Green News

From a raging pandemic to war on its doorstep, the EU has experienced multiple costly crises over the past few years. As the economy has taken a hit, the green transition has lost impetus in the public debate, and competitiveness has dominated the conversation instead. But can competition policy actually help the EU achieve its sustainability targets?

As the dust of the European elections is slowly settling on the continental right-wing drift, the fate of the Green Deal haunts the EU conversation. This ambitious set of comprehensive strategies and detailed policies aiming at the carbon neutrality and ecological transition of the EU’s economic model of production and consumption ranked very high among the concerns that drove the mobilisation of defiant, disgruntled voters to the polls.

Despite the recent changes in Europe’s political landscape, the Green Deal has already set the trajectory for radical change. However, whether the goals of the landmark legislation can be achieved depends entirely on how member states deliver on their obligations. A key element in this effort is finance, and the Green Deal requires a massive budget.

Yet, as the EU and its member states can only finance so much, the regulatory environment they provide for private economic actors is also critical. Successfully pairing public funding with private investment in service of the Green Deal will require a sweeping paradigm shift in economic regulation. The need for change is perhaps nowhere as evident as in the foundational principles of market competition itself, embodied in the legal framework of EU competition law.

A challenging obligation

Historically a driver of European integration and a pillar of the Union’s original social market economy model, competition policy was, in principle, supposed to allow the EU to balance the benefits of its market economy with the protection of the democratic fabric of society from unchecked corporate power.

That has not, however, been the case. Under the EU’s competition policy, there have been massive levels of industrial consolidation across the economy. This has led to an increase in unsustainable practices across many industries, such as in the seeds and agrifood sectors – or the media industry (to the point of prompting action from the Commission), to mention another aspect of the continuum.

This growing concentration of corporate power has led to calls for meaningful changes to the EU’s competition policy, but the European discussion on this matter seems to focus exclusively on economic notions of European and global “competitiveness.” Social and climate sustainability are rarely part of the conversation.

In 2023, the European Council commissioned former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta to write a key report on the single market. The report came out earlier this year, calling for an improved and reinforced single market to meet the EU’s pressing challenges, namely the sustainability of its economic model and its defensive autonomy. However, when the Council discussed its “new competitiveness deal” in April, member states mostly focused on competition between themselves and neglected most of Letta’s other recommendations; namely to put “a fair, green, and sustainable transition at the core of the EU’s Single Market”, integrating social and ecological goals into it.

The obsession with national and European competitiveness seems to overshadow the urgency of putting sustainability at the core of the reflection on economic competition.

Additionally, a highly expected report on the future of Europe’s competitiveness due in September and entrusted to the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is set to recommend the consolidation of national industries into more European ones with the aim of enhancing the Union’s competitiveness on the global stage. Again, the ecological crisis seems to come only second as a priority.

In the current political landscape, the general obsession with national and European competitiveness seems to overshadow the urgency of putting sustainability at the core of the reflection on economic competition. Thus, it is important to ask if the EU’s competition policy can serve the transition to a sustainable economy, and to what extent.

The global competition powered by the strategic rivalry between the US and China, two heavily subsidised economies scrambling for supremacy over green technologies and industries, has intensified the pressure on the EU and its member states to catch up to the race.

However, the EU faces significant hurdles on this path. Cash-strapped national budgets are still affected by the financial consequences of the pandemic and a prolonged economic crisis, which means that financing the green transition is beyond the capacities of both the EU and individual member states. What is more, the social and political risks of a complete overhaul of the current industrial production structure are posing further challenges. To achieve a higher level of sustainability, the EU must address the structure of the economy, the organisation of the market and, potentially, the emergence of new economic players challenging the dominant position of established entities.

As the shift towards a more sustainable economy challenges our industrial organisation, it inevitably raises the issue of the EU legal framework. Whether it is about the Stability and Growth Pact imposing austerity on eurozone balances, the preference for market instruments, or the principles of competition policies, the set of rules that have driven the EU’s economic model for seven decades are being brought into question by the new “climatic regime”.

Redesigning the EU’s competition policy

In this context, the legal niche that is competition law could prove to be much more important for the European Green Deal than is currently recognised. Competition policy has the potential to act as a fundamental element – or complement, or catalyst – for broader industrial policy, and there are various ways in which the green transition can engage with competition.

Firstly, in the EU, state investment into private enterprise must comply with rules on state aid and foreign subsidies, whether it is a direct grant, tax relief, or another kind of benefit. However, the EU has demonstrated a willingness to show some flexibility on its competition rules to accommodate green initiatives, as has been the case with the approval of funding for Swedish and German decarbonisation projects. We can expect to see governments wielding many such enticing carrots over the coming years. 

