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A new mining trade association statement on mining and Indigenous Peoples fails to advance Indigenous rights and creates unnecessary confusion, risking further violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights worldwide. The statement comes as demand for energy transition minerals, which are used in EV batteries and other renewable energy technologies, is skyrocketing. More than half of energy transition minerals worldwide are on Indigenous Peoples’ lands.

The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) is the principal trade association of mining companies. Amongst its members are the world’s largest mining multinationals, and its membership represents roughly 30% of the global metals market. The ICMM’s members are expected to adhere to the principles and positions adopted by the organization. As such, the ICMM’s position statements have the potential to be highly influential amongst the largest and most visible global mining companies. Furthermore, the ICMM is trying to develop a “consolidated standard” for responsible mining to serve as a global benchmark for companies to be measured against, although many civil society groups remain skeptical of the process given its industry-controlled governance and the risk of consolidation towards a lowest common denominator, rather than a high-bar, standard.

The ICMM’s updated Indigenous Peoples’ Position Statement was published on August 8th, 2024, replacing the mining industry association’s original Indigenous Peoples and Mining Position Statement published in 2013. While the new ICMM document is little more than a restatement of already existing international Indigenous Rights norms, it risks creating more harm than good. It includes ambiguous and seemingly contradictory language in critical sections, which leave open to broad interpretation how companies should proceed when:

1. a State (i.e. a country) does not recognize the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), does not recognize the existence of affected Indigenous Peoples within an impacted area, or otherwise fails to carry out an adequate FPIC process;
2. a State approves a project despite lack of consent by an impacted Indigenous community to said project; and
3. acquiring a mine site where FPIC was not carried out or carried out inadequately prior to the company’s acquisition of said mining operation.

These are common scenarios faced by mining companies which put at risk the rights of Indigenous Peoples. A policy that truly acknowledges the inherent rights of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination must provide clear, unambiguous guidance. 

Instead, the statement’s shortcomings risk validating its members’ ongoing and future violations of the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples. These and a series of other critical flaws and shortcomings have been identified by civil society and Indigenous rights organizations including the SIRGE Coalition, First Peoples Worldwide, Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy (AIPNEE), and Oxfam America.

The Right of Indigenous Peoples to Withhold Consent as Part of the Right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent

Encouragingly, the statement recognizes the right to withhold consent several times. For example: “[a]s a process, FPIC also enables Indigenous Peoples to freely give or withhold their agreement, should they choose to do so” (on page 15).

Unfortunately, on the very next page it asserts that “[t]here are also situations in which States might determine that a project should be authorised even without consent.”

The ICMM conditions this assertion by clarifying that “international human rights standards establish that such a determination can be made only after the State has made genuine attempts to obtain consent, and the determination must adhere to established criteria of necessity and proportionality for permissible limitations on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, as reflected in UNDRIP.” The statement also goes on to reiterate the independent duty of companies to engage in human rights due diligence regardless of State action. But the decision to include this language and support it by citing Article 46(2)—a controversial provision in the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that offers little practical clarity as to the scope of its application and has been subject to repeated criticism by Indigenous Peoples and their allies—contradicts the Statement’s purported respect for the right to withhold consent. It conditions this inherent right with hypothetical scenarios in which companies may proceed with mining projects despite an explicit lack of consent.

Companies’ Independent Duty to Respect Human Rights under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

Under international law, States are the actors ultimately responsible for ensuring the protection of human rights. However, one of the great contributions of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) is the explicit requirement for non-state corporate actors to comply with an independent duty to respect fundamental human rights, regardless of the failure of a given State to recognize or protect said rights.

The official commentary to Section II(A)(1.1) of the UNGPs reads as follows:

“The responsibility to respect human rights is a global standard of expected conduct for all business enterprises wherever they operate. It exists independently of States’ abilities and/or willingness to fulfill their own human rights obligations, and does not diminish those obligations. And it exists over and above compliance with national laws and regulations protecting human rights.”

The ICMM’s Position Statement recognizes this by stating on page 3 that “[r]egardless of how States meet their commitments, or where they fail to do so, the independent responsibility for companies to conduct due diligence and establish that they respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples remains.”

However, the statement also asserts on page 2 that “[d]ecisions about whether projects can initially proceed are State decisions.” This language could lead to the interpretation that companies may proceed with a project, regardless of the country’s compliance with its obligations to protect Indigenous rights, as long as they engage in a due diligence process that the statement fails to define with any degree of sufficient clarity and detail.

The failure of a State to conduct a proper FPIC process is a violation of fundamental Indigenous rights, and under such circumstances no project should proceed.

Denial of Retroactive Application of FPIC

According to the Position Statement, no retrospective application of an FPIC process is required in the case of projects where FPIC was never carried out, or was flawed in its execution. This is particularly problematic as many mines owned by ICMM members were opened without an adequate FPIC process, often by non-ICMM member companies. This provision allows ICMM members to freely inherit and profit from the legacies of neocolonialism and environmental racism set in motion by other actors—leaving no entity fully accountable for those harms.

And while the Position Statement calls on companies to provide for and engage in grievance mechanisms with affected communities, it does not require companies to participate in independent grievance mechanisms if they do not deem it necessary or appropriate. The Position Statement is of little-to-no value for rights holders without explicitly setting out how ICMM members’ compliance will be externally monitored, and what steps can be taken by affected Indigenous communities that are accessible and independent of the companies violating their rights.

Falling Behind in Respect for Human Rights

For the Position Statement to be of value it would have to go above and beyond already recognized and widely accepted international human rights norms regarding the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples. Instead, it contributes to existing confusion and creates further loopholes for companies to continue to trample on the rights of Indigenous Peoples around the world.

At a time when investors and regulators are calling for greater ambition in corporate human rights and environmental performance and demanding more transparent and reliable reporting, the ICMM continues to fall behind global trends in corporate respect for human rights. 

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For further reading, please see First Peoples Worldwide’s in-depth, critical analysis of the Position Statement here.

The post The International Council on Mining and Metals’ New Indigenous Peoples and Mining Position Statement Risks Doing More Harm Than Good appeared first on Earthworks.

This blog was written in collaboration with Lesley Muñoz Rivera (Colla), a member of the Copiapó community in Chile.

Disponible en español a continuación.

The Colla community in the Atacama Region of Chile has been sounding the alarm about the possible impacts of lithium extraction for the ecosystems they depend on, and, more specifically, for water sources. Over the past few years, multiple companies have been developing lithium extraction projects in areas of the Maricunga Salar and nearby lagoons where they have concessions. Today Earthworks and the Colla Indigenous Community from the Comuna of Copiapó present a new geophysical survey of the Maricunga Salar (salt flat). 

In April 2023, Chile’s government announced a National Lithium Strategy, which established an important role for the Chilean state in the lithium sector through public-private business contracts. In the case of the Maricunga Salar, at the beginning of 2024 the Chilean state mining company, Codelco, bought the Salar Blanco project which is the furthest developed in terms of permitting, given that it has its Environmental Qualification Resolution and is now looking for financing and support to make the project operational.

The Salar de Maricunga is an important habitat for Andean and Chilean flamingo species.

But Codelco must recognize that it has purchased a project with various risks for the company and its financiers and investors. The study published today shows that there is still not enough data available to create an adequate model of the Maricunga Salar’s watershed. This means that we cannot calculate the impacts of lithium extraction for the fragile ecosystems that depend on the salar, or for communities that depend on and have water rights to streams that flow down from the salar. Codelco’s project is currently facing legal challenges in Chile’s Environmental Tribunal, since the project did not implement a consultation process with the Colla Indigenous Community of the Comuna of Copiapó or other communities in the area. This presents further risks for financiers and investors. 

The environmental impact study for the Salar Blanco project focused on data collection in the northern part of the salar where the lithium extraction operations would be located, and concluded that there will be no impacts to the rest of the salar or nearby communities. The Colla Indigenous Community of the Comuna of Copiapó has taken care of this territory for over a century, and it was due to their concerns and observations they raised that we commissioned this study on the geophysical characteristics of the salar. It found:

A map that shows the partial protection of the salar (area inside the green line is protected).

• The clay core in the northern part of the salar could form part of an interconnected system which could make the center and southern parts of the salar vulnerable to the impacts of brine extraction for lithium.
• Corroboration of the hypothesis that subterranean water discharges from the south of the salar to the Paipote stream, which the Colla Indigenous Community of the Comuna of Copiapó has water rights to. 
• The environmental impact assessment does not have sufficient data to assure that the discharges that reach the central and southern zones of the salar are discharged through evaporation.

This year, the Chilean government announced the creation of a network of protected salares as part of its National Lithium Strategy. According to Minister of the Environment Maisa Rojas, “we know that salares are fragile and unique ecosystems, and creating protected areas is an excellent way to guarantee the survival of these ecosystems in the future.” As part of this strategy, the Maricunga Salar was put under partial protection, with protections given to the southern part of the salar where there is a national park and a Ramsar Site, a wetland of international importance. But if a salar is an interconnected system, as is suggested by this new study and the traditional knowledge of the Colla People, Codelco cannot protect the southern part of the salar while moving forward with lithium extraction in the northern part–these goals directly contradict one another. 

