on a narrow definition of “restoration” that deems peatlands restored when groundwater levels have been raised to 40 centimetres below the surface.  

The analysis of government data indicates that even by this measure, the areas “restored” have never reached the figures cited in official documentation and may in fact be far lower. Many of these peats sit on land licensed to timber companies. 

​​The data also shows that the area of peatland that meets this 40cm threshold also fluctuates wildly as water levels rise and fall, sometimes dropping as low as half a million hectares – a fraction of the area claimed as “restored” by the government.

​​The Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry, known as KLHK, did not respond to written questions, or to extensive attempts to seek comment on our findings.​ 

Environmental researchers who spoke to The Gecko Project viewed the implementation of a system to monitor peatland restoration as a positive step. But some also expressed scepticism about the government’s claims of success and how it was arriving at its figures. 

In the meantime, with Indonesia heading into what meteorologists predict could be an extreme dry season this year, the findings suggest that large areas of peatland could be far more vulnerable to burning than the government has acknowledged.  

The coming months, said David Taylor, a professor and peatland expert at the National University of Singapore, would serve as “a good test” of the government’s claims. 

An excavator operates in peatland covered by haze from fires in a concession belonging to PT Kaswari Unggul (KU) in Sumatra, Indonesia. (Photo: Greenpeace)

The repair job starts 

Despite covering only around three percent of the planet’s land surface, peatlands store around a third of all the world’s soil carbon.  

In Indonesia, where they cover more than 20 million hectares, peatlands have long been prone to fire during the dry season, especially during El Niño events. But the risks have ​been worsened by the draining of peatlands ​to allow cultivation of oil palm and timber plantations. 

The government set out to undo some of that damage by issuing a series of decrees and regulations, beginning in 2016, which aimed to rewet drained peatlands and replant vegetation.  

Gas lock-in: Debt-laden Ghana gambles on LNG imports

According to these guidelines, success would be assessed through multiple metrics, including plant growth and keeping the groundwater level at no lower than 40cm below the surface. Some research has suggested that higher water levels offer better protection against fires. 

A specially-established government body, now named the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency, or BRGM, was given authority for overseeing peat restoration in land controlled by communities or the government. 

However, several million hectares of peatland fall within land already licensed to plantation companies. ​KLHK​ ordered companies to restore peatlands within their concessions and report back their progress.  

Mission accomplished? 

According to KLHK reports, companies have made progress in restoring peatlands. The KLHK website, for example, states that 3.4 million hectares of peatland within concession areas were “restored” between 2015 and 2019. 

A more recent KLHK report from 2022 states that “as of December 2021 (peatland restoration) had reached 3.66 million hectares.” 

But the KLHK’s methods for assessing which peatlands are restored can be narrow, experts say, as they appear to focus only on rewetting lands and not on other metrics. 

While companies are required to raise peat groundwater levels to at least 40cm belowground, other phases of restoration work, such as replanting native vegetation, appear to have been sidelined, leaving “rewetting” to be used as a proxy for restoration.  

In a 2022 report, the ministry registered fewer than 6,000 hectares as having “vegetation rehabilitation”. 

“Green” finance bankrolls forest destruction in Indonesia

A data analysis by The Gecko Project also shows that, even under the more generous approach of counting only rewetted peatlands as restored, the numbers still fall short of what the government says has been restored. 

Still, KLHK has claimed that by 2019, rewetting work alone had already reduced carbon dioxide emissions by more than 190 million tons – equivalent to the annual national emissions of the United Arab Emirates. KLHK did not respond to questions about the data supporting these calculations. 

Restoration falls short? 

KLHK has not made public a list of areas deemed to be restored and did not respond to requests for this information. However, it has published the areas that have been rewetted to various levels. 

Using this data, The Gecko Project identified peatlands within concession areas and compared their water levels to the 3.66 million hectares that KLHK claims have been restored.  

At a more detailed glance, the data shows big fluctuations in the “rewetted” area, suggesting that water levels are not being maintained on a stable basis.  

For example, at the beginning of 2019, during a wet season that saw torrential floods in many parts of the country, KLHK registered that around 3.5 million hectares of peatland inside concession areas had groundwater levels at 40cm belowground or higher.  

But in the middle of the 2022 dry season, the area rewetted was down to around just half a million hectares. 

Fire risk 

The data analysis also identified multiple “dry” concession areas in which water levels fell consistently below 40cm in the past year, highlighting a possibly heightened fire risk as this year’s El Niño event progresses.  

As an example, PT Rimba Hutani Mas, a pulpwood plantation company and supplier of the major paper and pulp firm Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), manages nearly 70,000 hectares in South Sumatra province, the majority of which is on peatlands according to government maps.  

Large sections of PT Rimba Hutani Mas’s peatland had water levels below the 40cm threshold​ over the last year​, KLHK data shows. According to ​the ​ministry, concession holders that have groundwater at this level “should carry out field checks immediately and improve or repair water management infrastructure in the field.” 

In 2015, army officers and firefighters try to extinguish fires in peatland areas outside the city of Palangka Raya in Borneo’s Central Kalimantan province. Photo: (Aulia Erlangga/CIFOR)

But the company was subject to legal action by Singapore’s National Environment Agency after evidence emerged that fires in its concession had contributed substantially to the haze of 2015. APP argued at the time that almost all the fires in its concession areas had been started outside those areas. 

APP did not respond to specific questions about water levels in this supplier’s concession area. The company said it has been submitting “all the required data” to KLHK and pointed to its 2022 Sustainability Report. 

Job not done 

Peat researchers agree that fluctuations in water level are to be expected in peatlands, whether or not land is being managed. This complicates the use of groundwater level as a standalone measure of restoration success.  

Water levels are highly dependent on external climate conditions, noted Muh Taufik, a tropical peatland researcher at IPB University. In the wet season, the water table could be at ground level or even above ground, while in the dry season it can fall to a metre or more below the surface, he said. 

The topography of the land itself can influence the water table, too – valleys are more likely than slopes to remain wet. “It’s very difficult to maintain the water table around 40cm,” Taufik said. 

Such variability reinforces some researchers’ concerns about judging restoration success on the basis of water level data alone. 

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

While getting water back into dried-out peatlands is important, “it’s definitely not ‘job done’” once the water table reaches 40cm, said Dominick Spracklen, a professor of biosphere-atmosphere interactions at the University of Leeds. Rather, he said, “it is a good proxy for things moving in the right direction.” 

David Taylor, from the University of Singapore, suggested that rewetting should be seen as a first step.  

While having a monitoring system for peat rewetting is a positive step, he said, it’s important to take a more holistic approach to peat restoration that acknowledges the time and multiple steps involved – particularly reintroducing plants and allowing natural vegetation to grow in the absence of peat-damaging plantation activities. 

Uncertain figures 

Gusti, the professor at Tanjungpura University said it’s “very complicated” to determine whether the ministry’s peatland restoration claims have been achieved or not.  

Separate KLHK documents appear to acknowledge much lower success rates than claimed by officials. A 2020 report, for example, noted that, out of 280 concession areas, just 60 were found to have “actually improved their performance of peatland ecosystems management.” 

Fieldwork published in 2021 by the nonprofit Pantau Gambut concluded that “most companies” had failed to implement plans to restore peat. 

The implications of these failings, and the fluctuations in water levels, may become apparent in the coming months, as dry weather continues to intensify in Indonesia in the first El Niño year since 2019.1 By mid-June, KLHK reported that fires in 2023 had already affected more than 28,000 hectares of forest and other land. 

“Big El Niños over the last thirty years or so have been associated with drought here in southeast Asia [and with] peatland fires,” said Taylor.  

Fires can burn even on pristine peatlands, he said, but if Indonesia’s restoration work has been successful, it should help limit some of the damage. “I think it’s going to be a test of claims that have been made that these peatlands have been restored.” 

This story was published in partnership with The Gecko Project.

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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has staked his international reputation on improving Brazil’s environmental standing, had been pushing for the region to unite behind a common policy of ending deforestation by 2030 – one he has already adopted.

Instead, the joint declaration issued on Tuesday in the Brazilian city of Belem created an alliance for combating forest destruction, with countries left to pursue their own individual deforestation goals.