Second, climate adaptation will stimulate sectoral reorganisation and, thus, trigger mergers and acquisitions (M&A) which will come under review by competition authorities.  Up to now, the benchmark used to authorise M&As has been the “consumer welfare standard,” which purports to protect consumer interests. In reality, though, the consumer welfare principle embodies a bias towards concentrated power which can harm consumers, citizens and businesses.

However, the EU Commission has updated its position vis-à-vis M&As through the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which entered into force in 2023. The new rules require companies to provide more comprehensive and transparent sustainability reporting in line with the Green Deal, and to avoid mergers that reduce green innovation.

Third, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we witnessed another instance of sustainability being prioritised over competition due to a need for exceptional collaboration, with the EU temporarily greenlighting alliances to address the need for improving the supply and distribution of scarce products. In the face of increasingly recurrent extreme weather events, we could again find ourselves having to bend competition laws to mitigate harm and speed up climate adaptation.

While few are paying attention beyond the technocratic circle, current debates around the intersection of competition law and climate have generally focused on the narrow question of whether and to what extent relatively superficial collaborations between big companies should be permitted. Although this didn’t happen in the EU, a good example is an agreement by a coalition of the UK’s biggest supermarkets to jointly purchase Fairtrade bananas and coffee, which the country’s competition watchdog has greenlighted.  

At the same time, competition policy is generally hostile towards looser, more decentralised forms of coordination, such as cooperatives of small businesses. This bias is also being called into question by anti-monopoly activists in favour of a more decentralised, resilient, and democratic market economy. One can easily imagine circumstances in which dispersed and localised forms of coordination may need to become commonplace. For example, there could be an urgent need for local food production and distribution cooperatives in the event of a food shortage.

Again, the content of the rules for permissions and exemptions on the one hand and prohibitions on the other will determine the resulting mix of collaborations. It is time to bring a broader group of commentators, embodying a wider set of values, into the debate on collaboration.

Fourth, the current competition laws could allow companies to occupy a temporary position of monopoly when there are supply chain disruptions as a result of climate-driven economic emergencies. This is similar to what happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, when profiteering led to an increase in the price of hand sanitisers, face masks, and certain food products.

Oligopolistic firms use such circumstances as a cover for tacit collusion to create excess profit, as captured by the term “sellers’ inflation” or “greedflation.” These practices can lead to macroeconomic consequences, and it falls on competition authorities to investigate them. In turn, these probes can then contribute to sustainability by forming the basis for taxing excess profits or imposing windfall tax policies. The mandate of competition authorities currently includes such responsibilities, but there is a risk that companies could avoid accountability with the help of regulatory loopholes.

Fifth, competition law is a powerful tool, giving authorities and courts formidable powers of discovery and remedy. The European Commission can fine law-breaking companies up to 10 per cent of their worldwide turnover, and it has, for example, initiated proceedings against tech giants Meta and Apple for their alleged infringements of the EU’s anti-trust rules and unsustainable market practices. As a result, companies pay attention to competition law because it goes right to the heart of their business model, financial planning and bottom line.

Competition policy is a board-level concern, meaning that it has the potential to be used as a powerful tool for reordering the economy. This raises crucial questions about the use and potential misuse of competition law. In the US, for example, the threat of antitrust action has been weaponised by lobby groups to intimidate coalitions of investors engaging in perfectly legal, commercially self-interested decisions to divest from fossil fuels.

There is also a sixth reason why competition policy can serve the transition to a sustainable economy: in systemically important sectors – such as fossil fuels, food, transportation, shipping, and banking – concentrated market structure and the resulting market failures impact emission levels, land use, and ecosystem protection, and determine the viability of potential solutions. For instance, just 57 countries have been responsible for 80 per cent of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere since 2016.  Within the existing EU framework, competition policy acknowledges its role in influencing market structure to an extent, but not in contributing to other market failures. 

Lastly, economic conflicts are often accompanied by intense interest group lobbying. A cautionary example is how the agricultural lobby, representing large, multinational agrochemical companies, has channelled the justified anger of farmers in Europe into a false dichotomy between farmers’ livelihoods and the protection of nature. In reality, it is multinational enterprises and their representatives, not the farmers, that oppose the Green Deal because the existing system serves them well; and eventually, when the current system does inevitably change, these large firms will also be the ones with the resources to adapt.

Meanwhile, small-scale farmers see their incomes and way of life threatened. Many of them are already unable to continue with their profession and are leaving farming altogether, even without the added costs of complying with green regulations.