A bulletin by the Observatory of Latin American Environmental Conflicts and the Observatory of Mining Conflicts in Latin America from 2021 highlights that, “to understand Maricunga you need a much deeper look than is common, in which the ecosystems that are part of these territories are interconnected.” If the Chilean government wants to protect these fragile and unique ecosystems, it must produce studies that view the salar as an integrated and interconnected system. Partial protection does not consider this and leaves all the species, both human and non-human, that rely on and live alongside this salar vulnerable. 

The dispute surrounding the environmental impact studies of the Salar de Maricunga shows us the importance of consulting with Indigenous communities before a mining project begins. These communities that have spent centuries studying an ecosystem and how it functions thanks to ancestral knowledge of a territory and its life forms, have the right to consent to projects that take place on or near their territories, and consider these projects while watching out for their future survival and for the fragile ecosystems that they depend on and take care of.

• Report: Impacts of Lithium Mining to the Santa Rosa Lagoon Lacustrine System, Salar de Maricunga
• Press Release: New Study on Water Impacts from Lithium Extraction in Chile’s Maricunga Salar

Nuevo estudio sobre los impactos hídricos de la extracción de litio en el Salar de Maricunga en Chile

Este blog fue escrito en colaboración con Lesley Muñoz Rivera (Colla), miembro de la comunidad de Copiapó en Chile.

La Comunidad Colla en la región Atacama de Chile ha estado sonando la alarma sobre los posibles impactos de la extracción de litio para los ecosistemas sobre los cuales dependen, y, en específico, para sus fuentes de agua. En los últimos años, varias empresas han estado ingresando proyectos de extracción de litio en los  lugares donde tienen concesiones en el Salar de Maricunga y lagunas cercanas. Hoy Earthworks y la Comunidad Indígena Colla de la Comuna de Copiapó presentaron una nueva prospección geofísica del Salar de Maricunga. 

En Chile, el gobierno anunció su Estrategia Nacional de Litio en abril 2023, lo cual entre sus medidas establece un papel importante para el estado  chileno en el negocio del litio por medio de negociaciones público-privadas. En el caso del Salar de Maricunga, a inicios de 2024, la empresa estatal Codelco compró el proyecto más avanzado en el salar en cuanto a permisos–ya que el proyecto “Salar Blanco” cuenta con Resolución de Calificación Ambiental aprobada–y ahora está buscando financiamiento y apoyo para poder operacionalizar el proyecto. 

El Salar de Maricunga es un hábitat importante para las especies de flamencos Andinos y Chilenos.

Pero es importante que Codelco reconozca que ha comprado un proyecto con varios riesgos para la empresa, y sus financiadores e inversores. El estudio publicado hoy demuestra que todavía no hay suficientes datos para crear un modelamiento adecuado de la cuenca del Salar de Maricunga. Esto significa que no se puede calcular los impactos de la extracción de litio para ecosistemas frágiles que dependen del salar, o para comunidades que dependen de y tienen derechos a fuentes de agua que corren aguas abajo del salar. Por otro lado este proyecto comprado por Codelco, se encuentra con recursos legales pendientes en el Tribunal Ambiental, puesto que este proyecto no consideró a la Comunidad Indigena Colla de la Comuna de Copiapó y otras comunidades que habitan el territorio, dentro del proceso de consulta, siendo esto parte del riesgo que tiene este proyecto para financiadores e inversores. 

Los estudios de impacto ambiental para el Proyecto Salar Blanco se enfocaron en recolectar datos solo del norte del salar donde se piensa ubicar las operaciones de extracción de litio, y concluyeron que no habrá impactos para el resto del salar o comunidades en la región. La Comunidad Indígena Colla de la Comuna de Copiapó se ha encargado de cuidar este territorio  por más de un siglo, y fue a causa de sus preocupaciones y observaciones que se hizo otro estudio de las características geofísicas del salar.

Pero el estudio presentado hoy encontró que:

Un mapa que muestra la protección parcial del salar (el área dentro de la línea verde está protegida).

• El núcleo arcilloso en el norte del Salar podría formar parte de una sistema interconectado, lo cual podría hacer que la zona centro y sur del Salar sean vulnerables a los impactos de la extracción de salmuera para el litio. 
• Corroboración de la hipótesis de posibles descargas de agua subterránea desde el sur del salar hacia la quebrada Paipote, sobre la cual la Comunidad Indígena Colla de la Comuna de Copiapó cuenta con derechos de agua.
• El Estudio de Impacto Ambiental generado por la empresa no cuenta con datos suficientes para asegurar que toda la descarga que llega a la zona sur y centro del Salar se descarga por evaporación.

Este año, el gobierno chileno anunció la creación de una red de salares protegidos como parte de su Estrategia Nacional de Litio.  Según Maisa Rojas, la ministra del Medio Ambiente, “sabemos que los salares son ecosistemas frágiles y únicos, y crear áreas protegidas es una excelente herramienta para garantizar la sobrevivencia de estos ecosistemas para el futuro.” Bajo esta estrategia, el Salar de Maricunga fue declarado parcialmente protegido, con protecciones otorgadas a la zona sur del salar donde se encuentra un parque nacional y un sitio Ramsar, que reconoce humedales de importancia internacional. Pero si el salar es un sistema interconectado, como sugiere este nuevo estudio geofísico y el conocimiento ancestral del pueblo Colla, Codelco no puede pretender proteger la zona sur mientras se avance con la explotación del litio en la zona norte–representa dos metas que se oponen entre sí. 

Un boletín del Observatorio Latino Americano de Conflictos Ambientales y el Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros de América Latina del 2021, subraya que  “la comprensión de Maricunga contempla necesariamente utilizar una mirada mucho más profunda a la común, en la que se relacionan los ecosistemas que forman parte del territorio.” Si el gobierno chileno quiere proteger estos ecosistemas frágiles y únicos, se tienen que generar estudios que contemplen el salar como un sistema integrado e interconectado. Una protección parcial no contempla esto y deja vulnerable a todos las especies, humanas y no humanas, que dependen de y conviven con este salar.

La disputa sobre los estudios de impacto ambiental del Salar de Maricunga nos demuestra la importancia de consultar a los pueblos indígenas desde antes que comience un proyecto minero. Estas comunidades llevan siglos estudiando el ecosistema y su funcionamiento teniendo conocimiento ancestral sobre el territorio y sus formas de vida, tienen el derecho a decidir sobre los proyectos en o cerca de sus territorios, y contemplan estos proyectos velando por su sobrevivencia indigena a futuro y por los ecosistemas frágiles que cuiden y dependen de.

The post New Study on Water Impacts from Lithium Extraction in Chile’s Maricunga Salar appeared first on Earthworks.

Earlier this month, fracking company CNX released the first round of data from its “radical transparency” program. This initiative is a public-private partnership between Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and a fossil fuel company that the Governor previously brought charges against while serving as the commonwealth’s attorney general. Since the announcement of that partnership, frontline community members and environmental advocates have continuously raised concerns, specifically on the issues of voluntary self-reporting from a company that has faced criminal charges for falsifying data. 

Many feared that CNX would use this partnership to artificially salvage its image. Less than a year later, those fears are becoming a reality. This sanctioned rebranding of a serial and criminally charged polluter could potentially set  precedent for the expansion of fracking next to homes, schools, and playgrounds, and the possible construction of a dangerous hydrogen hub in Appalachia.  

The Shapiro administration has made a grave error in partnering with CNX on a program that is little more than a public relations campaign. This initiative is flawed and the Governor’s office should acknowledge it.

Any policy decisions made using this data is highly problematic. Air and water quality monitoring through this collaboration is questionable. Too few facilities were used in the sample. And, worst of all, those facilities were hand-selected by – and we’ll say it again – a chronic and criminally charged company, CNX. 

There are serious flaws in methodology in this first round of “data.” There are mountains of actual peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary. When it comes to sample size, which only include 11 well pads and 2 midstream facilities, it only represents 0.6% of the 1,850 wells CNX owns across Pennsylvania.

So, what is so radically transparent?

So, what is so radically transparent about this curated, paltry dataset – and what is happening at CNX’s other sites? 

There is plenty of evidence that some CNX well pads are polluting significantly more than what this initiative is showing.. Less than a year ago, an ITC-certified Earthworks thermographer filmed a CNX well pad in Washington County, PA. This well was NOT selected for the “radical transparency” program. An industry-standard optical gas imaging camera captured an enormous plume of pollution, including health-hazardous volatile organic compounds such as BTEX and the climate super pollutant methane, spewing from the facility. This was not a unique event. Publicly available methane emissions data from Carbon Mapper shows at least four methane “super emitter” events near the locations of CNX well pads in 2023.

There is also evidence to suggest that the kind of equipment CNX is using to measure air quality can miss pollution from oil and gas facilities. A report released by Earthworks and Oil Change International in 2023 and revisited in 2024 showed that continuous emission monitors, like those used by CNX, are not reliable due to a variety of human and mechanical errors. These include placing monitors too far away from emissions sources, positioning them too low to the ground to adequately detect pollution, or using too few monitors to effectively detect pollution.