The document also leaves out any mentions to halting fossil fuel contracts in the Amazon rainforest, a proposal that was championed by the Colombian President Gustavo Petro but ultimately failed to make it into the final text.

The Brazilian coalition of climate NGOs, Climate Observatory, said the declaration fell short of expectations, adding the agreement “fails the rainforest and the planet”.

Pressure grows on governments and banks to stop supporting Amazon oil and gas

Slow action

The failure of the eight Amazon countries to agree on a pact to protect their own forests points to the larger, global difficulties at forging an agreement to combat climate change. Many scientists say policymakers are acting too slowly to head off catastrophic global warming.

Lula and other national leaders left Tuesday’s meeting without commenting on the declaration. Presidents from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru attended the summit, while Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela sent other top officials.

Brazil’s Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira said in a press briefing that the issue of deforestation “in no way whatsoever will divide the region” and cited “an understanding about deforestation” in the declaration, without elaborating.

As Guyana shows, carbon offsets will not save the Amazon rainforest

This week’s summit brought together the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) for the first time in 14 years, with plans to reach a broad agreement on issues from fighting deforestation to financing sustainable development.

Márcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Brazilian NGO coalition Climate Observatory, said the summit’s declaration is a “first step” but added it still lacks “concrete responses to the situation we’re dealing with”.

“The planet is melting, we are breaking temperature records every day. It is not possible that, in a scenario like this, eight Amazonian countries cannot put in a statement, in bold letters, that deforestation needs to be zero and that exploring for oil in the middle of the forest is not a good idea,” said Astrini.

Oil in the Amazon?

Tensions emerged in the lead up to the summit around diverging positions on deforestation and oil development.

Fellow Amazon countries also rebuffed Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro’s ongoing campaign to end new oil development in the Amazon. In his speech on Tuesday, Petro likened the left’s desire to keep drilling for oil to the right-wing denial of climate science.

He said the idea of making a gradual “energy transition” away from fossil fuels was a way to delay the work needed to stop climate change.

G20 climate talks fail to deliver emission cuts despite leadership pleas

Civil society organisations accused the Brazilian government of opposing a mention to fossil fuels in the final text, adding the country wanted to “bury” any mentions of a fossil fuel phase out in the region.

Brazil is weighing whether to develop a potentially huge offshore oil find near the mouth of the Amazon River and the country’s northern coast, which is dominated by rainforest.

“What we are discussing in Brazil today is of an extensive and large area – in my vision perhaps the last frontier of oil and gas before … the energy transition,” Brazil’s Energy Minister Alexandre Silveira told reporters after Petro’s speech.

Silveira said they should conduct research into what oil is there in order to make a decision on the issue.

Illegal mining

Beyond deforestation, the summit also did not fix a deadline on ending illegal gold mining, although leaders agreed to cooperate on the issue and to better combat cross-border environmental crime.

The final joint statement, called the Belem Declaration, strongly asserted indigenous rights and protections, while also agreeing to cooperate on water management, health, common negotiating positions at climate summits, and sustainable development.

As Reuters previously reported, the declaration additionally established a science body to meet annually and produce authoritative reports on science related to the Amazon rainforest, akin to the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change.

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As delegates trudged through the snow, it looked like Copenhagen for most of the two weeks. World leaders weren’t invited and on Tuesday night, more than 60 negotiators from developing countries stormed out of finance talks. Ministers arrived on Thursday with a mountain to climb.

But climb it they did! In the early hours of Monday morning, China’s environment minister Huang Runqiu banged his gavel down on the Kunming-Montreal agreement. There were strong complaints from some African countries, led by the rainforest-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, but the deal was done.

They agreed to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, to mobilise $200bn for nature protection, set up a new nature fund under the Global Environment Facility and get rid of at least $500bn a year worth of nature-harming subsidies by 2030.

Like the Paris agreement, it is voluntary. Nobody will force governments to protect anything and there’s no guarantee the sum of their individual pledges will add up to any of the targets above. But it’s far better than most nature-watchers were expecting.

This week’s stories

• Momentum grows towards 2050 zero carbon shipping target
• ‘Kunming-Montreal’ deal sets up new fund for biodiversity by 2023
• Cop15 global nature deal passes despite DR Congo’s objection
• Mexico’s new climate plan is worse than its old one, analysts say

Sweating for sweets

In India, we’ve continued our series on how climate change is worsening the lives of India’s sugar farmers. A 46C heatwave is bad enough from an air-conditioned office. It’s quite another if you’re working 16 hours a day in a sugar field. Even worse if you’re female and expected to do housework on top of that and lift heavy bundles of sugarcane while pregnant.

The sugar grown in these fields is sold to big companies like Nestlé, Coca Cola and Pepsi. Teenager Dhanvir Kumar, who joins in the harvest on his family farm, had an uncomfortable message for those with a sweet tooth. “We grow sugar but can’t afford to buy sugar,” he said, “drinking tea with sugar is like a crime.”

The human cost of sugar

• Cost of a KitKat: Big brands leave sugar farmers at the mercy of climate extremes
• India’s female cane cutters face child marriage and hysterectomy
• Migrant labourers suffer exploitation in India’s sugar fields
• India’s sugarcane farmers struggle to cope with droughts and floods

The post Breakthrough for nature protection – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

A report commissioned by Business for Nature estimates $1.8 trillion is spent each year on subsidising destructive activities for nature such as the growth of fossil fuels, monocultures and overfishing.

The European Union has backed a proposal at the Cop15 biodiversity summit to redirect harmful subsidies towards activities that protect nature, as well as eliminating harmful subsidies by 2025.  

“As a priority, existing resources need to be used more effectively, including by aligning all financial flows with nature-positive objectives and by addressing harmful subsidies,” said the European bloc in a statement. 

UN nature pact nears its ‘Copenhagen or Paris’ moment

Countries like India and Japan have opposed entirely eradicating subsidies. India’s lead negotiator, Vinod Matur, told Carbon Copy the country’s farmers “who are poor and disadvantaged need both social and economic support”. Japan pushed to remove references to agricultural and fishing subsidies in the lead up to the negotiations.

Argentina, one of the world’s largest meat producers, supported the elimination of harmful subsidies but questioned the world’s capacity to actually redirect them, considering it a form of “creative accounting” to justify current subsidies. 

One Latin American negotiator, who wished to remain anonymous criticised the EU’s position. “We think the situation is concerning. We think the lack of flexibility of some developed countries is particularly worrying,” they said.

Sweating the small stuff

It is a key battleground this week when the issue is formally discussed in plenary negotiations, said Costa Rica’s lead negotiator Eugenia Arguedas. Costa Rica is chairing a coalition to protect 30% of the planet’s land and water ecosystems by 2030.

Li Lin, senior director of policy and advocacy at WWF, added that countries focused on “minutiae” during the first week of talks, leaving the “big-ticket items” to the second week. “They have left themselves a lot to do in the next few days,” he said.

Almost 200 countries have gathered in Montreal to negotiate the world’s strategy to reverse biodiversity loss and protect the globe’s frail remaining ecosystems, which are key to stopping climate change.

A recent UN scientific report warned that at least a million species are threatened with extinction, an “unprecedented” decline in all of human history.  

Opening the talks, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said that divesting harmful subsidies is one of the key outcomes expected.

“[We need a deal] that addresses the root causes of this destruction — harmful subsidies, misdirected investment, unsustainable food systems, and wider patterns of consumption and production,” Guterres said.

Observers agreed that this will be one of the main clashing points, as it has been during the previous negotiations leading up to the Montreal summit. But the head of IUCN’s forests and land team Carole Saint-Laurent said these redirected subsidies could be a fresh source of resources.

“We see tremendous potential in redirecting harmful subsidies to investments in restoration of ecosystems,” said Saint-Laurent, who added this could become a “win-win” for all countries.

Overfishing breakthrough

Countries made some progress in June, when the World Trade Organization (WTO) reached an agreement to ban certain kinds of unsustainable fishing subsidies, an issue that had stalled since 2011.

For the first time, countries agreed to ban subsidies for unregulated fisheries, fisheries targeting overfished stocks and fisheries in the “unregulated” high seas. Now, two thirds of WTO member states need to formally accept the agreement and start implementing it.