Competition policy shapes market structures and has enabled the relentless consolidation in the agricultural sector over recent decades. By allowing unrestrained economic growth, competition laws are indirectly responsible for the lobbying power of agrochemical companies, as well as dominant players in other climate-relevant sectors. This means that competition policy can also be indirectly leveraged to address existing imbalances by targeting the economic power of market giants.

In other words, competition policy can be used to ensure that the private sector remains governable and accountable to the public, and that it does its part in the efforts to bring sustainability to the European economy.

But there are limits to what can or should be achieved through competition policy. Competition law comes with its own doctrinal baggage, and there is nothing as difficult to dislodge as a set of bad ideas embedded amongst an international community of technical experts and academics.

Without democratic oversight, the competition regime has evolved in harmful ways. In the name of “freedom”, markets around the world have become dominated by powerful actors; a “competitive” market can be one dominated by just a few behemoths; “consumer welfare” is sought through low prices, even if that implies low wages and appears to serve corporate welfare better; big companies are regarded as “more efficient” even if they are better able to exploit workers and nature.

That international community of experts will not willingly relinquish their hold on the highly powerful lever of economic policy that they currently wield, even as they disclaim their responsibility for the social, economic, and ecological consequences of the mass consolidation of industry that their policies have created.

Competition in a time of crisis

Fundamentally, competition policy is part of a wider set of tools for capital governance that will shape, both passively and proactively, how economic resources are channelled in the context of the green transition, and the responsibilities and obligations of companies for their role in it.

In addition, current and future competition enforcement will have a bearing on some crucial questions: What will food distribution look like beyond 2030? What technologies will we use to connect with each other and share information when weather or health events make it impossible to meet in person? How is AI being used to spread climate disinformation?

All this raises the issue of democratic accountability. While the urgency of the green transition is undeniable, it may be used to override the objections of local communities to projects like power plants, wind farms or mining operations. Although the European fossil fuel energy system has been undoubtedly technocratic and top-down, the transition towards a decarbonised energy system and a more sustainable economy presents an opportunity to empower citizens and local communities.

However, the EU still needs to address the democratic dimension of its Green Deal. Across Europe, grassroots citizens’ initiatives are increasingly demanding a say in the implementation of the green transformation. Competition policy tends to see citizens only as consumers, but there might be another dimension to entertain in the face of our current crises.

Still, the trend remains towards centralisation. Notably, the current EU legal framework does not guarantee NGOs or the public a right to challenge European decisions on granting state aid when they are contrary to environmental laws. As such, the EU is not in compliance with the Aarhus Convention when it comes to citizens’ right to live in a healthy environment. (A pillar of environmental democracy, this international agreement to which the EU is part of requires that the public – whether NGOs  or citizens – are granted access to information, participation and even justice, should they consider that EU decisions do not comply with EU environmental law.)

Interestingly, the Commission could – under the pretence of complying with the Aarhus convention and seeking to protect citizens’ right to a healthy environment – choose a procedure that would exclude the European Parliament from the legislative process to the benefit of the EU Council. This would likely result in a structural power imbalance in favour of national governments, practically limiting the reach of civil organisations.

It is true that a citizen or NGO petition to the European Parliament can only have a limited impact. However, bypassing the only democratically elected body of the EU would ensure that competition policy remains in the dark, closed rooms where corporate interests meet governments’ (not necessarily democratic) preferences.

Averting, mitigating, and adapting to climate catastrophe and biodiversity collapse will demand an unprecedented deployment of resources and economic coordination, whether through private or public means. The crucial policy questions of our generation revolve around the mix of resources we deploy, and how and when we do it. Whether the green transition is just and democratic depends on who decides on the deployment of those resources, and in whose benefits those assets are mobilised. Competition policy might very well be where the next battle for a sustainable European economy takes place.

Despite warnings that climate change would create widespread desertification, many drylands are getting greener because of increased CO2 in the air — a trend that recent studies indicate will continue. But scientists warn this added vegetation may soak up scarce water supplies.

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By melting Arctic sea ice, warming has led to a growth of shipping through the Northwest Passage, a route from Europe to Asia that traces the northern edge of Canada. But a new study finds a growing risk from more hazardous forms of sea ice, trimming the number of days during which ships can safely journey through Arctic waters.

Read more on E360 →

Coastal ecosystems — including oyster reefs, sandy beaches, mangrove forests and seagrass beds — provide important habitat for marine life and food and recreation for people. They also protect shorelines from waves and storms. But these precious systems face serious threats. This series looks at what put them at risk, along with examples of efforts to restore and protect important coastal ecosystems around the world.

We need to talk about sand.

Most people don’t realize that these humble grains — that ubiquitous stuff of vacations, ant farms and hourglasses — are the second-most used natural resource in the world after water. According to a 2019 report from the United Nations Environment Programme, we use more than 55 billion tons of it per year — nearly 40 pounds per person per day.