Long Term Consequences: more fracking & more pollution

The announcement of this “Radical Transparency” partnership between Governor Shapiro and CNX came in November 2023 shortly after both the company and the commonwealth were awarded funding from the Department of Energy (DOE) Regional Hydrogen Hub program through the ARCH2 and MACH2 hydrogen hubs respectively. 

The ARCH2 hub, of which CNX is a project partner, is a blue hydrogen hub, which would use fracking as a feedstock to create hydrogen. Despite being called a clean energy source the truth is that this is yet another lifeline to preserve the fracking industry in Appalachia.

The ARCH2 project poses the threat of the continued buildout of fracking infrastructure, more pipelines, underground CO2 injection, and the construction of multiple new chemical facilities. ARCH2 must be held to a higher standard of community engagement and scrutiny if the DOE is going to sink $30 million of our tax dollars into it – especially when dealing with CNX. 

The well-documented history of CNX harming communities and climate will continue if this initiative is to be recognized as a real test of this operator’s pollution problem. The claims CNX makes from its cherry-picked data make a mockery of the actual scientific process, which has produced hundreds of peer-reviewed studies showing health harms from fracking. This company’s “radical transparency” program should not be given unwarranted legitimacy by Pennsylvania’s governor. The future of our planet and the safety of communities should not be determined by flawed data and misleading statements orchestrated by criminally-charged fossil fuel corporations.

The Shapiro administration has made a grave error in partnering with CNX on a program that is little more than a public relations campaign. This initiative is flawed and the Governor’s office should acknowledge it. More than that, Governor Shapiro should follow through on recommendations backed by peer-reviewed evidence and his own 2020 grand jury report, which calls for expanding no-drill zones to protect the health of communities. 

No one wants a politician helping a public relations effort by a company that has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted. Frontline residents want and deserve an elected leader who respects science, follows the facts, and puts  the health of communities above all else.

The post Radically misleading: Governor Shapiro’s dangerous partnership with CNX hurts communities & ignores the facts appeared first on Earthworks.

Meeting the ambitious targets necessary to avert climate catastrophe will require scaling up our use of low-carbon energy sources. These solar, wind, and battery technologies, including electric vehicle (EV) batteries, currently rely on minerals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, graphite, and rare earths which are almost exclusively mined or extracted from the ground at great cost to the environment and communities. 

A new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute challenges claims that the energy transition is yoked to more mining, which just replaces one harmful form of extraction with another. Their research affirms what Earthworks and allied organizations have been saying for several years: that a just and rights-based energy transition is not only essential, but eminently achievable, ensuring the benefits of low-emission transport are equitably shared and do not disproportionately impact vulnerable communities. 

In order to achieve this, we must transition from our current, fossil fuel-based linear model of extract, burn, repeat, to a circular model built around efficiency and recycling. And as the RMI report indicates, such a closed loop model could indeed end the need for new mineral extraction for renewable energy technologies by 2050. Success will require improvements in battery technology, vehicle efficiency and non-car transportation, along with—critically—the buildout of the infrastructure necessary to reuse, repurpose and recycle EV batteries. In turn, recycling and disassembly must be done responsibly, respecting the health and safety of communities and workers and minimizing toxicity. 

In such a system, battery minerals can be reused almost indefinitely, unlike fossil fuels.  But it will only work if we focus on bending that linear model into a circle. 

RMI’s research reinforces and expands on the findings of the 2021 report by the University of Technology, Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures that found that a significant portion of the lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper needs for EV batteries globally could be met by secondary sources. According to that research, effectively recycling end-of-life batteries could reduce global EV mineral demand 55% for newly mined copper, 25% for lithium and 35% for cobalt and nickel by 2040一even with the most ambitious 100% renewable targets worldwide.  

RMI’s report goes one step further. It finds that by 2050 we can eliminate our need for new mined minerals for batteries altogether. It won’t necessarily be easy—we have a lot of work to do to get there—but it’s encouraging to see hard numbers showing it can be done. What happens between now and 2050? The answer to this question is of huge significance for the thousands of communities living near mine sites around the world, in particular Indigenous communities, given that half of all battery minerals are likely to be extracted from the lands and territories of Indigenous Peoples. 

We must ensure that the lands, sacred sites, languages, livelihoods, water, food systems, medicine and cultures of Indigenous Peoples and communities living near mining operations do not become sacrifice zones in the name of mining or electrified transit. The only way to do that is to build a system in which the majority of our minerals needs come from the re-use and recycling of minerals, greater materials efficiency, and a closed-loop, circular materials system. What minerals are newly extracted would meet stringent environmental and social requirements, such as those laid out by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. It’s the only way to guarantee our clean energy economy is truly clean一as well as just and sustainable. 

Click here to learn more and get involved.

The post Bending the Line: New Research Confirms the Key to a Just Clean Energy Transition is A Circular Minerals Economy appeared first on Earthworks.

A preliminary analysis of the Vineyard Wind turbine that failed has found that, although the fundamental design of the machine’s 351-foot blades is sound, a manufacturing flaw caused one of them to snap as it spun over the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month.

The July 13 accident, which prompted federal authorities to shut down the entire wind farm, littered the beaches of Nantucket, Massachusetts, with foam and fiberglass. GE Vernova, which manufactures the Haliade-X turbines, said Wednesday that its tests revealed that insufficient bonding was applied to the blade at its factory in Gaspe, Canada, Reuters reported. The company said its quality assurance program should have caught the problem, and it will inspect each of the 150 blades the facility has produced.

“We have work to do, but we are confident in our ability to implement corrective actions and move forward,” a company representative told Reuters. GE stressed that its investigation has so far found no reason to doubt the integrity of the design, noting that, “there is no indication of an engineering design flaw in the blade.”

The blade failed July 13 while undergoing post-installation testing and commissioning, sending debris flying into the Atlantic. Some 300 feet of what remained hung by a few strands of fiberglass alongside the tower, which stands roughly 450 feet above the water, though when the blade points straight up, the overall height reaches around 853 feet. Most of that fell into the sea five days later; waiting vessels recovered what they could despite weather conditions that created what Vineyard Wind called “a difficult working environment.”

By that point, however, foam and fiberglass had long since reached the shores of Nantucket, roughly 15 miles miles away, angering locals and providing ammunition to opponents of wind power. Residents expressed concern about PFAS contamination, plastic pollution, and the impact of the mishap on the local environment and economy. Although Vineyard Wind insisted the material is nontoxic and there have so far been no reports of the accident killing, injuring, or otherwise harming marine life, fiberglass can cause skin irritation.

Although the manufacturing oversight that led to the failure is unfortunate, it is among the most likely points of failure in the lifecycle of an offshore turbine, Grant Goodrich, the executive director of the Great Lakes Energy Institute, told Grist. Problems arising from installation are vanishingly rare, he said, and because the blade that failed was new, that meant that a manufacturing defect or damage incurred during transportation of the blade were the biggest areas of concern.

Still, failures of any kind are rare, though not unheard of. A turbine blade at the Dogger Bank A offshore wind farm in the United Kingdom failed earlier this year. It was the same model used by Vineyard Wind, but GE Vernova told Reuters that the two incidents are not related and its investigation into what happened 15 miles off the coast of Nantucket continues.

“Our investigation is ongoing, and we are working with urgency to scrutinize our blade manufacturing and quality assurance program across offshore wind,” the company said in a statement, according to the Boston Herald. “We have work to do, but we are confident in our ability to implement corrective actions and move forward.”

Ultimately, though, addressing the problem and cleaning up the mess the accident created may be faster and easier than addressing the damage it may have done to public perception of wind. Critics of renewable energy seized the opportunity to denounce wind farms and link the turbine failure to congressional Democrats pushing a permitting reform bill that promotes renewables.

Yet advocates of wind and other forms of clean energy quickly noted that they are far safer than fossil fuel production and do not cause leaks, spills, or explosions. The industry’s safety record is widely known in Europe and China, where the industry is relatively mature and the bulk of the world’s offshore farms are located. Goodrich noted that projects around the world ordered 20,000 utility-scale turbines last year, yet there were only a handful of accidents or failures. 

Vineyard Wind is among the nation’s first major offshore wind farms. The sprawling complex of 62 turbines, which one day will produce 862 megawatts, was in the earliest stages of operation. Just 10 were spinning when the blade broke and the Federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement shut them down. There is still no word on when energy generation will resume, though clean energy advocates vowed to ensure that it will — in Nantucket and beyond.

“Now we must all work to ensure that the failure of a single turbine blade does not adversely impact the emergence of offshore wind as a critical solution for reducing dependence on fossil fuels and addressing the climate crisis,” the Sierra Club said in a statement. “Wind power is one of the safest forms of energy generation.”

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Wind turbines rarely fail. So why did Vineyard Wind’s fall apart? on Jul 25, 2024.

Sports clothing firm Lululemon – the official supplier of kit to Canada’s Olympics team – is portraying itself as a sustainable brand despite its rising greenhouse gas emissions and “highly-polluting” activities, according to a complaint filed to the French authorities on Wednesday.

Environmental advocacy group Stand.earth accused the Vancouver-based apparel company of greenwashing in a “first-of-its-kind complaint” submitted to the French Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) days before the Olympics Games opening ceremony in Paris.