World leaders not invited to attend critical UN biodiversity summit

But after almost two years of online and in-person negotiations and with only a week left to reach a successful outcome, observers have also warned of the risk of not reaching an agreement in Montreal.

Campaigners have also called out delegates on the slow progress in other topics, such as a mechanism to monitor each country’s actions to meet the targets.

“Negotiators look to be taking a hatchet to the ratchet here in Montreal. We are sleepwalking into repeating the mistakes we made in Aichi [where the last deal was struck in 2010]. We are at risk of having vague commitments with no substance,” said Guido Broekhoven, Head of Policy Research and Development at WWF.

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After a two-year delay and a change of location, the UN biodiversity summit aims to halt nature loss by 2030 and restore ecosystems. It could either be a success like the signing of the Paris Agreement or a dramatic failure like the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen.

“Anything can happen. It would be terrible if we had a ‘Copenhagen’ because we would lose a golden opportunity to protect nature,” said Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO of the Global Environmental Facility, the largest funder of biodiversity protection. 

Countries are set to define targets to stop biodiversity loss for the next ten years, with a coalition of more than a hundred nations calling to protect 30% of all land and ocean ecosystems by 2030. Big forested countries such as China, Brazil and Indonesia are yet to join the coalition.

A draft prepared in the lead up to the event remains disputed. Initially the text was “technically quite good” said Brian O’Donnell, director of the advocacy organization Campaign for Nature. But “we’ve had two years of online negotiations. What started as a very good framework has ended up almost all in square brackets” – indicating a lack of consensus.

Leadership vacuum

The meeting was originally scheduled to take place in 2020 in Kunming, China, but was repeatedly delayed over Covid concerns. Eventually Montreal offered to take over as host city. China keeps the presidency of the talks.

China has not officially invited world leaders. It fell to UN biodiversity chief Elizabeth Maruma Mrema to urge them to attend the event instead of the football World Cup, which is taking place in Qatar at the same time.

Scientists warn that a million species are threatened with extinction, due to the climate crisis and other threats like pollution and deforestation.

Analysis: What was decided at Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh?

Addressing the issue, however, is also a form of climate action, said Kiliparti Ramakrishna, senior advisor on ocean and climate policy at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Nature-based solutions are directly connected with biodiversity and yet we treat [climate and biodiversity] separately. That is not good,” he said.

There were some signs of that changing when Cop27 talks concluded in Egypt on Sunday. In a first for the UN climate process, the Sharm el-Sheikh Implentation Plan encouraged countries to consider “nature-based solutions or ecosystem-based approaches” to climate action.

In the past decade, countries agreed to a ten-year plan called the Aichi targets, aimed at halting biodiversity loss. A UN summary report shows countries failed to meet a single one of those targets.

“(Countries) set these strategies only once a decade. The past strategy failed and so this is the time to get it right. Biodiversity is declining too rapidly,” said O’Donnell. 

Funding gap

Rodríguez explained the lack of sufficient funds was one of the main reasons for the failure of the Aichi targets. That will be key this time around, both in setting up the agreement but also in its implementation.

Even if an agreement is reached, “it’s still just paper”, said Rodriguez. “Implementing (the targets) requires public policies and strong institutions. But many countries require investments to build those capacities in the first place,” he added.

The latest draft includes the target of mobilizing $200 billion per year, “including new, additional and effective financial resources”. To Ramakrishna, the Montreal summit “could be a Paris moment if we get the resolution on finance”. 

Crucially, a deal on finance must phase out subsidies for nature-destructive practices, Rodriguez said. This was also one of the Aichi targets, but “relatively few countries have taken steps even to identify incentives that harm biodiversity,” the UN summary report says. 

“Harmful subsidies far outweigh positive incentives in areas such as fisheries and the control of deforestation,” adds the report. The draft deal includes the goal of reducing these subsidies by $500 billion per year.

Other critical issues remain contested, among them the use of genetic resources. African countries have called on developed nations to pay for genetic information on their biodiversity, which is used in industries such as pharmaceutical companies.  

However, in the preliminary round of negotiations in Nairobi this year, countries did not agree on this issue.

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Well unfortunately, the same holds true when the kids are Chinese president Xi Jinping and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and the project is saving the world’s wildlife and the forests and carbon that go with it.

After four years of talks, the CBD nature summit is just two months away. But the UN’s biodiversity chief told Climate Home this week that “as the plans go, we may not have the heads of state and government”.

Because of Covid-19 restrictions, the talks have been moved from China’s Kunming to Canada’s Montreal but it’s still up to China to send out the invites.

Xi is not expected to show up amid Covid fears and deteriorating relations with Canada over the arrest of a Huawei executive.

Without leaders, the event risks being ignored and overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and even the football world cup.

This week’s news…

• Lula will update Brazil’s ‘insufficient’ climate plans if elected: advisor
• EU outlines funding options to help climate victims recover
• Ugandan police ‘brutally arrest’ anti-pipeline protesters outside EU embassy
• World leaders not invited to attend critical UN biodiversity summit
• Demand response: A win-win solution to climate and energy price crises
• EU ministers back €20 billion plan to ditch Russian fossil fuels
• As Brazil’s Congress swings further right, environmentalists pin hopes on Lula

A new Brazilian government would be just the boost the talks need but nature-lovers will have to bite their nails all month after leftist Lula failed to defeat Amazon-destroying Jair Bolsonaro in the first round.

Lula is still the favourite to win on 30 October though and his environmental spokesperson told Climate Home this week that Brazil will update its “insufficient” climate plan with a focus on saving the Amazon.

“Rather than trudging in the fossil-fuel footsteps of those who went before, we can leapfrog this dirty energy and embrace the benefits of clean power”

Kenya’s new president William Ruto will not join African nations’ dash for gas

The post Odd couple bungle nature talks – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

A draft decision published on Wednesday emphasised “the critical importance of nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches, including protecting and restoring forests, to reducing emissions, enhancing removals and protecting biodiversity”.

While the importance of nature featured in the negotiated outcome of Cop25 in Madrid, if adopted it would be the first time “nature-based solutions” made it into a UN climate pact.

On Friday, the term nature-based solutions was replaced with the phrase “protecting, conserving and restoring nature” in an updated version of the text.

Supporters see nature-based solutions as a way to connect the climate and biodiversity agendas, setting the scene for an effective biodiversity deal in Kunming, China next year. Critics object to the implied commodification of the natural world and say the term is misused by big business to justify continued pollution.

Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the Paris Agreement, said at a press conference on Thursday that she hoped nature-based solutions would make it into the final pact. “It’s good that we are going away from the vision of nature being offsets – and more towards the idea of restoration, of nature being an important element of the climate package,” she said. 

“More and more we will see that it is impossible to distinguish between biodiversity and climate. They’re two parts of the same problem,” she said.

A space is opening up to discuss oil and gas exit at Cop26. Lobbyists are pushing back. 

An observer of the talks told Climate Home News that the UK, Colombia, France, the EU, US, Singapore, Fiji, DRC, Mexico, Norway, Australia, Canada and Liberia are all pushing for nature-based solutions to be included in the final Cop26 text.

At a meeting of heads of delegation on Wednesday, Bolivian negotiator Diego Pacheco Balanza objected to the phrase on behalf of the like-minded development countries (LMDCs).

“This text assumes that nature is only in service of people’s needs, but nature has an intrinsic value. It is sacred. That must be reflected. ‘Nature-based solutions’ were never negotiated here,” Bolivia’s negotiator said, as reported by an observer who attended the meeting. 

China, the host country for biodiversity talks in April, is a member of the LMDCs. The Chinese delegation did not make anyone available to comment.

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Gavin Edwards, WWF’s nature lead at Cop26, told Climate Home News that the inclusion highlights that “nature has truly arrived in the climate discourse” and helps “bridge the silo between the nature and climate community”.

He said that if the final Cop26 text references nature-based solutions, it will “strengthen the hand for it to be included in the CBD [Kunming biodiversity agreement]”. It was removed from an early draft of the biodiversity convention following opposition by some African governments, Brazil and Argentina.