And a lot of that sand comes from illegal activity, involving criminal gangs who mine, smuggle, and kill for the precious material.

The Building Blocks of Modern Society

Sand — legal or otherwise — gets used to enhance beaches, extract petroleum through hydraulic fracking, fill land under buildings, and make computer chips.

But the biggest amount by far — an estimated 85% of the sand mined globally — goes into making concrete. Concrete combines two key ingredients: cement, a binding agent made from calcium or other substances, and aggregate, which is either sand or a combination of sand and gravel. Quality concrete requires jagged and angular aggregate grains — a quality found in only a tiny fraction of the worlds’ sand, most of it on beaches and in rivers. This sand also is easy and cheap to mine, and it’s located close to much of the construction taking place around the world.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, world consumption of aggregate for all uses exceeds 40 billion metric tons (44 billion U.S. tons) a year — an estimate that’s likely on the conservative side and represents about twice the amount of sediment carried annually by all the world’s rivers. (Sediment from land rocks is the source of most coastal sand, which also comes from shells and marine organisms pulverized by waves, the digestive tracts of coral-eating fish, and the remains of tiny creatures called foraminifera.)

Not surprisingly, UNEP calls management of sand one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century.

The organization also warns about sand mining’s serious consequences for humans and the natural environment.

Removing beach sand leaves coastal structures more vulnerable to erosion even as climate change raises sea levels and makes storms more intense. Transporting sand generates carbon dioxide emissions. Sand mining has political and cultural consequences, including effects on the tourism industry, and creates noise and air pollution.

Coastal sand mining also destroys complex ecosystems. The microorganisms, crabs, and clams that live in beach sand are important food sources for birds. Sea turtles and several bird species nest on sandy beaches. Seagrass, an important food source and habitat for marine residents, needs sandy ocean floor to grow. Stretches of underwater sand provide habitat for sea stars, sea cucumbers, conchs, and other critters, and are feeding grounds for flounder, rays, fish, and sharks.

Removing sand also affects water quality in the ocean and depletes groundwater.

Stolen Sand

Yet this harm is not the only issue. Increasing demand for sand has created a vast illegal industry resembling the organized criminal drug trade, including the same violence, black markets, and piles of money — an estimated $200 to $350 billion a year. Of all the sand extracted globally every year, only about 15 billion metric tons are legally traded, according to a report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Pascal Pedruzzi, director of UNEP’s Global Resource Information Database-Geneva, became aware of illegal sand mining when the Jamaican government asked UNEP in 2014 to find out why the island had a serious beach erosion problem.

“There was a lot we didn’t know about sand extraction, including how much was being taken,” he says.

Or from how many places: Sand is mined from coastal environments in at least 80 countries on six continents, according to the 2022 book Vanishing Sands, written by several geologists and other experts on coastal management and land rights.

The book outlines a litany of sand crimes, from seemingly small to massive. In Sardinia, Italy, airport officials have seized about 10 tons of sand over 10 years, much of it carried in thousands of individual half-quart bottles. In Morocco criminals removed as many as 200 dump trucks of sand a day from massive dunes lining the Atlantic coast.

According to Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, illegal sand mining in Morocco is run by a syndicate second in size only to the country’s drug mafia. It involves corrupt government and law enforcement officials and foreign companies. Much of the Moroccan sand, for example, ends up in buildings in Spain.

In India demand for sand tripled from 2000 to 2017, creating a market worth 150 billion rupees, just over $2 billion. Multiple diverse and competing “sand mafias” run mining sites surrounded by armed private security guards. Their weapons likely are obtained illegally, given the difficult process of acquiring guns legally in India.

By Sumaira Abdulali – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

The NGO South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People reports hundreds of deaths and injuries related to illegal sand mining in India each year, including citizens (adults and children), journalists, activists, government officials, and law enforcement.

There are similar stories in Bangladesh, Cambodia, elsewhere in Africa, and in the Caribbean — almost everywhere sandy coastal areas can be found.

How to Solve the Problem

UNEP has begun tackling the problem of sand mining, putting forth ten recommendations that include creating international standards for extracting sand from the marine environment, reducing the use of sand by using substitutes, and recycling products made with sand.

While these recommendations target legal sand mining, more responsible management and reduced overall demand also should make illegal mining less lucrative and, therefore, less common.

“The good news is there’s a long list of solutions,” says Peduzzi. “We start by stopping waste of sand. We can make the life of buildings longer, retrofitting them instead of knocking them down. Maybe change the use of a building over time, as a school first and then 50 years later, a place for elderly people. When a building needs to be destroyed, crush and reuse the concrete. Build with wood, bricks, adobe, and straw.”