Stand.earth has called on the French regulator to investigate Lululemon’s “vague, disproportionate and ambiguous” environmental claims which, the green group said, constitute misleading commercial practices. In response, the company told Climate Home its publicity does not misrepresent its operations.

Through its “Be Planet” campaign unveiled in 2020, Lululemon tells customers that its “products and actions avoid environmental harm and contribute to restoring a healthy planet”.

A screengrab from Lululemon’s sustainability webpage

But the company’s latest impact report shows that emissions from Lululemon’s full supply chain – known as Scope 3 – nearly doubled to 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between the campaign’s launch and 2022. That’s equivalent to powering 300,000 gasoline cars for a year.

Stand.earth’s complaint said Lululemon’s emissions are set to grow even further as it tries to hit a goal of doubling sales by 2026.

“Lululemon customers worldwide deserve to know the true impacts of the company’s climate pollution, not the greenwashed version it uses to sell products,” said Stand.earth Executive Director Todd Paglia.

UAE’s ALTÉRRA invests in fund backing fossil gas despite “climate solutions” pledge

Earlier this year, Stand.earth filed a similar complaint against Lululemon in Canada that resulted in the country’s Competition Bureau opening a formal investigation into the retailer’s use of environmental claims. A separate complaint accusing Lululemon of greenwashing was brought in early July this year by a private citizen in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

A spokesperson for Lululemon said that Be Planet “is not a marketing campaign” but “a pillar” of the company’s impact strategy, and that the firm is confident the statements it makes to the public accurately reflect its impact goals and commitments.

“We are taking direct action and are committed to collaborating with industry partners to help address supply chain impacts on climate change,” the spokesperson added. “We welcome dialogue and remain focused on driving progress.”

Rising revenues, rising emissions

Lululemon is one of the world’s fastest-growing retailers of athletic apparel, with net revenues rising 19% to $9.6 billion in 2023. The company, which has more than 700 stores in 20 countries, is the official clothing provider for Team Canada at the Olympic Games whose opening ceremony takes place in Paris this Friday.

According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Paris 2024 Games are targeting a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions compared to the average of the London Olympics in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, including Scope 3 emissions such as from spectator travel. This means Paris 2024 will offer the first Olympic Games aligned with the Paris Agreement on climate change, the IOC says.

View of Lululemon name above its retail store in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, NY, August 2, 2023. (Photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa USA)

Lululemon, meanwhile, has committed to reaching net zero emissions across its supply chain by 2050 through a target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), widely seen as the gold standard in corporate accountability.

But the company has come under intense criticism from green advocates over its climate and environmental impacts caused by energy-intensive production, high consumption of natural resources like water and long-distance shipping of items around the globe.

Four-fifths of Lululemon’s manufacturers in 2022 were located in countries that are highly-dependent on fossil fuels like Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The materials most commonly used by Lululemon in its clothes – polyester and nylon – are themselves produced from fossil fuels, according to the Stand.earth complaint.

EU greenwashing crackdown

The environmental group said the case will mark the first test of the French regulator’s readiness for a wave of new European greenwashing legislation.

The European Parliament approved a new directive in January requiring member states to introduce stricter rules surrounding the use of sustainability claims by companies and banning certain practices.

European lawmakers are currently working on a further piece of legislation that aims to define what kind of information companies must provide to justify their green marketing in the future. In its current form, the proposed regulation would require sustainability claims to be based on scientific evidence and checked by an independent and accredited verifier.

A global wealth tax is needed to help fund a just green transition

The so-called “Green Claims” directive is currently going through a negotiation process between the European Parliament and the European Council – which brings together EU leaders – before a final text is agreed.

“For decades, companies have faced no consequences for deceptive practices aimed at misleading the public about their environmental and climate justice impacts,” said Stand.earth’s Paglia. “However, we’re now seeing a rising interest in holding these companies accountable for their claims, and a crackdown is beginning to happen from Europe to North America.”

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)

 

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The rush to mine the deep seabed for resources needed for green technologies could have profound ecological consequences. As world governments now meet to negotiate decisions on the future of the international seabed, global protocols to halt deep-sea mining plans will only go so far unless human society fundamentally changes its growth-at-all-costs model. 

Nestled in the ocean floor are vast quantities of minerals – metals like cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements, which are crucial for batteries, electronics, and green technologies. These resources ensure that the deep sea, which covers more than half of the Earth’s surface, is fast becoming a key point of interest for the green transition. That in turn raises the prospect of an intensification of deep-sea mining (DSM). Although technological advancements have made exploration activities increasingly feasible over recent decades, the deep sea remains one of the least explored and understood ecosystems.  

The dangers that come with deep-sea mining are many. It risks harming undiscovered species and disrupting intricate food webs that have evolved over millennia. Disturbing these ecosystems may furthermore compromise their role in regulating global climate patterns, including the sequestration and storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  

The DSM industry often promotes new technologies as being safe for biodiversity. However, these claims lack comprehensive, independent scientific validation. The deep-sea ecosystem is complex and largely unexplored, and even seemingly small disturbances can have significant and unpredictable impacts on biodiversity and ecological functions. They may generate changes in species composition, for instance, which in turn threatens food webs and commercial fish stocks. Coastal communities that depend on healthy marine ecosystems for their livelihoods could therefore face unprecedented disruptions. The ocean, a source of food and income for these communities, might be turned into a battlefield for resource extraction, with few benefits trickling down to those who need them most. That is why scientists are warning of large-scale and irreversible damage to the marine environment.  

Solving one problem within the same extractive and colonial paradigm that created the problem in the first place is bound to fail.

Yet the question is larger than ocean protection. It is about how we manage all the world’s resources, whether or not they lie in the deepest reaches of the ocean. The rush to secure access to deep-sea minerals may even divert attention and resources away from improving practices and mitigating the impacts of on-land mining, which already has a long record of generating conflicts with local communities and indigenous populations in mining areas. This diversion could lead to increased social, human rights, and environmental violations in already vulnerable communities and ecosystems where terrestrial mining is prevalent. 

The irony is stark. The rush to manufacture technologies that we see as solutions to our environmental crisis – electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels – means we are repeating, on the seabed, the very same patterns of exploitation that have so degraded terrestrial resources. Solving one problem within the same extractive and colonial paradigm that created the problem in the first place is bound to fail. Instead, we should pursue a more sustainable and equitable approach to resource management that addresses the root causes of conflict and promotes the well-being of both terrestrial and marine environments. 

Challenging the growth impulse  

The European Critical Raw Materials Act, hailed as a landmark achievement of the previous EU mandate, aims to diversify Europe’s supplies by ensuring a steady flow of critical minerals both from within Europe and through strategic partnerships. Built on the assumption that constant growth and increasing material consumption are both necessary and inevitable, the Act promotes the extraction of raw materials through various measures.  

But there is an alternative to the assumption that we need to delve deeper into the Earth’s crust. What if, instead, we chose to address the root cause of our resource demands? 

The UN Global E-Waste Monitor shows that global electronic waste has reached record highs and is increasing five times faster than recycling rates. The recycling rate for rare earth elements in e-waste is only around 1 per cent. If we look at smartphones alone, about 16,000 tonnes of cobalt are lost annually due to inadequate collection and recycling of these devices, which represents approximately 10 per cent of the global cobalt production. There should be huge economic interest in turning waste into valuable secondary or tertiary products, yet the transition to a circular economy seems slow. Despite the EU boasting a circularity rate of 11.5 per cent in 2022 – indicating that Europe consumes a higher proportion of recycled materials than other world regions – progress in the EU has stagnated, and it continues to fall far short of its ambition to double the circularity rate by 2030. 

The battery industry is among the highest consumers of minerals. Yet its demands are changing. Traditional lithium-ion batteries are being replaced by lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which do not require nickel or cobalt – two critical raw materials (CRM) that deep-sea mining proponents seek to obtain. By 2030, increased use of LFP batteries could reduce demand for nickel, manganese and cobalt by more than 50 per cent. Moreover, sodium-ion batteries, which avoid the constrained and often unpredictable supply chains of lithium, cobalt, and nickel are on the rise following positive research and innovation efforts. This kind of technology will prove significant for future energy storage systems too.  

However, circularity, substitution and technology development will not be enough to halt the increasing demand for CRMs. Here is where sufficiency comes into play. Sufficiency is all about finding a balance – meeting our needs without overstepping the planet’s ecological boundaries. It challenges the notion that more is always better, and asks profound questions about human needs. In this context, it would mean that we would not only ask how cars can be more efficient, but also ask whether we need to have two cars per household. For instance, car sharing can cut the materials used in transport by 50 to 70 per cent per passenger-kilometre. Yet greater reductions come with public transport, cycling, and walking. Public policies have the potential to transform the shift to transport sufficiency through, for instance, investments in public transport, improved urban planning, and railway networks stretching to rural areas. By emphasising needs-based consumption, sufficiency measures encourage the use of fewer resources without compromising functionality or quality. 

The transition to sustainable mineral resource management is a monumental task requiring engagement across multiple sectors. To this end, the latest Environment Council Conclusions suggested the implementation of an entirely new legal framework on resource management. Various suggestions on how to achieve this have been put forward, with increasing support. Suffice to say, there are high expectations on the new Commission’s proposed Circular Economy Act.  