“It will be very hard for [nature-based solutions] not to be an outcome in the CBD if it is agreed at Cop[26],” said Edwards. “More governments are keen to link these two agendas, of biodiversity and climate. Nature-based solutions [provide] that linkage.”

Indigenous delegates at Cop26 (Photo: UNFCCC/Flickr)

Indigenous leaders from forest regions have mixed feelings about the concept, stressing that it must come with safeguards for their rights.

“Our position is that indigenous governance is the quintessential nature-based solution. Therefore, indigenous peoples’ governance should be recognised and supported as a nature-based solution. For other nature-based solutions projects, there should be safeguards and full respect for indigenous peoples’ rights,” Jing Corpuz, an Igorot leader from the Philippines and policy lead at the non-profit Nia Tero, told Climate Home News.

Genilda Maria Rodrigues, an indigenous observer from the Kaingang community in southern Brazil, said she welcomes nature-based solutions as restoration of forests is urgently needed in her region. “We are approaching the point of no return,” she said. “We want someone to help our community reforest the area…

“But it’s very important that it is done in a transparent way. We don’t want it [done in] any way, but in the right way, with the consultation of the indigenous community,” she added.

China-US announce deal at Cop26 to accelerate climate action this decade

There are also concerns that polluters could use nature-based projects to offset rather than reduce their own emissions.

Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International, told Climate Home News, that nature-based solutions often “become synonymous with carbon offsets”.

“When they do, they end up compounding the injustice of climate change,” she said, adding that there is currently no official definition, criteria or safeguarding mechanism for nature-based solutions. 

“We’d rather see language that recognises the critical importance of biodiversity and ecosystems to addressing the climate crisis, that doesn’t set up nature for being a solution to corporations’ pollution,” she said.

This article was updated on 12 November 2021 to reflect new language in the Cop26 cover text. 

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Source: Flickr/foto43

By Gerard Wynn

Governments need estimates for the cost of climate change, to prod them into taking action to curb emissions, US climate scientists, lawyers and economists will say this week in a comment article in the journal Nature.

The experts defended the notion of putting a dollar cost on the expected damages from climate change, a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) poured cold water on the idea, saying that such estimates could be limiting and overly deterministic.

The IPCC last week released the second in its three-part series documenting the threat of climate change, focusing on impacts including droughts, floods and rising seas.

Estimates of monetary cost of climate damage were “difficult”, given the problem of unexpected impacts, especially if greenhouse gas emissions and global average temperatures continued to rise, said IPCC lead author Stanford University’s Chris Field.

The US experts countered that costs estimates were still needed, to guide policymakers in their efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, in a comment article released ahead of formal publication on Thursday in the journal Nature.

“As legal, climate-science and economics experts, we believe that the current estimate for the social cost of carbon is useful for policy-making, notwithstanding the significant uncertainties,” said the economists, lawyers and climate scientists from New York University, Stanford University, Rutgers University, the University of Virginia, Princeton University and the University of Gothenburg.

The IPCC will publish its third and final instalment on April 14, focusing on the policy options for cutting carbon emissions, and will include estimates for the cost of such emissions cuts.

The experts writing in Nature argued that such costs had to be compared with the cost of climate impacts, to help policymakers draw the line between carbon mitigation and adaptation.

“Governments, agencies and companies use such estimates (of the cost of unlimited climate change) to guide decisions about how much to invest in reducing emissions.”

“Yet the social-cost benchmark is under fire. Industry groups, politicians — including leaders of the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives — and some academics say that uncertainties render the estimate useless.”

Economics

The IPCC is an intergovernmental body currently with 195 countries as members, established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view.

Representatives of its member governments convene in Berlin, Germany, this week to approve the IPCC’s final report.

The report describes the recent trajectory of rising carbon emissions, and the considerable challenge for cutting emissions, both from industry including transport and energy generation, and the wider economy, including cities and homes.

Global growth in carbon emissions has accelerated over the past decade, underlining the scale of the task to cut emissions while the world population and global living standards grow.

The experts writing this week in the journal Nature said that estimates of the cost of climate damage could jolt governments to take action.

“The leading economic models all point in the same direction: that climate change causes substantial economic harm, justifying immediate action to reduce emissions,” they said.

“In fact, because the models omit some major risks associated with climate change, such as social unrest and disruptions to economic growth, they are probably understating future harms. The alternative — assigning no value to reductions in carbon dioxide emissions — would lead to regulation of greenhouse gases that is even more lax.”

“A broader programme involving more people exploring more phenomena is needed to better estimate the social cost of carbon and to guide policy-makers. Otherwise policies will become untethered from economic realities.”

The authors quoted a US analysis last year which estimated the cost of climate change at $12 to $64 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted in 2020, depending on assumptions about how future damages are valued in today’s money. They said that such a range could be an underestimate, however, given the danger of severe climate changes and of long-lasting impacts on global economic growth.

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Fish are set to be disproportionately affected by rising temperatures from climate change, warns research (Source: USFWS Pacific/Creative Commons)

Warming oceans as a result of climate change will cause fish to shrink, according to a new report.

The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared 169 terrestrial, freshwater and marine species, and found that while land-dwelling animals will also shrink, the change will disproportionately affect fish.

Aquatic animals could shrink 10 times more than those on land, according to researchers. The researchers warn this could have negative implications for aquatic food webs and the production of food from aquaculture.

Over 100 million tonnes of fish are eaten world-wide each year, and many communities, particularly in the developing world, depend on fish for their animal protein intake.

Over 50 million people are also directly dependant on fishing for their livelihoods.

“Given that fish and other aquatic organisms provide three billion people with at least 15% of their animal protein intake, our work highlights the importance of understanding how warming in the future will affect the ocean, lake and river dwelling species,” said Dr Jack Forster, lead author of the report.

The researchers said the difference between land and marine based animals, could be down to the lower oxygen availability in the water, compared to the air.

They said the warming temperatures would mean organisms needed more oxygen, but aquatic species will have a harder to satisfy the increased demand. Reducing the size at which they mature is one way to do this.

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Almost all of the world’s coral reefs are at risk unless drastic action is taken to keep temperature rises below 2°C, according to new research.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, found that unless effective emission reduction policies are implemented urgently approximately two thirds of corals could suffer by 2030.

“Our findings show that under current assumptions regarding thermal sensitivity, coral reefs might no longer be prominent coastal ecosystems if global mean temperatures actually exceed 2°C above the pre-industrial level,” said lead-author Katja Frieler.

“Without a yet uncertain process of adaptation or acclimation, however, already about 70% of corals are projected to suffer from long-term degradation by 2030 even under an ambitious mitigation scenario.”

Researchers warn that to save 50% of the world's reefs, temperature rises should be limited to below 1.5 degrees (Source: USFWS/Creative Commons)

The researchers warn that to protect at least half of global coral reefs increases in warming must be limited to 1.5°C.

Coral reefs are home to a quarter of all ocean species. They protect coastlines, attract tourists and are a source of food to over 500 million people worldwide.

Ocean warming and acidification – both driven by man-made climate change – pose major threats to coral ecosystems.

Corals get most of their energy from the algae which covers them. This relationship between coral and algae can breakdown in warmer waters, causing coral bleaching. While corals can survive this, if warming conditions persist for long periods of time they can die.

While it is possible for corals to adapt to rising temperatures, the latest study also takes into account the double effect of ocean acidification.

The study predicts the process of acidification – which threatens the calcification process which is crucial to the growth or corals – would reduce their resilience to warming temperatures.

The researchers, from the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the University of British of Columbia and the Universities of Melbourne and Queensland, warned that this latest study shows how close we are to a world without coral reefs.

“The window of opportunity to preserve the majority of coral reefs, part of the world’s natural heritage, is small,” said report co-author Malte Meinshausen. “We close this window, if we follow another decade of ballooning global greenhouse-gas emissions.”

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Deforestation could significantly reduce tropical rainfall, according to new research.

The study, published in Nature, found that air passing over extensive forests in the Earth’s tropical regions produces at least twice as much rain as air passing over little vegetation. In some cases these forests affected rainfall thousands of kilometres away, according to the study.

The researchers warn this would have dramatic impacts on farmers working within tropical basins – such as the Amazon and Congo – as well as reducing their hydro-electricity capacity from receding river flows.