Building with straw also could reduce burning of crop waste. Every year, India produces 500 million tons of straw but burns 140 million tons as “excess.” One company there, Strawcture Eco, is using straw to create wall and ceiling panels that are fire resistant, insulating, and sustainable.

Alternatives to sand in concrete include ash from waste incineration and aluminum smelting waste. Peduzzi notes that ash creates concrete that is about 10% less solid, but points out, “that is still pretty good. You can use it to make buildings, but maybe not a bridge.”

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The UNEP report notes that involvement from industry, the private sector, and civil society is vital in solving the problem. For example, shifting away from building with concrete will require changing the way architects and engineers are trained, acceptance by building owners, and new laws and regulations.

“We rely on sand, as a commodity,” Peduzzi says. “But we also need to realize its ecosystem services. We must be wiser about how we use it.”

UNEP hopes to collect solutions into a single, accessible online location (although it currently lacks funding for the effort). The idea is to create a hub for policies and technological solutions, Peduzzi says, and to develop best practices for them. The Global Initiative report on India also calls for a website for tracking illegal sand mining hosted by a think-tank or journalism agency — a sort of crime-spotters portal where people could anonymously upload evidence.

Shifting Sands, Shifting Thinking

William Neal, an emeritus professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and one of the authors of Vanishing Sands, suggests in an email that finding sand substitutes is not enough. Coastal communities, he says, need to retreat from rising seas rather than build more hard structures such as seawalls. This “shoreline engineering” often destroys the very beaches it is intended to save, he explains, and the long-term cost of saving property through engineering often ends up exceeding the value of the property. Seawalls also tend to simply shift water elsewhere, potentially causing flooding and significant damage along other parts of the shoreline.

Peduzzi also espouses shifts in thinking, including how we get around in cities.

“Instead of building roads for cars, build subways,” he says. “That moves people faster and gets away from fossil fuels. The icing on the cake is that when digging subway tunnels, you are getting rocks, generating this material instead of using it. Cars are not sustainable — not the material to make a car itself or the roads and parking lots.”

Without systemic changes, the problem of sand removal is only going to grow bigger as the population increases and people continue to migrate from rural to urban areas, increasing the demand for infrastructure like roads and buildings.

“The problem has been overlooked,” Peduzzi warns. “People need to realize that sand is just another story of how dependent we are on natural resources for development.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Coastal Restoration: Recycled Shells and Millions of Larvae — A Recipe for Renewed Oyster Reefs

The post Coastal Restoration: Saving Sand appeared first on The Revelator.

Hannah Bond is co-CEO at ActionAid UK.

This month has been unprecedented, even in a news cycle that has grown increasingly immune to ever-worsening climate catastrophes. After Beryl, a powerful category five hurricane, smashed its way across the Caribbean, an alarming report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service found that the planet has breached 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming for the twelfth month straight.  

For a new UK government pledging to take strong climate action at home, this must be a wake-up call for it to act on its historic responsibilities as a major global greenhouse gas polluter. These two alarming events alone show why it must put climate finance at the heart of its climate agenda as COP29 rapidly approaches. 

In Hurricane Beryl’s shadow, loss and damage fund makes progress on set-up

The Caribbean is one of the regions most at risk of climate change, with 70 percent of its population living or working in coastal areas surrounded by ever-warming seas that make hurricanes like Beryl more common and more violent. While a category five hurricane is unprecedented this early in the year, forecasters have already predicted that the region could experience up to seven severe hurricanes between now and the end of October.  

Extreme climate shocks are not only wreaking havoc, claiming lives, and destroying whole communities – they are also severely affecting the region’s tourism-dependent economies. Already it’s been estimated that the clean-up alone will cost tens of millions of dollars – a cost that doesn’t even begin to factor in what’s needed to rebuild destroyed communities still paying the price of previous disasters – crises that are gendered in their nature.  

Costly damage

Women and girls are more than 14 times more likely to be killed by climate shocks, according to Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia, while our own research found that women also face an increased risk of non-economic impacts such as gender-based violence and forced child marriage.

Hurricane Maria – the deadliest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the 21st century – cost the island nation of Dominica an estimated 225 percent of its GDP, while Hurricane Irma in the same year cost Antigua and Barbuda more than $136 million in damages, with the tourism industry representing around 44 percent of all losses.  

Even seven years on, the scale of the destruction has meant that communities are still rebuilding while dealing with hurricanes that worsen with intensity and frequency with each passing year. Yet, despite this, small island nations that have only contributed around 1% of all global carbon emissions, have struggled to unlock climate finance, accessing a mere $1.5bn out of the $100bn pledged in total to Global South countries.   