Advocating a precautionary approach 

In the face of an aggressive industry narrative, momentum is growing for a precautionary approach to deep-sea mining. Just three years ago, not a single country in Europe defended a moratorium, precautionary pause, or ban (the concepts are interchangeable) on deep-sea mining. Today, 12 out of 27 member states do. They share the European Commission and the European Parliament’s position that no DSM should proceed until knowledge gaps are filled, environmental safeguards are ensured, and governance issues are resolved. France and Germany stand out as virtuous actors. They have been particularly vocal against DSM, having driven the push for a moratorium, and having advocated for thorough environmental safeguards and governance before any DSM activities proceed. 

But significant actors still advocate DSM. In Europe, Norway and Poland have been particularly driven by their interests in exploiting seabed resources for economic gain and technological development. Key companies involved include Norway’s LOKE Minerals, which is interested in the Arctic, and Global Sea Mineral Resources (GSR), a subsidiary of Belgium’s DEME Group, whose focus is on the Pacific Ocean. Another significant player is Allseas, a Dutch company known for its offshore activities, including DSM research and technology development. 

In 2023 the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the UN-affiliated body mandated to manage the deep sea in international waters, has committed to advancing negotiations on a so-called mining code with a view for adoption by July 2025. This mining code would enable the ISA to begin issuing exploitation contracts, building on the 31 exploration contracts already granted. This accelerated timeline raises concerns that critical gaps in the scientific understanding of deep-sea ecosystems may not be adequately addressed before commercial activities commence.  

A study published in Marine Policy earlier this year pointed out at least 30 unresolved issues in its latest mining code draft. One of the most pressing concerns is how the ISA plans to effectively protect the marine environment from potential harm caused by seabed mining, as mandated by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Governance issues within the ISA itself pose additional challenges. Allegations of corruption and procedural irregularities have cast doubt on the authority’s ability to effectively manage and regulate DSM activities. 

Adding to the pressure, The Metals Company, a major player in the DSM sector known for extensive exploration in the Pacific Ocean, plans to submit a mining application this year. In a strategic move, they intend to invoke the so-called two-year rule within UNCLOS which allows expedited consideration of their application even without a mining code adopted. This move puts pressure on the ISA to fast-track the adoption of a mining code and, in turn, has intensified the push for a moratorium, with ISA’s structural and voting mechanisms favouring a potential application. 

We urgently need bold policies with ambitious material footprint reduction targets to shift business as usual.

This is why the ISA Assembly will next week discuss for the first time a motion to consider a General Policy for the protection and preservation of the marine environment, suggested by nine states. This is one legal tool by which a precautionary approach could be enacted, meaning that it would set the overarching conditions required to be fulfilled before DSM is considered.  

Historic examples, such as the whaling moratorium or ban on mining in Antarctica, show us that the international status quo can be altered through political will and decisive action. This raises hopes that the ISA too can be transformed into an international body which effectively ensures marine protection. 

A new ethic of care 

As we stand at the brink of this new frontier, we must choose a path that reflects our responsibility to the planet and future generations. The debate over DSM forces us to confront a fundamental question: What kind of custodians of Earth do we aspire to be? Our current trajectory – one of endless extraction and consumption – is both unsustainable and morally indefensible. Instead of plunging into the abyss in search of resources, we need to cultivate a culture that values quality over quantity, repair over replacement, and conservation over consumption.  

The call to action is clear: we urgently need bold policies with ambitious material footprint reduction targets to shift business as usual. These targets must be followed up with a range of sufficiency initiatives across various sectors. There are plenty of ideas, creativity, and proposals on how to move forward. 

The global momentum behind a precautionary approach to DSM not only highlights the urgent need to address the environmental and social risks associated with the emerging industry, but reflects a shift in how we believe we should govern our natural resources. There is a growing recognition that the traditional, growth-at-all-costs approach is incompatible with our planet’s finite resources. Beyond the immediate action to adopt a General Policy in the ISA, we are seeing a larger understanding of the need for deeper systemic changes that reflect a true recognition of our planet’s limits, transcending the realm of international seabed management.  

Such a narrative would ensure that a precautionary pause on DSM does not create a gold rush in other mineable areas, but rather that financial streams would be redirected to research, innovation, and circular economy. To make this a reality, governments and international bodies must implement robust legal frameworks, invest in sustainable technologies, and prioritise education and public awareness about the importance of resource conservation. Collaborative efforts between nations, industries, and civil society will be essential to create a resilient and sustainable resource management system. This system can act as a catalyst for rethinking raw material dependencies, ensuring sufficiency, strengthening strategic autonomy, and promoting planetary wellbeing. 

In the grand tapestry of Earth’s ecosystems, the deep sea remains a dark, mysterious place, weaving its own intricate story of life. It is a story that has unfolded over aeons, far removed from human influence. As we ponder the depths, let us also consider the heights of our potential for stewardship.

Pesticides used on crops in the United States are increasingly laced with “forever chemicals,” making it likely that they are being spread in common foods and waterways, according to a study published Wednesday. By Edward Carver Common Dreams The peer-reviewed study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first full review of the presence of per- and […]

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Connecticut scored a major victory in its lawsuit seeking to hold ExxonMobil accountable for “an ongoing, systematic campaign of lies and deception” about the role of the company’s fossil fuel products in causing climate change, after a state court judge denied Exxon’s motion to dismiss the case. By Mike Meno The Center for Climate Integrity The lawsuit, filed by Connecticut […]

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Just a few years ago, the alternative protein industry promised to revolutionize the way people eat burgers: They would still sizzle and bleed, they’d taste great, but they wouldn’t actually contain any meat. Today it seems that, if that revolution is still coming, its arrival has been more than a little delayed. Sales of plant-based meat and seafood have fallen over the last two years, and a recent bevy of headlines suggest that this latest wave of imitation meat was just that: a passing fad.

A new report suggests that if the alt protein industry has any hope of scaling, it will take robust funding from a number of different sources — including, crucially, the public sector. The report compares plant-based meat imitations to electric vehicles, a powerful climate solution that has benefited from government support, such as direct purchase subsidies. 

But like the EV industry before it, alternative meat has a culture war problem to sort out before it can grow — with or without government investment.

Despite some obvious differences, there’s a major parallel between electric cars and alternative meat: They’re designed to be a one-to-one replacement for their predecessors. Buying an electric vehicle “doesn’t require consumers to make extensive behavioral changes” like forgoing a car completely, said Emma Ignaszewski, one of the authors of the report. Similarly, consumers can simply choose to buy burgers that aren’t made from animal protein rather than burgers that are. “You can enjoy your burger, but it can be produced with far lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional meat is,” said Ignaszewski, who is a senior associate director at the Good Food Institute, or GFI, a think tank that promotes alternative proteins. 

Research has shown that animal agriculture is responsible for 11 to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. The development of plant-based foods — meat substitutes that don’t contain meat — could help reduce these emissions and lead to less deforestation and land degradation. One study found that a vegan diet produced about 75 percent less planet-warming gas emissions than meat-rich diets.  

Ignaszweski acknowledges that the comparison of alt meats to EVs has its limitations. “The average American buys a car once every eight years,” she said, while “purchasers of meat buy 60 packages at the grocery store every year. Over the course of a decade, that’s one decision point versus 600.”

But the broader point of the report, which was published by GFI, the Boston Consulting Group, and Synthesis Capital, a venture capital fund that invests in new food technologies, is that meatless meats could take off in the same way EVs have if more public dollars were invested in the industry. (The report touches on plant-based meat and seafood, as well as cultivated or “lab-grown” meats, which are produced directly from animal cells, and substitutes that utilize the fermentation process to enhance the nutritional value or flavor of plant ingredients.)

Sales of plant-based meat and seafood have fallen over the last two years. Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images

In 2022, the alternative protein industry received $635 million in government support globally. The Environmental Working Group, or EWG, found last year that, since 2001, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has only put $124 million towards subsidizing alt proteins. By comparison, the USDA gave at least $59 billion in various subsidies to livestock operators from 1995 to 2023. 

More public investment in plant-based meat would not only help drive research and development of new technologies and help scale manufacturing, according to GFI, it would also be a signal to private capital markets that the alternative protein space is worth taking seriously.

“If the U.S. is serious about technical solutions to address climate change, the food system is a really important piece of that puzzle,” said Ignaszweski. 

Other experts agree, with caveats. David Zilberman, a longtime professor at the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at UC Berkeley, believes it’s “a little bit exaggerated” to compare meatless meat to EVs. He cites, for example, the employment opportunities created by EV manufacturing as one of the reasons that the two industries are different. But he agrees the sector sorely needs more support. He described alternative proteins as having “huge importance, especially in terms of food security, but most importantly in terms of climate change.” Greater investment would help drive the kind of innovation that would help alternative proteins reach taste parity with conventional meats. “In the long run, if you were able to develop things that taste better, consumers would like it,” said Zilberman. 