Since 1970, over 600,000 square kilometers of Amazon rainforest have been lost and current trends predict as much as 40% of the forest could be lost by 2050.

In addition to supplying water to Brazil’s vital hydro-electric fleet, the Amazon rainforest also acts as a carbon sink – but some researchers believe that rising temperatures and drought are limiting its ability to perform this function.

How could deforestation impact rainfall in the Earth's tropical regions?

The researchers modeled their observations against predictions for future deforestation and warn rainfall could be reduced in the Amazon basin by up to a 21% in the dry season by 2050.

The impact vegetation has on rainfall has been debated amongst scientists for some time. Most now agree that plants put moisture back in the air through their leaves, but the quantity and geographical reach is still not fully understood.

The researchers said the latest findings show the importance of initiatives to protect tropical rainforests, warning it would have negative impacts for people living near the Amazon and Congo forests.

“Brazil has recently made progress in slowing the historically high rates of deforestation across the Amazon and our study emphasises that this progress must be maintained if impacts on rainfall are to be avoided,” said Dr Dominick Spracklen from Leeds University.

“The Amazon forest maintains rainfall over important agricultural regions of Southern Brazil, while preserving the forests of the Congo Basin increases rainfall in regions of Southern Africa where rain-fed agriculture is important. Increased drought in these regions would have severe implications for their mostly subsistence farmers.”

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Rapid warming over the Antarctic Peninsula over the last 50-100 years has contributed to ice shelves collapse, says scientists, warning future warming could destabilise ice shelves thousands of years old.

Researchers examined the history of the James Ross Island ice core to predict possible future changes (Source: Robert Mulvaney/British Antarctica Survey)

The researchers from Britain, Australia and France reconstructed the 15,000 year climate history of the ice core on James Ross Island in the Antarctic Peninsula to help predict how continued warming in the region could impact its future.

The group warned of future ice shelf collapse on the Antarctic peninsula (Source: NASA Blue Marble project)

The study, published in the journal Nature, found 600 years of warming followed by the rapid warming over the last 50-100 years caused the present-day disintegration of ice shelves and glacier retreat.

“The centuries of ongoing warming have meant that marginal ice shelves on the northern Peninsula were poised for the succession of collapses that we have witnessed over the last two decades,” said Dr Verilie Abram, co-author of the report.

“And if this rapid warming that we are seeing continues, we can expect that ice shelves further south along thePeninsulathat have been stable for thousands of years will also become vulnerable.”

The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming places on Earth – average temperatures taken from station near James Ross Island have risen nearly 2°C in the past 50 years.

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Climate change most significant threat to Antarctic ecosystems, say researchers

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Warm oceans are driving ice loss in Antarctica, says study

New report: West Antarctic ice shelves tearing apart

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A new “Ocean Health Index” designed to score every coastal nation in the world on their contribution to the health of the world’s oceans shows “room for improvement” with global oceans scoring an average 60 out of 100.

The index, published in Nature, was designed to evaluate the ecological, social, economic and political condition of every coastal country in the world.

A collaboration of 30 universities, non-profit organisations and government agencies it pulls together data on the current status and likely future conditions of the oceans.

Global map of index scores per country. All waters within 171 Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) were assessed (Source: Ben Halpern and colleagues, NCEAS 2012)

Each region was marked against 10 goals; clean water, biodiversity, food provision, carbon storage, coastal protection, coastal economies, tourism and recreation, sense of place, natural products and artisan fishing opportunities.

Each goal was then tested against sustainable development criteria with many incorporating penalties for pursuing them in a way that would hamper future delivery.

Key Findings

Globally oceans scored an average of 60 out of 100 with countries varying widely – between 36 and 86 – showing “substantial room for improvement” according to the report.

Thirty-two percent of countries scored less than 50 on the index while only 5% scored more than 70.

Generally, developed countries did better on the index than developing countries and scores correlated with the Human Development Index.

While many West African, Middle Eastern and Central American countries scored poorly; Northern Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and various tropical islands and uninhabited regions scored highly.

There were, however, noticeable exceptions. Poland and Singapore scored low on the index (42 and 48 respectively) whereas Suriname (69) and the Seychelles (73) scored highly.

Scores for individual goals also varied widely within countries.

The scientists warned scores on half of the goals are getting worse, and that the current assessment could be overly optimistic if existing regulations are not effectively implemented.

The index aims to assess both the natural and human conditions of the oceans (Source: © Conservation International/photo by Mark Erdmann)

Baseline for the future

The researchers say the current analysis is meant as more of a baseline for the future than as a conclusion about the health of the oceans.

“When we conclude that the health of the oceans is 60 on the scale of 100, that doesn’t mean we are failing,” said Karen McLeod, a lead author on the report from Oregon State University.

“Instead, it shows there’s room for improvement, suggests where strategic actions can make the biggest difference and gives us a benchmark against which to evaluate progress over time. The index allows us to track what’s happening to the whole ocean health instead of just parts of it.”

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Oceans, forests and other ecosystems continue to soak up 50% of the carbon emitted by human activities, despite those emissions increasing, according to new research. 

The new study, published in Nature, analysed 50 years of global carbon dioxide.

“Earth is taking up twice as much CO2 today as it was 50 years ago,” said Ashley Ballantyne, lead author of the report from Colorado University.

Scientists try to better understand how the earth's forests, oceans and ecosystems absorb carbon emitted by human activities

The researchers found that the processes by which the planet’s ecosystems and oceans absorb greenhouse gases are not yet at capacity, despite recent studies predicting the earth’s ‘natural sinks’ were no longer keeping pace with the rate of emissions.

“Globally these carbon sinks have roughly kept pace with emissions from human activities, continuing to draw about half of the emitted CO2 back out of the atmosphere,” said Pieter Tans, co-author of the study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“However we do not expect this to continue indefinitely,” he added.

Carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere mainly by fossil fuel combustion but also forest fires and some other natural processes.

Some of this is then pulled back out of atmosphere into the tissues of growing plants or absorbed in ocean waters.

If these ecosystems were unable to keep up with the amount of carbon being released by human activity and more were to remain in the atmosphere the faster-than-expected rise could see climate change accelerate.

The researchers say this new study highlights how much there is still to know about how the process of carbon absorption takes place.

A recent study, for example, predicted that as much as 40% of emissions absorbed into the oceans could happen in the Southern Ocean. Similar disparities could potentially be found amongst different tree species growing in different regions of the world.

“Since we do not know why or where this process is happening, we cannot count on it,” Tans said. “We need to identify what’s going on here, so that we can improve our projections of future CO2 levels and how climate change will progress in the future.”

In the oceans, for example, Tans says scientists predict that rising acidity levels – a negative impact of their role absorbing carbon – will make it increasingly difficult for them to absorb more CO2.

“The uptake of carbon dioxide by the oceans and by ecosystems is expected to slow down gradually,” he says. “We just don’t see a let-up, globally, yet.”

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What lessons can we take from our natural world to redesign our own economy? (Source: NASA)

We live a linear way of life.

Resources are extracted from the earth, products are created and when we are bored of these goods – or they are broken – we generally send them to landfill or burn them.

This eats into the finite resources of the planet, leaves vast amounts of discarded waste material – and it is becoming obvious that this is an unsustainable way of life.

Faced with uncertainty over employment, financial crises, rising prices for energy and materials, growing populations, scarcity of water and food and increased climate change some people are looking for an alternative.

For many the solution is to create a circular economy (from here on I will refer to this as CE) which is one which is by design restorative.

It would use biological materials that once exhausted could be returned safely to the natural world. It would exploit technological materials that could be kept within the system at high quality and used again. And again. And again.

When I put it like that it seems fairly straightforward.

But to transform a ‘linear’ way of life and bend it into the ‘circular’ will involve a major transformation of the way we design, make, use and dispose of things – as well as how we fund them.

No easy task – but since the release of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s report ‘Towards the Circular Economy’ in January 2012 it is a concept which is increasingly taking hold.

The UK think tank Green Alliance has launched their own task force looking at the issue, while the Aldersgate Group, an influential business group promoting climate friendly measures, released their own report last month looking at the economic resilience of the circular economy. So what are its defining principles?