Negative debt spiral

To make matters worse, countries across the Caribbean have no choice but to turn to international financial institutions and take on eye-watering levels of debt to help communities regain their footing. Debt laden with restrictive repayment conditions further locks countries into a negative spiral – forcing governments to shape their economies and societies in order to service their debts.  

All this means that small island nations are left to play catch up, forever stuck on the back foot. Instead of spending the meagre levels of finance pledged to resilience-proofing their economies and communities, loans are used to service debts while interest rates for repayments globally remain at a record high.  

In its manifesto, Britain’s Labour Party spoke about “tackling unsustainable debt” as a “priority area” in its global commitments – indeed a positive step forward. But in power we need it to act and end the colonial debt system and support countries in the Caribbean and beyond move towards a just and climate resilient future. 

The Loss and Damage Fund must not leave fragile states behind

For a new government keen to show global leadership on climate, this year’s COP summit is a vital moment for the UK to play a much stronger role on climate finance than its Conservative predecessors. As the fourth-highest historic carbon emitter in the world, the UK has a moral and historic responsibility to address climate change, but its actions haven’t matched its words so far. 

During its election campaign, Labour failed to pledge new funds to address the huge gulf in climate financing for losses and damages, opting instead to simply deliver the previous government’s low-ball commitments to spend £11.6bn between 2021-2026. With nations set to meet at COP this year to define new annual climate finance commitments for Global South countries – known as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) – Labour needs to be much more ambitious in Azerbaijan. The future of communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis depends on it. 

Now, in the words of Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickson Mitchell, is not the time for countries like the UK to “sit idly by with platitudes and tokenism.” Now is the time for radical action and for the new UK government to stand up and deliver for the billions of people facing a runaway climate emergency. 

The post Hurricane Beryl shows why the new UK government must ramp up climate finance  appeared first on Climate Home News.

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As Caribbean nations tallied the destruction caused by the passage of Hurricane Beryl, the board of the fund set up to compensate for such devastating loss and damage held its second meeting this week. 

“The level of damage is apocalyptic,” said Henrietta Elizabeth Thompson from Barbados, among the countries worst hit by the natural disaster, at the start of the four-day session in Incheon, South Korea.

The board needs to create a fund that “reflects the scale of the magnitude, of the risk, the damage and devastation faced by people across the world and the urgency required to respond to it,” she added.

But before the fund starts handing out any money in future, board members have to agree on procedural matters.

A name and a place

On the opening day, the Philippines was picked as the host of the fund’s board in a secret vote by members. The Southeast Asian nation defeated bids from seven other candidates: Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Barbados, Eswatini, Kenya and Togo. 

Selecting a host country was one of the most pressing priorities for this week’s meeting. It represented a first necessary step for the board to take up a legal personality and enter into formal agreements with the World Bank, set to host the loss and damage fund on an interim basis. 

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While the administrative staff of the fund will be based at the World Bank, the board will carry out some of its meetings in the Philippines in the future, likely in the capital Manila. The country’s proposal scored particularly high thanks to its abundant transport options and accommodation facilities and its visa free entry for short stays for most visitors, according to a background paper. 

A man stands in a home where the roof was ripped apart, in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica, July 5, 2024. REUTERS/Maria Alejandra Cardona

The somewhat thorny issue of what to officially call the fund also landed on the table in South Korea. 

For nearly all climate talks participants, it’s simply been the “loss and damage fund” since it was adopted at COP27, but the United States have made various attempts at a rebrand. At COP28 in Dubai, for example, then U.S. climate envoy John Kerry kept referring to the “fund for climate impact response” – a more neutral label that softened the suggestion of developed countries’ historical responsibility. 

In consultations ahead of the meeting, the co-chairs of the board collected various options, from the minimalistic “the Fund” to the highly technocratic “Fund referred to in decisions 1/CP.28 and 5/CMA.5”.

Ultimately, members decided to go with “Fund for responding to Loss and Damage”, abbreviated as FLD, without spending much time debating the matter. 

Beware the ‘billions’

Divisions cropped up when the discussion turned to the process of selecting the executive director (ED). Hoping to announce the name of the executive director at COP29 this November, the board had to agree at this session on the criteria for picking the fund’s boss, including the roles and responsibilities.

Several board members from developing countries wanted the ED’s job description to mention efforts to find additional money for the fund at the scale of billions. “If you have someone running a fund of 100 million, this is totally different from 10 billion, 55 billion, or 100 billion,” said Egypt’s Mohamed Nasr, “the scale of this fund is not confined to where it is”.