Still, for the U.S. to back alternative proteins in the same way it has helped to spur the adoption of EVs would require a political sea change. Fears of climate policies eliminating meat from the American diet loom large over the conservative movement. A 2023 study found that Republicans said they were less likely to vote for a hypothetical candidate who said, “It’s time for us to work together as a nation to reduce our reliance on meat and dairy and focus on solutions like plant-based foods and artificial meats instead.” In 2018, Senator Ted Cruz memorably warned that, “If Texas elects a Democrat, they’re going to ban barbecue across the state of Texas.” He later explained it was a joke, but the message was instantly clear: Climate action means sacrificing precious ways of life, especially for men who view eating meat as a tenet of masculinity. This fear has resulted in a backlash against alternative proteins: In May, Florida and Alabama banned the manufacture and sale of lab-grown meat.

Crafting an effective narrative to counter entrenched beliefs about meat versus plant-based foods will be key to the industry’s success, said Samantha Derrick, the founder of Plant Futures, an interdisciplinary program at UC Berkeley that aims to train students for careers in alternative proteins. “I think, as well organized as Big Ag is, even though they have a lot of money and resources, there’s a lot of potential on the alt protein side,” said Derrick. And she believes that the generation of entrepreneurs entering the workforce now can help develop a new, more compelling narrative. 

“Ultimately at the end of the day, the information, the data, the research, the climate argument, it’s all on our side,” said Derrick. “And that’s one thing that Big Ag does not have that we have.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Plant-based meat needs government support to scale up, but a culture war stands in the way on Jul 25, 2024.

In recent decades, the way Americans buy things has undergone a radical transformation. E-commerce firms like Amazon have reshaped how people shop and how they receive their purchases, dotting the country with gigantic warehouses for the distribution of merchandise and bringing high volumes of truck traffic to nearby communities.

In a paper published Wednesday, researchers at George Washington University used satellite data to measure the air pollution associated with large warehouses — the first such nationwide study.

The researchers focused in part on nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, a traffic-related air pollutant that is regulated under the Clean Air Act and is linked to asthma and other respiratory diseases. The study, which was funded by NASA, cross-referenced the locations of 150,000 warehouses across the U.S. with satellite observations of NO2 and found that people who live near warehouses are exposed to an average of 20 percent more NO2 than those who don’t. It also found that warehouses are located disproportionately in Black, Hispanic, and Asian neighborhoods — and that the concentration of racial minorities was closely correlated with the number of warehouses in a given area. Over 250 percent more Hispanic and Asian residents live near the largest warehouse clusters than the national average.

The highest concentrations of NO2 pollution are one or two miles downwind of the warehouses, said Gaige Kerr, the study’s lead author. This reflects the fact that NO2 is not directly emitted by vehicles. Instead, Kerr said, “Tailpipes emit NO, nitrogen oxide, and then NO undergoes chemical reactions in the atmosphere. Those reactions take a little bit of time, so the result of that is, you can imagine, there’s this plume of NO-rich air at the warehouse and it’s blown by the prevailing winds.” 

Read Next Earth just sweltered through the hottest day ever recorded Matt Simon

Warehousing is as old as the shipping of goods, but Kerr said the growth of online retail has transformed an industry that had looked the same for decades. “If you look at a plot of warehouse characteristics over time, the average new warehouse built from about 1980 to 2010 all kind of are the same,” Kerr said.

But then everything changed. “Following 2010, there is a really dramatic increase in the average square footage of warehouses,” Kerr said. “There’s about a 400 percent increase in the number of loading docks at the average warehouse, and also increases in the number of parking spaces as well as the density of warehousing clusters.”

With the growth of these facilities came organized community opposition in some of the country’s biggest warehouse hubs. In California’s South Coast, home to the largest concentration of warehouses in the country, local regulators adopted a landmark pollution rule in 2021, requiring warehouses to offset pollution from their trucks by choosing from a suite of actions including adding electric vehicle chargers or solar panels, or paying a mitigation fee to fund clean energy investments in the affected communities.

This rule was novel in its recognition of warehouses as an “indirect source” of pollution: Even though the buildings themselves didn’t emit pollutants, their owners were now on the hook for the pollution from the traffic they brought. Other states have begun considering implementing versions of this rule.

Kerr said there are policy solutions available at a variety of jurisdictional levels to lessen the health impacts of warehouse pollution. Besides issuing emissions limits, the federal government can further incentivize the electrification of trucks. But other players can do their part as well: “Individual corporations can pledge to phase out some of their older diesel vehicles, which are the worst when it comes to pollution. And there can also be commitments from electric utilities to deploy charging infrastructure, especially near clusters of warehouses and in really heavy trucking corridors,” Kerr said. 

Americans could also buy less stuff. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Deal of the day: New study links online shopping to air pollution on Jul 25, 2024.

Rethinking sacrifice: a climate camp in Aberdeen Channel Comment brendan 25th July 2024 Teaser Media

With the Paris Olympics fast approaching under the shadow of the climate crisis, activists and advocates continue to raise questions about the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) commitment to one of three pillars of the Olympic Agenda: sustainability. Adam Ali, Western University; jay johnson, University of Manitoba, and MacIntosh Ross, Western University The Conversation And for […]

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The vision

“When you lose it, you’ve lost a record of climate on Earth that can never be recovered. There’s a lot of scientists who realize this, and have realized it for decades, who are making heroic efforts to recover this ice before it disappears forever.”

— Ice core scientist Tyler Jones

The spotlight

The first time Tyler Jones visited the National Science Foundation’s Ice Core Facility in Colorado’s Jefferson County, he felt like he’d stepped into an episode of The X Files. “It was like I was in some secret government installation,” he said. Jones, an ice core scientist from the University of Colorado Boulder, equated the facility to a “giant walk-in freezer” nestled inside an old concrete building, where scientists are preserving cylinders of glacial ice that essentially act as time capsules of information.

The coldest chamber of this immense freezer is filled with shelves bearing the weight of ice cores from both poles, stored in protective metal tubes, dating back decades. “It’s basically a giant library of ice cores,” Jones said — a library that includes some of the first ice cores ever taken.

Portions of samples from as far back as the 1950s are preserved at the facility, because scientists have long known that, as technology advanced, it would allow future generations to analyze old samples in new ways. “We always try to save some ice to give those future scientists a chance to do something better than we’re doing right now,” Jones said.

This desire to preserve ice cores has taken on a new urgency, given how fast glaciers around the world are melting. When the average person thinks about this problem, they may picture icebergs falling into the sea and mountainsides left barren as the ice retreats upslope. But glacial melt is also having an invisible impact within the ice itself, rapidly erasing the data that glaciologists and climate scientists rely on to learn about planetary changes.

A piece of an ice core extracted by a research team in Svalbard, Norway. Riccardo Selvatico for CNR and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Around 10 years ago, Carlo Barbante, a chemist at the University of Venice in Italy, and his glaciologist colleague Jérôme Chappellaz from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology had the idea for an initiative that would complement the work of the Ice Core Facility in Colorado and similar facilities in other countries: an international Ice Memory Sanctuary, focused on preserving cores extracted from endangered glaciers.

The sanctuary was built last year as a cave on the High Antarctic Plateau, where the average temperature is -54 degrees Celsuis (-65 degrees Fahrenheit). So far Barbante, Chappellaz, and their colleagues have collected cores from seven glaciers across Europe and one in Bolivia that will eventually be stored there, and they have plans underway for more international collaborations to add cores to the sanctuary from other parts of the world.

[Read more about the Ice Memory Foundation, and how glacial melt is impacting other areas of scientific study, here.]

“We don’t want to lose these important archives,” Barbante said. “They give us a lot of information about, of course, the past, but also the present and the future.”

Andrea Spolaor remembers how far out the front of a tidewater glacier reached when he first visited the world’s northernmost research station in Svalbard, Norway, more than 10 years ago. He estimated that it may have retreated by nearly 2 miles since then. In April 2023, when Spolaor, a snow chemist with the Italian Research Council, led an expedition to take a core from an ice field 25 miles away from Ny-Alesund station, melting already posed a problem.

When he and his team reached their chosen location, they set up their drill and got to work carrying out their plans to extract two 400-foot-long ice cores. But after about 80 feet, they pulled up water. At first, they tried to drain what they thought was a small pocket of melt. “After, I don’t know, five or six hours,” Spolaor said, “I think we took out three or four hundred liters of water.” They’d struck an aquifer. In 2005, a research team had drilled through solid ice in that same spot.

Spolaor and company moved uphill to try again. It meant thinner ice, but they still managed to take three roughly 240-foot cores without striking water again.

Then time came to pack up the samples, strap them onto sleds behind their snowmobiles, and head back to the research station. As they neared the coast, they discovered that a river of meltwater had formed while they were draining aquifers and taking cores. They had no choice but to wade through 100 yards of ice-cold, waist-high water to carry each box out. “It was a bit annoying,” Spolaor said. “We spent four hours in the water to take out the samples.”

Spolaor’s team’s research camp on an expedition on Svalbard. Riccardo Selvatico for CNR and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Spolaor and his team plan to use a portion of the samples for their immediate research needs, building on studies they’ve done in the past to understand what the future holds for Svalbard and other places in the Arctic. They’re hoping that the lower portion of their ice core will cover an era of unexpected warming that took place around 1,000 years ago, which has the potential to tell us something about how the poles respond to abrupt warming. The samples they don’t use for research today will head to the Ice Memory Sanctuary for other research teams in the years and decades ahead with questions of their own.