Learning from nature

While our systems work on a linear basis, the earth has been functioning for billions of years in a circular fashion. In the environment there is no landfill and materials continue to circulate within the cycle.

One species’ waste is another’s food. Energy is provided to the earth’s systems is a safe, clean way from the sun. When plants and animals die they are absorbed into the earth to be recycled.

What if our way of living could look more like this?

The circular model is a biomimetic (life-imitating) approach – taking nature as an example for our own systems.

There are five basic principles from this used in the circular economy. Firstly the CE works on the principle that waste is food – both the biological and technical aspects should be re-purposed.

Secondly is the principle that diverse systems are resilient systems. To make this happen, thirdly, the energy of the system must come from renewable sources.

Fourthly price must tell the truth – nature is not paid with money but with result and in a similar way our prices should reflect the real cost of our activity.

Finally we must think in terms of systems over components. In nature all of the interdependencies feed into and benefits from one another – and our own systems should reflect this idea.

Douwe Jan Joustra from One Planet Architecture Institute – an Amsterdam based firm working closely with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation: “There are some basic principles from the way that nature functions that we can learn and that we should take into account when we start developing the CE.

“For instance closing the cycles, we tend to think that this is a very simple process – we can identify the cycles and we can make the cycles – but when you look at nature you can see that it is a very complex system of enormous amount of cycles and interdependencies and we need to learn how to use that idea in our economy.”

The use of renewable energy

Renewable energy will be vital to the transition to the low carbon economy. To make sure that the components of our economy can continue to circulate in the same way and with the same quality, large amounts of energy will be needed.

By using energy from nature to fuel a new system, it will decrease resource dependency and increase resilience against shocks.

Our current systems that rely on fossil fuels are based on centralised systems built on high-density energy. The multiple linkages of this system make it inefficient. The CE aims to shift to a new, more efficient energy system powered by the sun – including solar energy itself, wind, and wave and to a lesser extent geothermal.

Douwe Jan Joustra: “When we want to have materials and want to keep the materials in the quality we have them then we need to have energy. When it comes to the CE we will need quite a lot of energy to keep all the materials on the level of quality that you want, otherwise decay will start.

“We need clean energy, renewables, and so energy by the sun. The sun every moment of the day brings about 9000 times more energy to Earth than we need to keep our whole system going. The problem is we are not yet able to harvest that energy that we can use it in our existing system.”

Tomorrow: How can we design the circular economy?

Related Video: The principles of the circular economy, courtesy of the The Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

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Warming ocean temperatures over the past 50 years have been largely man-made, according to new research.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, examined rising ocean temperatures over the past five decades and compared them with a dozen different models used to project climate change.

It found that while 10% of the rising temperatures could be blamed on natural variations, man-made greenhouse gases were the major cause.

The researchers find that man-made emissions have been a major cause of ocean warming over the last five decades (© ronaldhole/Creative Commons)

The researchers looked at the average temperature in the upper layers of the ocean – from the surface to 700 meters – and found global average ocean warming of around 0.025°C per decade, slightly more than one tenth of a degree warming over 50 years.

The researchers say this kind of warming would not have been possible without human impacts.

Scientists believe that the oceans absorb around 90% of atmospheric heat – warning that as temperatures in the atmosphere rise, ocean warming will also become an increasing problem.

Ocean warming has been blamed for events such as coral bleaching. Scientists are also concerned about the impact of fish and plant species from warming oceans – particularly Krill which like to breed in particularly cold water near sea ice.

Sub-surface, deeper ocean warming was noticeably less than the observed Earth surface warming – mainly due to the relatively slow transfer of ocean surface warming to lower depths, according to the researchers.

The latest report, a collaboration from researchers across America, India, Japan and Australia is said to be the most comprehensive look at how the oceans have warmed to date.

Read the full report here.

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For some the climate change and sustainability movement’s aims have become so far removed from the vision of a world at peace with nature, that traditional environmentalism no longer has a place in the debate.

For them protecting the planet has been replaced by the need to sustain human life in the wake of increasing climatic changes.

Rio+20 offers yet another moment of reflection and debate for the world, but can climate change and the environment be reconciled?

The debate was reignited back in February following an article in Orion Magazine by Paul Kingsnorth – writer and one of the founders of the Dark Mountain project.

It went public again last week as the self confessed “recovering environmentalist” went up against the guys from Earth in Brackets, to debate the true meaning of ‘environmentalism’.

Are we too wrapped up in climate change and carbon that we are neglecting our duty to protect the planet? (© NASA)

For Kingsnorth – the environmentalism he grew up with is long dead. It has been replaced by debates about carbon and climate change and the new industrial revolution.

He is disilluisoned by the current state of the ‘green’ movement. Unable to reconcile his own emotional love of nature with what he calls, modern environmentalism – “in order to promote something called “sustainability” – Kingsnorth made a pledge to “withdraw” from the movement.

Nathan Thanki from Earth in Brackets believes human equity and development can go hand-in-hand with protecting nature. Withdrawing, for Thanki, is not the answer.

Age old debate

It is not a new argument. We see it played out across the world, and in the UK, every time a proposed windfarm is announced, the debate continues.

In one corner those who want clean, renewable energy to help save the country – and the world – from increasingly climate change.

And in the other corner, conservationists like Simon Jenkins, the head of the National Trust, who objects to what this ‘green’ industrialisation may do to the countryside.

Often labelled as nimbies to a large extent these people represent the traditional environmentalists Kingsnorth grieves for.

So here’s the question: how can we reconcile the climate change movement with the traditional meaning of environmentalism?

Withdrawing

Kingsnorth writes: “This is no longer mine, that’s all. I can’t make my peace with people who cannibalise the land in the name of saving it. I can’t speak the language of science without a corresponding poetry.

“I can’t speak with a straight face about saving the planet when what I really mean is saving myself from what is coming.”

In response Nathan Thanki from Earth in Brackets wrote: “While I found myself sympathising, and agree broadly with the analysis of many anti-civilisation thinkers – sharing their frustrations with the mainstream environmental movement, with the advance of greenwashed capitalism, with industrial civilisation, even with our species itself – none of those sympathies or shared sentiments could assuage the sheer disappointment I felt reading that article.”

Thanki argues that being concerned with human equality, rights and justice doesn’t mean nature’s value becomes yet another commodity we can price up.

And for him sustainability should not be about preserving industrial civilisation in its current form.

Many of the environmentalists RTCC has spoken to ahead of the Rio+20 Earth Summit share a similar sentiment to Thanki – speaking of a need to protect nature not only as a resource base but as a vital part of the wider planet.

At the same time it is easy for the current “environmental” argument – that which Kingsnorth says is about carbon and climate change – to become bogged down with talk of the green economy, renewable energy and food security.

It quickly becomes a very human-centric argument.

Walking around the conference centres in Durban or Bonn, for example, is difficult to understand the role that nature, the world’s forests and oceans, plays amongst the smart suits and the briefcases.

So where do we go from here?

As the argument spilled out onto Twitter, others waded in with their own thoughts. It became apparent that there is no easy answer…

In some ways it goes back to what should be – and many of us, maybe optimistically, expect to be – at the heart of the Rio+20 debate.

How do we ensure social development while at the same time living within the boundaries set out for us by the planet?

Maybe at this point we should add, without plundering the planet to the very limits possible before its collapse.

For Kingsnorth – and many others too – it appears that finding new machines and mechanisms to fix the problem which he contends has been caused by past machines and mechanisms exposes the fatal flaw.

And with talks of new industrial revolutions, and even new growth ratings put forward for Rio+20 to replace GDP, it could be easy to claim environmentalists have lost touch with the nature they were traditionally championing.

For modern day environmentalists though, leaving the world to feel the full impacts of climate change would be disastrous not only for ourselves but for the animals and plants which we share the planet with.

And there is an argument that the solution must work within the system to succeed.

We talk today of pragmatic environmentalists – unromantic and practical.

They aim to ensure quality of life while trying to eradicate the excesses that much of the Western World indulge in.

The want to use the engineering skills we have for better means than digging for more and more unreachable fossil fuel resources – but to create a clean technology revolution.

Reconciling the debate

How do we reconcile the work being done to combat climate change with work to protect nature?