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Countries have pledged around $700 million to the fund so far, with Italy, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates among the biggest contributors. The United States has pledged only $17.5 million. South Korea pledged $7 million at this week’s meeting. The residual costs from loss and damage is projected to reach a total of $290 billion to $580 billion by 2030, according to a 2018 study.

But some developed country board members, including the US, rejected the proposal of including a reference to “billions”, according to observers.

“It is clear that developed nations…remain non-committal about scaling financial mobilisation,” said Harjeet Singh, global engagement director for the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, who attended the meeting. “The initial commitments of a few hundred million dollars are merely a drop in the ocean compared to the real and escalating costs of climate change that developing countries endure,” he added.

Eventually, board members found a compromise wording. The ED will be asked to lead efforts to grow the fund’s resources “towards contributing to a response at scale to respond to climate-induced loss and damage”.

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The recruitment process will now go underway with the goal of putting a shortlist of candidates in front of the board by the next meeting scheduled for September 18-20 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Legal agreements

Between now and then, there will be little time for a summer break.

After approving last June the conditions of hosting the fund, the World Bank now has until August 12 to share with board members the draft text of the agreements detailing how that will work in practice. It will include things like provisions to handle the money and give access to recipients and the rules governing the relationship between the board and the World Bank.

Developing countries and civil society groups are eager to see guarantees that communities in hard-hit countries will be able to access funds directly without going through various intermediary agencies.

“Agreeing and certifying these agreements will be the most important decision at the next board meeting”, said Liane Schalatek, associate director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington who attended the board meeting. “The World Bank has shared an outline of what they will include, but we are talking about legal agreements so the devil is in the detail”.

The post In Hurricane Beryl’s shadow, loss and damage fund makes progress on set-up appeared first on Climate Home News.

In Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” where the air is thick with pollutants and asthma rates are alarmingly high, a troublesome irony is unfolding.

This region is home to sprawling petrochemical plants and toxic fossil fuels that disproportionately affect the respiratory health of the area’s majority-Black residents.

Here, inhalers — one of the key tools for managing diseases like asthma — play a dual role: alleviating symptoms of pollution while also contributing to environmental degradation. This paradox has underscored the urgent need for sustainable solutions that holistically address environmental justice, health, and race equity issues in frontline communities like Cancer Alley.

Inhalers, often viewed as life-saving devices, have a profoundly negative impact on the environment. The most popular of the two main varieties of inhaler, metered-dose inhalers, release a gas that warms the earth hundreds of times faster than carbon dioxide.

A recent investigation by NPR revealed that the cumulative amount of climate-damaging gasses released from traditional inhalers is the equivalent of driving half a million gas-powered cars for a year. This means that each puff contributes significantly to climate disintegration. And as pollution damages more people’s lungs, the need for inhalers increases.

This 85-mile stretch of land wasn’t always referred to as Cancer Alley. Older residents recall a thriving community where many people lived off the nutrient-rich land. However, corporate greed and negligent politicians have irreparably damaged the soil, the land, and the air, leading to some of the highest cancer rates per year for residents.

Dozens of new cases each year are believed to be linked to severe air pollution. That pollution has also led to high rates of asthma in the area. Even more concerning is data showing the link between pollution, asthma, and cancer is visible in neighborhoods with high poverty rates — but not in more affluent communities, proving again that poverty kills.

The implications of the inhaler paradox are staggering. Not only do frontline communities bear the brunt of pollution-related health burdens, but they also face the ironic reality of using medical interventions that perpetuate the cycle of environmental degradation. Addressing this issue requires collective advocacy and action between healthcare professionals, environmental advocates, policymakers, and community leaders.

We have long approached environmental and public health solutions with a bandaid instead of a cure. The unique problem posed by inhalers releasing toxic gasses that increase climate change is one example why short-term solutions are no longer an acceptable way to manage our climate’s deteriorating health. Frankly speaking, it’s too costly to keep operating under this model when it is costing lives, the health of our planet, and our collective future.

Beyond encouraging the use of other inhalers and safe recycling, it is critical that government agencies do more to address greenhouse gas emissions so that we can proactively focus on prevention efforts instead of doing damage control.

While recent EPA rules on clean vehicles and emission reduction efforts are encouraging, it is not enough to combat the damage we have already done to the planet.

That is why my organization, the Hip Hop Caucus, is working with communities on the frontlines of these issues, uplifting their stories through The Coolest Show. Together we’re pushing back against attempts to roll back the minimal regulations protecting these communities and advocating to shut down operations that disproportionately put Black and brown lives at risk.