As snow accumulates on a glacier, it slowly crushes and compacts what lies below it. The snow transitions first into a porous substance called firn, before getting squeezed all the way into ice. But the pores don’t disappear. The ice is full of tiny air bubbles. “This makes the ice an absolutely unique archive,” said Margit Schwikowsi, an environmental chemist and chair of the scientific committee for the Ice Memory Foundation, the organization that was established in 2021 to create the sanctuary. The bubbles offer a glimpse of ancient atmospheres. “There’s no other archive, to my knowledge,” Schwikowski said, “where you have this direct preservation of old air.”

The archives they carry allow ice cores to serve as historical records printed in the form of molecules and aerosols. The cores are filled with stories of eruptions, wildfires, storms, plastics, and, of course, climates. Oxygen isotopes tell scientists about global temperatures at the time the ice formed, while the air pockets reveal what greenhouse gases were present in the past. But, as Spolaor and Schwikowski have both encountered in their own investigations, runoff from melting glaciers can erode or entirely erase some of those climate signals as meltwater trickles through the ice crystals. And it can happen quite suddenly.

This past January, both Spolaor and Schwikowski published studies independent of each other that had similar conclusions for different glaciers: In just a few years, melting had eroded a substantial portion of the climate record the glaciers had once contained.

Though the papers by Spolaor and Schwikowski are among the first to document this loss as it happens, scientists have long known this was a possibility. Glaciers have been melting rapidly for decades, and there’s a chance we’ve already hit a tipping point that would cause them to continue to disappear even if aggressive climate action is taken.

With those concerns growing, some experts are also considering more targeted measures to protect the world’s glaciers. Earlier this month, a group of scientists released a first-of-its-kind report calling for a “major initiative” over the coming decades to study techniques that could slow, halt, or even reverse the melting of glaciers and mitigate the associated rise in sea levels. One example is some form of underwater curtains that would insulate ice shelves from warmer ocean water. Scientists and advocates still have hope that these types of interventions won’t be necessary — but, as with the Ice Memory Sanctuary, it’s a form of insurance to at least investigate these possibilities now.

A lot of work remains to be done for Barbante, Schwikowski, and their colleagues, including finalizing a scientific steering committee to evaluate proposals for using ice cores from the sanctuary, with an eye toward one day handing the foundation over to a large international body like UNESCO that has the resources to manage this scientific treasure trove.

The more immediate challenge is finding funds to conduct the expeditions, and convincing their international colleagues to take on the logistical complications of gathering an extra sample or two to send to Antarctica — which can mean increasing the risks of expeditions that are already complex and hazardous. But many researchers are willing to take on the risk for the sake of ensuring future generations will have access to the same crucial information that fuels their own studies.

“When you lose it, you’ve lost a record of climate on Earth that can never be recovered,” Jones said. “There’s a lot of scientists who realize this, and have realized it for decades, who are making heroic efforts to recover this ice before it disappears forever.”

— Syris Valentine

More exposure

• Read: more about the latest science on glacial tipping points (Grist)
• Read: a personal essay about what it meant for Venezuela to lose its last glacier (The Washington Post)
• Read: more about the underwater curtain method that could protect glaciers from hotter oceans (The Guardian)
• Watch: a short video explaining how the ice cave was designed and built to house the sanctuary in Antarctica (Ice Memory Foundation)

A parting shot

A photo of how ice samples are extracted. Here, glaciologist Tobias Erhardt drills a shallow ice core at the East Greenland Ice-core Project camp.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Spotlight: Riccardo Selvatico for CNR and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Parting shot: Dr. Tyler R. Jones, Assistant Research Professor, INSTAAR, University of Colorado

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This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Meet the scientists behind the ice sanctuary — a memory vault for dying glaciers on Jul 24, 2024.

At first glance the hills and valleys covered in coastal sage scrub oak are little more than a featureless green swath. On closer inspection, however, you can recognize it for what it truly is: the beating heart of one of the most genetically rich ecosystems on the planet. Birds, insects, mammals, fungi, and even some other plants find refuge under the boughs of coastal sage scrub oak, while water drawn up from its deep roots spreads out to sustain ground-dwelling organisms.

Species name:

Coastal sage scrub oak or Nuttall’s scrub oak (Quercus dumosa)

Description:

The coastal sage scrub oak rarely grows more than about 7 feet tall, but it can spread outward a great distance thanks to its lateral branches and multiple trunks. The trees’ small, spiny leaves emerge in the spring soft and bright green, but gradually toughen and darken to a dusty dark green by summer. Their acorns tend to be thin and elongated, almost conical.

Q. dumosa acorn. Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Where it’s found:

The coastal sage scrub oak, as its name implies, is found along coastal areas in Southern and Baja California. The full extent of its range is the subject of spirited debate, as it shares many similar physical characteristics with other scrub oaks found more inland. In San Diego County, the remaining populations of coastal sage scrub oak exist in fragmented populations, usually in wildlife reserves, like islands in a sea of urban development.

IUCN Red List status:

Endangered

Major threats:

Urban development destroyed much of this tree’s habitat, and its remnant population still faces this threat, along with several others. The introduction of grasses and other highly flammable nonnative species, like eucalyptus, have increased fire frequency and intensity. Escaped ornamental plants and grasses can outcompete oak saplings for light, space, and water. And climate change is resulting in disruptions to precipitation, which stresses all populations.

Notable conservation programs or legal protections:

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is spearheading the development of new ex situ conservation methods, including the use of tissue culture and cryopreservation, to prevent further loss of the coastal sage scrub oak’s genetic diversity. Through partner networks, such as the Global Conservation Consortium – Oak and the Center for Plant Conservation, we exchange information and know-how with many partner organizations. Each organization can specialize in some method of preventing the loss of a species, whether that be working with local, state, or federal authorities; technology development and implementation; reforestation and land restoration; or what might be eventually the most important method, reaching out to the general public to show them how they can make a difference, large or small. The coastal sage scrub oak, as well as the other endangered species native to the coastal sage scrub and chaparral ecosystem, requires focused and sustained effort from all these methods, so, by participating in networks, we effectively pool our strengths.

My favorite experience:

While collecting tissue samples after a spring rain, I took a moment to look at the tracks imprinted into the soft ground. Animal prints were everywhere — mule deer, raccoon, fox, opossum, roadrunner, and what I hoped were those of an exceedingly large bobcat and not a mountain lion. I rarely saw any of these animals during the day but, thanks to the rain, it was clear that they were all around me — present but hidden within the oaks.

Q. dumosa amidst a rocky backdrop. Photo courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

What I could see, however, were the many birds flying from tree to tree, reminding me of fish swimming among outcrops of coral. Insects buzzed all around. Galls created by tiny wasps were starting to grow from some of the oaks. By summer, some of these galls would grow to the size and color of a peach, bobbing slowly in wind scented with wildflowers, sunbaked dust, and sagebrush. I knew that under my feet deep roots reached toward the precious groundwater that would sustain the forest during the dry season, and spreading from those roots were mycorrhizal fungi that would work with the oaks to support each other.

I grew up among the firs, cedars, hemlocks, and maples of the Pacific Northwest. I always thought forests needed to be composed of tall, majestic trees christened with carpets of rolling moss. Yet this sea of small, scraggly oaks held so much life. My perspective grew. It’s one thing to read about this ecosystem and another matter entirely to truly see it and understand how precious it is.

Key research:

• • Protocol development
  • Global Consortium for Conservation – Oaks

Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? You’re invited to share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Species Spotlight. 

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The post Species Spotlight: The Coastal Sage Scrub Oak, an Unassuming Cornerstone of its Ecosystem appeared first on The Revelator.

A new report from the national advocacy group Food & Water Watch presents a stark picture of the immense amount of climate-killing methane emissions emanating from the top two sources of such pollution: fossil fuel fracking and corporate factory farming. While carbon dioxide still remains a larger source of greenhouse gas emissions, methane has a vastly outsized impact on […]

The post Food & Water Watch: Methane pollution could kill us all appeared first on Red, Green, and Blue.

Sport needs to tell a new story Channel Comment Andrew Simms 24th July 2024 Teaser Media

Four environmental groups on Monday evening endorsed the presidential run of U.S. vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, whom many campaigners view as slightly stronger on climate issues than President Joe Biden. By Edward Carver Common Dreams The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund, the Sierra […]

The post Green groups are ALL IN for Kamala Harris for President appeared first on Red, Green, and Blue.

The Stop Corporate Capture Act would bring transparency, equity, and a reliance on agency expertise back to the rulemaking process By Geoffrey Nolan Earthjustice Yesterday, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen […]

The post Earthjustice praises the Stop Corporate Capture act to restore “Chevron Deference” appeared first on Red, Green, and Blue.

As world leaders gathered in Dubai at the start of COP28 last December, the United Arab Emirates dropped a surprise headline-grabbing announcement. The host nation of the UN talks promised to put $30 billion into a new climate fund aimed at speeding up the energy transition and building climate resilience, especially in the Global South.