For those of you who have read the work of the Dark Mountain Project – a growing number both inside and outside the environmental movement – the arguments are compelling.

In an ideal world, while no less focus should be placed on the threat of climate change, much more should be placed upon protecting the natural world around us.

With discussion surrounding Rio+20 aimed at giving nature a prominent place at the table, climate change has not been the death of environmentalism – at least not yet anyway.

Last week Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made a call for the role of nature at the conference, including protection of the air, water and forests saying: “Mother Earth has been kind to us. Let humanity reciprocate by respecting her natural boundaries.”

It would appear that more environmentalists are coming back round to Kingsnorth’s way of thinking.

But the debate has moved irreversibly on from the days when he was protesting against road expansion.

Whether Rio+20 will take this debate forward or whether the idea of sustainable development will be swallowed up into the politically charged and somewhat corporate discussions often seen at these conferences is yet to be seen.

But even if it is unlikely that the two sides will ever fully see eye-to-eye – it is a debate definitely worth having.

Where do you stand? Leave us a comment on the form below – or contact the team via Twitter @RTCCnewswire

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Climate change could be causing plants to flower faster than predicted, with potentially devastating knock-on effects for food chains and ecosystems, according to new research.

The study, published in Nature, warned that predicting species’ responses to climate change is becoming a major problem – with warming climates having significant impacts on plants and animals around the world.

The scientists warn that plants flowering early could have knock on effects for ecosystem services and food chains (© Mohamed Malik/Creative Commons)

The researchers say they chose plants as the focus of the study because of how their responses to climate change could impact food chains and ecosystems services – such as pollination, nutrient cycles and water supplies.

Increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can affect the way plants produce oxygen, while higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns can also affect their behaviour, according to the study which examined 1,634 species across four continents.

The latest study warned that previous experiments could have underestimated the speed at which plants flower by 8.5 times and how quickly they grow leaves by a factor of four.

They also predicated that the rate of flowering could continue to advance by five to six days per year for every degree Celsius of warming.

The scientists called for future experiments to be improved so that researchers can greater understand how plant species could react to climate change.

See the full report here.

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Two studies point towards impacts of climate change on species such as the beluga whale in the Arctic Ocean (© Pocket Wiley/Creative Commons)

Climate change could be reducing biodiversity and posing “significant challenges” to the survival of marine life in the Arctic Ocean, according to a new study.

The unique research – the first to study the effects of global warming on the Arctic Ocean across all seasons – aimed to learn more about the impacts on the polar marine ecosystem of the “most rapid warming trend in at least the past 1,450 years”.

The some 350 researchers from 10 science teams across 27 countries spent 293 days in 2007-8 in the Southern Beaufort Sea onboard the research icebreaker Amundsen examining everything from ocean current to ice algae and beluga whales.

The study, released at the Polar Year conference in Montreal this week (April 22–27) found that as ice coverage and thickness have reached record lows in the last decade, the energy dynamic of the Arctic Ocean has changed, producing profound effects for weather, ocean current and plant and animal life.

With increased penetration of solar energy and warmer ocean surface water, the researchers found a significant rise in biological production in the Arctic Ocean.

As more solar energy hits open water, ice melt can also affect the carbon exchange between ocean and atmosphere, says the research. Longer, warmer summer can cause more CO2 to escape to the atmosphere while in winter the colder open water can absorb more.

While the researchers say they are still not sure how much CO2 is stored and released they discovered that the winter process could be just as important as the summer for carbon exchanges.

Changes in temperatures can also bring mixed results for biodiversity. While the increased presence of eddies, or spinning underwater currents, observed by the researchers could introduce more nutrients to the water and increase populations of fish, warmer temperatures have also allowed invasive species to migrate north – putting unique Arctic species at risk.

Traditional knowledge

The all-season study warned about "significant challenges" to biodiversity in the Arctic from climate change (© Polar Cruises/Creative Commons)

The study also aimed to develop an extensive database of traditional knowledge from the Inuvialuit living in the Western Arctic and create a “Two Ways of Knowing” framework to integrate this knowledge with Western science.

The Polar Year conference taking place this week in Montreal brings together polar researchers from around the world.

Bucking the trend

In another study released at the conference – from the Arctic Council’s biodiversity working group, researchers argue that some fish and mammal species are actually increasing in the Arctic.

The research, a collaborative study from the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Programme, the Zoological Society of London and the World Wildlife Fund, examined 890 populations of 323 species of Arctic vertebrates.

They found that some fish populations had risen dramatically and that those living closer to the surface water were more susceptible to climate change than those living near the ocean bottom.

While some mammals were found by the study to be recovering from exploitation, rising populations of gray whales, bowhead whales and Greenlandic walruses have not yet returned to historical levels.

Meanwhile species of ring seal, beluga whale and thick-billed guillemot have declined.

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New research has found the polar bear to be much older than originally thought, showing it adapted much less rapidly to harsh conditions of the Arctic. Researchers say this questions its ability to adapt to current climate change.

The study, published in Science, found that polar bears may have evolved from their brown bear ancestors as far back as 600,000 years ago, making them five times older than previously recognised.

And if the endangered Arctic species had much more time to adapt to its harsh conditions it could be harder for them to adapt now to the rapid changes brought about by climate change, warn the researchers from German Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F).

Their genome shows that polar bears have survived several past events of severe climate change (© Alan Wilson / www.naturepicturesonline.com )

Previous studies of the polar bear had considered it an example of surprisingly rapid adaptation of a mammal to colder climates.

It’s specific qualities, including its black skin, white fur and fur covered feet seem less surprising now, say the researchers.

Whether polar bears will be able to survive current sea ice melting is still not clear.

With human impacts accelerating the rate of climate change, the Arctic could reach higher temperatures than previous interglacial warm phases.

In addition to this, the scientists believe other human-related issues are threatening the bear today – including Arctic residents killing the bears and increased pollution.

“If we were to lose the polar bears in our era, we would have to ask ourselves what role we played in pushing them over the edge,” said Frank Hailer, lead author of the study.

The latest findings on the polar bears evolutionary history are a result of analysis of information from the nuclear genome of polar and brown bears.

Despite being different in terms of body size, skin and coat colour, fur type, tooth structure and behaviour, previous research had indicated that polar and brown bears have only diverged recently in evolutionary terms – based on studies of the mitochondrial linage (a small part of the DNA passed from mothers to offspring).

By studying a lot more of the DNA from inside the cell nucleus, the latest study found very different results.

“Instead of the traditional approach of looking at mitochondrial DNA we studied many pieces of the nuclear DNA that are each independently inherited,” explains Hailer. “We characterised those pieces, or genetic markers, in multiple polar and brown bear individuals.”

Conducting research on polar bears is very difficult. The bear spends most of its life on the sea ice, and also typically dies there where its remains sink to the sea floor.

Fossil remains of the bears are therefore scarce – so researchers must study the history of the species by looking at the genes of today’s polar bears.

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The study examined four grassland ecosystems typical to Arizona (© Gelatobaby/Creative Commons)

Climate change may initially make the grass greener, but not for long as plant species will quickly deteriorate, warns a new study.

The research, published in Nature Climate Change, found that while grassland species could thrive in the early stages of warming, they would quickly be adversely impacted by continued warming.

“We were really surprised by the pattern, where the initial boost in growth just went away,” said Zhuoting Wu, from the Northern Arizona University, co-author of the report. “As the ecosystems adjust, the responses changed.”

The decade-long study examined four grassland ecosystems typical of those found in northern Arizona along elevation gradients from the San Francisco Peaks down to the Great Basin Desert.

It then tested these ecosystems against simulated climate change, coupling the warming with a range of predicted changes in precipitation – more, the same and less.

While plants grew more quickly in the first year of rising temperatures, this effect was progressively diminished over the following nine years, until finally disappearing, say the researchers.

Knock on effects

They aimed to report the long-term effects of global warming on plant growth, the types of species that make up the community and any changes to the way plants use or retain resources such as nitrogen.

The warmed grassland cycled nitrogen more rapidly, an effect researchers thought would make more nitrogen available to plants, helping them grow.

Bruce Hungate, senior report author from NAU said the findings challenge this expectation having found more nitrogen being converted to gases that were then lost to the atmosphere or with rainfall washing through the soil.

“Faster nitrogen turnover stimulated nitrogen losses, likely reducing the effect of warming on plant growth,” he said. “More generally, changes in species, changes in element cycles – these really make a difference.”

“It’s classic systems ecology: the initial responses elicit knock-on effects, which here came back to bite the plants. These ecosystem feedbacks are critical. You just can’t figure this out with plants grown in a greenhouse. ”

The study also found that long-term warming resulted in the loss of native species and encroachment of species typically found in warming environments.

The study will continue for another five years.

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Compelling new evidence suggests that rising CO2 caused much of the global warming responsible for ending the last ice age.

The study, published in Nature, confirms what scientists have believed for sometime, and further supports the view that current rises in human-driven CO2 will lead to more global warming.

“CO2 was a big part of bringing the world out of the last Ice Age and it took about 10,000 years to do it,” said Jeremy Shakun from Harvard University and lead-author of the report.

The study found that globally carbon dioxide rises preceded rising tempuratures at the end of the last Ice Age (©23am.com/Creative Commons)

“Now CO2 levels are rising again, but this time an equivalent increase of CO2 has occurred in only about 200 years, and there are clear signs that the planet is already beginning to respond.”

“While many of the details of future climate change remain to be figured out, our study bolsters the consensus view that rising CO2 will lead to more global warming.”

While previous studies only compared carbon dioxide levels to local temperatures in Antarctica, the current study aimed to reconstruct global average temperature changes, using 80 core samples from around the world.

Looking only at local temperatures in Antarctica, warming appears to precede rising CO2, an argument often adopted by sceptics to disprove carbon dioxide’s role in global warming.

Shakun however, says this is leaving a huge gap in the research.

Putting all these records together into a reconstruction of global temperature shows a beautiful correlation with rising CO2 at the end of the Ice Age,” said Shakun. “Even more interesting, while CO2 trails Antarctica warming, it actually precedes global temperature change, which is what you would expect if CO2 is causing warming.”

Most scientists, according to Shakun, now believe the first factor in rising temperatures in Antarctica was not carbon dioxide emissions but a change in the Earth’s orbit, which resulted in more sunlight hitting the northern hemisphere.

As ice sheets over North America and Europe melted, millions of gallons of freshwater flooded into the North Atlantic Ocean and disrupted the cyclical flow of ocean currents.

Atmospheric CO2 compared to Antarctic temperature and global mean temperature at the end of the last ice age (© Jeremy Shakun)

This meant the current which normally brings warm water north from the tropics – and today keeps Europe mild – was blocked, and the Southern Hemisphere warmed at the expense of the Northern Hemisphere – melting Antarctic ice and drawing up CO2 from the deep water.

Shakun says this all points towards CO2 being an amplifier for warming in the Southern Hemisphere.

He said: “If it was an amplifier, the question is how big an amplifier? Does it explain a lot of climate change, or was it a small piece and other factors were more important? I think this research really points a strong finger at the idea that CO2 was a major player.”

While the research strengthens the link between CO2 and the Ice Ages, Shakun believes it also reinforces the importance of addressing CO2 driven climate change today.

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The research asks the question, what turns an extreme event into a record breaking event? (© Steve Garner 32/Creative Commons)

Climate change could turn weather events into the record breaking phenomena that have been witnessed over the last decade, according to new research.

The research points to 14 extreme events that cost the US $14 billion, Japan’s record rainfall in 2011, continued drought on the Yangtze River in China, and record breaking heat waves across Europe in 2003 and 2010, all taking place on the backdrop of the warmest decade in a millennium.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change aims to build on pervious work on the topic of extreme weather and show that the high number of record breaking events witnessed over the last 10 years is not a coincidence.

“Single weather extremes are often related to regional processes, like a blocking high pressure system or natural phenomena like El Nino,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author of the article.

“These are complex processes that we are investigating further. But now these processes unfold against the background of climatic warming. That can turn an extreme event into a record-breaking event.”

Of particular interest to the researchers is what turns an extreme event into a record breaking event, something they say more research must focus on.

For example the 2003 European heatwave exceeded beat the previous records by 2.4°C, and was then surpassed again in 2010.

The researchers also stressed that while climate change can be linked to changes in the frequency of extreme events it is still not possible to link one specific event to climate change.

“The question is whether these weather extremes are coincidental or a result of climate change,” say Dim Coumou, lead author of the report. “Global warming can generally not be proven to cause individual extreme events – but in the sum of events the link to climate change becomes clear.”

“It’s like a game of loaded dice. A six can appear every now and then, and you never know when it happens. But now it appears much more often, because we have changed the dice.”

This can be compared to the events in the US between 13^th and 19^th March when in the seven days alone, historical heat records were exceeded in more than a thousand places in North America, according to Coumou.

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Newborn fur seal pups could be particularly vulnerable to climate change, according to a new study.

Published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, the reseach warns that the first few months of life could become increasingly difficult for young pups as changing weather patterns hit their metabolic rates.

Young pups need to put most of their energy in these months into growing and learning – preparing for their lives without their mothers.

The researchers warn that as weather gets windier and wetter energy used for the pups growth will be transferred to help keep the pups warm (© Liam Quinn/Creative Commons)

With windier and wetter conditions predicted for the Antarctic, however, young seals could assign more energy to keeping warm, leaving less for their development, warn researchers.

The team of scientists gathered data from 48 young seals on Livington Island, just off the Antarctic Peninsula for their study – examining how much energy pups get from their mothers and how they used it.

“Energy budgets are important if we are to understand how individuals interact with their environment,” said report lead author, Dr Birgitte McDonald.

“In juvenile animals we need to know how they allocate energy towards growth, energy storage, maintenance including thermoregulation and development for foraging skills to facilitate a successful transition to independence.”

The team measured the pup’s milk energy intake, metabolic rate and growth rate over the first four months of their lives while completely dependant on their mothers’ milk.

The amount of milk the pups drink was the biggest predictor of their growth rates, the researchers found, followed by various other factors, including body size, general health and the weather.

They found as much as 60% of the milk energy goes to growth.

As pups get older, however, and are left alone this percentage falls and by one month they have just 25% of their energy available for growth.

“If climate change models are correct and the Antarctic Peninsula gets windier and wetter weather, this may influence how much energy is available for growth,” warned McDonald.

“Changes in prey availability and climate may lead pups to conserve energy by sacrificing the development of foraging skills or to wean at a lower mass or body condition, resulting in negative impacts on the ability to transition successfully to nutritional independence.”

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The shift has already impacted on shellfish harvesting sites in north west Scotland (source: http://www.uhi.ac.uk/ruralstudies/creative commons)

Warming oceans and increases in windiness could be causing of an abundance of harmful algal blooms in the North Atlantic Ocean and North Sea, according to new research.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change found there has been a dramatic switch between the prevalence of dinoflagellates to diatoms – two groups which include many of the microscopic planktonic plants forming the base of the ocean’s food chain.

The patterns show shifts in the distribution of species known to cause harmful effect through toxin poisoning.

The researchers, from Swansea University’s Institute of Life Science and the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth said the effects of the shift could already be impacting UK waters, with shellfish harvesting sites off the Scottish west coast closing.

“Imagine looking at your garden one morning and finding that the grass had suddenly been replaced by bushes,” said Professor Graeme Hays, one of the paper’s authors from Swansea University.

“This may sound far-fetched but we have found changes of this magnitude in the biology of the North Atlantic, with a dramatic switch in the prevalence of dinoflagellates to diatoms.”

Using over 92,000 samples spanning 50 years from the Continuous Plankton Recorder survey, the team found that increases in temperature – a key element of climate change – had helped to drive this shift.

They also discovered that an increase in the wind levels of the North Atlantic region over the last 50 years had a part to play in the shift.

“This increase in windiness is something that is often overlooked,” said Professor Hays. “In the ocean windiness promotes vertical mixing of the water, which in turn has profound impacts on surface nutrient levels and the vertical distribution of plankton.”

He said the implications of the discovery are not yet fully known, but that the switch is like to be felt much higher up the food chain, impacting on larger animals such as fish and whales.

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