ALTÉRRA was billed as the world’s largest private investment vehicle to “focus entirely on climate solutions”. COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber hailed its launch as “a defining moment” for creating a new era of international climate finance.

Yet four months later, one of the initial funds ALTÉRRA backed with a $300-million commitment agreed to buy a major fossil gas pipeline in North America, Climate Home has discovered.

In March, BlackRock’s “Global Infrastructure Fund IV” acquired half of the 475 km-long Portland Natural Gas Transmission System, with Morgan Stanley taking the rest in a deal worth $1.14 billion overall.

That acquisition would not have come as a surprise to the fund’s investors.

When US-based BlackRock pitched it to the State of Connecticut’s Investment Advisory Council back in 2022, the world’s biggest asset manager gave a flavour of where their money would likely end up. Its presentation – seen by Climate Home – featured a list of “indicative investments” including highly-polluting sectors such as gas power plants and transportation networks, liquefied natural gas (LNG), airports, terminals and shipping.

Climate Home does not know whether ALTÉRRA saw the same presentation, nor did the UAE firm respond directly to a question asking if it was aware before the COP28 announcement that the BlackRock fund might invest in those sectors.

An ALTÉRRA spokesperson told Climate Home its “investments seek to build the energy systems of tomorrow, while supporting the transition of existing energy infrastructure towards a just and managed clean energy ecosystem”.

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In addition to the gas pipeline, BlackRock’s infrastructure fund has so far invested in carbon capture, waste management, utilities maintenance services, telecom infrastructure, data centres and the production of industrial gases, according to regulatory filings, a BlackRock job advertisement and press reports accessed by Climate Home.

A BlackRock spokesperson said its global infrastructure fund franchise “targets investments in solutions across the energy transition value chain, driven by the long-term trends of decarbonization, decentralization, and digitalization to support the stability and affordability of energy supply around the world”.

Andreas Sieber, associate director of global policy and campaigns at climate advocacy group 350.org, said Climate Home’s findings “confirm our worst fears”. “The ALTÉRRA fund uses a masquerade of green progress while funnelling investment into fossil fuel pipelines and gas projects, which are the biggest causes of the climate crisis,” he told Climate Home.

Climate finance is a hot topic at UN negotiations, with countries expected to set a new global goal at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, this November, amid persistent calls for higher amounts to help poorer nations boost clean energy production.

The COP28 presidency said last year that ALTÉRRA would “drive forward international efforts to create a fairer climate finance system, with an emphasis on improving access to funding for the Global South”. Al-Jaber added that “its launch reflects… the UAE’s efforts to make climate finance available, accessible and affordable”.

But the sparse details provided at the time prompted climate justice activists to question the real impact it would have in countries that most need financial support to adopt clean energy and adapt to a warming world. Only about a sixth of the fund – $5 billion – was earmarked as “capital to incentivize investment into the Global South”.

Follow the money

ALTÉRRA is a so-called ‘fund of funds’. Instead of directly investing money in individual companies or assets, it puts its cash into a series of funds run by other investment firms. At COP28, it committed a total of $6.5 billion to funds managed by BlackRock, Brookfield and TPG, without setting out how the remaining $23.5 billion would be spent.

Since then, ALTÉRRA has not announced any further investments. Its chief executive, Majid Al Suwaidi, told Bloomberg this month that the fund is “actively planning the next phase of allocations”, without giving further details.

The launch of #ALTÉRRA marks the start of three unique alliances with global asset managers, @Brookfield, @BlackRock, and @tpg.

Together, we share the same vision, to bridge the climate investment gap and finance a new climate economy. pic.twitter.com/7yEXOyZqpK

— ALTÉRRA (@Alterrafund) December 1, 2023

Most of the funds picked by ALTÉRRA remain at an early stage and have yet to announce completed transactions or are still trying to raise more capital from investors. The most notable exception is BlackRock’s fourth Global Infrastructure Fund. By the time it won the $300-million commitment from ALTÉRRA in Dubai, the vehicle was ready to deploy its money.

ALTÉRRA told Climate Home its investment in the BlackRock vehicle is in line with its goals of getting climate finance “flowing quickly and at scale” and of partnering “with funds that invest in the energy transition and accelerate pathways to net-zero”.

Announcing its first $4.5-billion closing in October 2022, BlackRock said the fund would “continue to target investments in climate solutions, while also supporting the infrastructure needed to ensure a stable, affordable energy supply during the transition”.

In private conversations with potential investors, the asset manager spelled out more clearly what that meant.

Its presentation to the State of Connecticut in December 2022 showed that the fund would not only invest in things like renewable energy, electrification and battery storage, but also in fossil gas power plants and pipelines, LNG and transportation infrastructure like airports, shipping and terminals.

A slide from BlackRock’s presentation of the Global Infrastructure Fund IV to investors

In line with this strategy, BlackRock agreed a deal this March for its Global Infrastructure Fund IV to acquire half of the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System (PNGT), a fossil gas pipeline stretching from the Canadian border across New England in the United States to Maine and Massachusetts.

When it began operations in 1999, the pipeline helped shift New England’s power generation away from coal and oil, but it has also created a stronger dependency on fossil gas, leaving citizens vulnerable to price spikes. The region is now planning to accelerate the rollout of renewable energy sources.

Comment: To keep its profits, Big Oil stole our future

The PNGT was not the first fossil fuel infrastructure the BlackRock team behind the Global Infrastructure Fund had snapped up. In a written testimony submitted this March to the State of New Hampshire, a senior executive listed a dozen oil and gas pipelines backed by earlier rounds of the fund. They included one operated by ADNOC, the UAE state-owned oil company whose CEO is Sultan Al-Jaber, COP28 president and chair of ALTÉRRA’s board.

Responding to Climate Home’s findings on where ALTÉRRA’s money is going, Mohamed Adow, director of Nairobi-based think-tank Power Shift Africa, said it is “extremely concerning to see a fund hailed by a COP president as a solution to the climate crisis investing in fossil fuels”.

“This needs to be a wake-up call to the world that these funds created by COP hosts are little more than PR stunts designed to greenwash the activities of fossil fuel-producing nations,” he added.

Oil-backed carbon capture

BlackRock does not disclose the infrastructure fund’s complete portfolio, but it has invested another $550 million in Stratos, the world’s biggest direct air capture (DAC) project being developed in a joint venture with oil giant Occidental. The plant under construction in Texas promises to suck as much as 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere annually and bury it underground.

Its proponents see DAC as a key technology to balance out emissions in the race to achieve net zero by 2050, although so far it remains expensive and largely unproven at scale. Stratos won a grant from the US government to fast-track the construction of the facility, and it has struck deals to sell carbon offsets generated in future from the plant with corporate giants like Amazon.

Scottish oil-town plan for green jobs sparks climate campers’ anger over local park

When the DAC partnership was announced last November, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said Stratos “represents an incredible investment opportunity for BlackRock’s clients… and underscores the critical role of American energy companies in climate technology innovation”.

But Stratos’ critics have questioned Occidental’s motivations and dismissed its DAC investments as a greenwashing ploy to keep pumping oil and slow down the transition away from fossil fuels.

“We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time,” Vicki Hollub, Occidental’s chief executive, told the CERAWeek energy industry conference last year. “This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”

Call for safeguards

While BlackRock’s infrastructure fund deploys its cash largely in the Global North, ALTÉRRA’s promised investments in developing countries are still taking shape.

Brookfield in June launched a new “Catalytic Transition Fund” backed by ALTÉRRA with a $1-billion commitment. The fund’s stated focus is “directing capital into clean energy and transition assets in emerging economies”.

Climate Home asked ALTÉRRA if it had adopted any exclusion policies that would, for example, rule out investment in certain types of fossil fuels.

The UAE fund did not respond to the question, but a spokesperson said its investment approach is aligned with the goal “of accelerating the climate transition, with a focus on clean energy, industry decarbonization, sustainable living, and climate technologies”.

Climate activists protest against fossil fuels during COP28 in Dubai in December 2023. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

350.org’s Sieber called on Al-Jaber – who was widely criticised by green groups for his dual role as president of COP28 and head of a fossil fuel corporation – to “act swiftly to enforce stringent safeguards” for ALTÉRRA’s investments.

“The UAE is on the brink of losing the little credibility it still has left in addressing the urgency of the climate emergency,” Sieber added. “The world, especially communities who are being hit the hardest by climate impacts every day, cannot afford to have one more cent invested in fossil fuels.”

The key question now is whether Azerbaijan – the host of COP29 and itself a substantial producer and exporter of oil and gas – will do things differently. Last week, it announced a new voluntary fund that it said will invest at least $1 billion for emissions reduction projects in developing countries. Baku is hoping to secure contributions for it from fossil-fuel producing nations and companies.

Power Shift Africa’s Adow said developing countries need state-backed climate finance from rich nations, negotiated through the UN climate process, and “not just cooked up in voluntary schemes”. That funding “can be used where the need is greatest, not just where it might make most money for some private profit-seeking businesses,” he added.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; fact-checking by Sebastián Rodríguez; editing by Megan Rowling and Sebastián Rodríguez)

 

The post UAE’s ALTÉRRA invests in fund backing fossil gas despite “climate solutions” pledge appeared first on Climate Home News.