We’ve witnessed the effects of corporate greed and climate denial on our planet. It’s untenable to keep proposing short-term public health solutions without addressing the underlying causes of disease. Reports have shown how creating climate friendly policies can save taxpayer dollars in the long run — and more importantly, save lives.

It’s not too late to do right by the 20,000 residents of Cancer Alley. But we must act before it’s too late.

This op-ed was produced by Inequality.org and distributed for syndication by OtherWords.org.

The post Compounding a Crisis: When Public Health Solutions Worsen Climate Change appeared first on The Revelator.

The Pacific is set to shift from its warmer El Niño phase to its cooler La Niña phase in late summer or early fall, U.S. officials say, likely bringing an end to a long stretch of unprecedented warmth.

Read more on E360 →

The serene coastline of Chongoleani used to be a little-known paradise for local fishers and farmers just north of the Tanzanian city of Tanga.

But now it is becoming the end-point for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) where, after a journey of over 1,400 km through Uganda and Tanzania, the oil is stored and put onto ships bound for customers abroad.

EACOP is a joint venture between French multinational TotalEnergies, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the governments of Uganda and Tanzania. It plans to bring oil from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields near Uganda’s Lake Albert, down past Lake Victoria and all the way east through Tanzania to the Chongoleani Peninsula.

While the $4-billion project promises economic growth and energy security for the region, it has sparked protests due to its negative environmental, economic and social impacts – which have been met by crackdowns on the part of the authorities in both countries.

East African climate activists have joined forces with their international counterparts in a campaign called #StopEACOP, arguing that the pipeline will exacerbate climate change by transporting 246,000 barrels of oil a day to customers to burn, releasing greenhouse gases. They also warn that it will displace thousands of people and endangers water resources, wetlands, nature reserves and wildlife.

The Ugandan government says that it has the right to exploit the country’s fossil fuel resources in order to fund much-needed economic development and is taking measures to reduce the project’s climate impact, such as heating the pipeline with solar energy. Wealthy nations like the US, Canada and Australia, meanwhile, are also increasing fossil fuel production.

Living “like town dwellers”

In Tanzania, Chongoleani residents said they had been warned by the village chairman and other ward leaders not to talk to journalists, but Climate Home spoke to two whose land had been taken over by the government for the pipeline and its port.

Without adequate compensation, they said they had been unable to buy a new farm in the area and have to buy food from the city rather than growing their own and selling the surplus.

Mustafa Mohammed Mustafa said his family used to own two farms in Kigomeni village, together about as big as eight football pitches. On these, they grew coconut, cassava, corn and groundnuts. They ate some of it and sold the rest.

But with the pipeline coming, the government-owned Tanzania Ports Authority took over their land, compensating them with 15m Tanzanian shillings ($5,700), which hasn’t been enough for them to buy new farmland in the area.

“We live like town dwellers these days,” said Mustafa. “We buy firewood, we buy charcoal, we buy lemons, coconut, cassava. We buy all of these supplies from the city centre. How is this alright?”

House prices soar

Part of the reason they cannot afford a farm, says Mustafa, is that EACOP’s arrival has increased the price of local land, as it is considered a project area with potential for business investment.

Villagers either put a high price on their land or hold onto it and only accept offers from the government or foreign investors, according to Mustafa, believing this will get them a better deal.

A sign for Chongoleani oil terminal (Photo: Climate Home News)

Mustafa blames the government for not giving them proper information from the initial stages of the project, nor a choice about whether they wanted to sell their property. Instead, he said, they were told that the project is of great economic importance for the country.

“I am angry that the government took advantage of our ignorance of legal matters and gave us a bad deal that we couldn’t argue against,” Mustafa said.

Sitting alongside Mustafa in Chongoleani village, Mdiri Akida Sharifu said he regrets selling his family’s land in Kigomeni but they had no other option.

“At the moment, we have very little faith that this will benefit us. When government officials came here, they encouraged us to give up our land with the promise that once the project started, we would be given priority in getting jobs. But now that we’ve given up our land, we even have to buy lemons from Tanga town,” he said.

Countrywide compensation battles

Elsewhere along the pipeline’s routes, landowners have complained about unfair compensation, saying the government paid them in 2023 using price estimates made in 2016, ignoring seven years of inflation. Kamili Fabian from the Manyara region told local paper Mwananchi that he was paid less than a third of his land’s value. “Where is the justice in that?” he asked.

The government says it uses national and international standards to compensate people fairly. Energy minister Doto Biteko has said 35bn shillings ($13m) had been allocated for this purpose and the government had built 340 new homes for relocated people.

Reporting on these issues is a challenge. When Climate Home visited the coastal village of Putini, a man called Mahimbo – who would only give one name – refused to comment on the compensation process and said local leaders had told the villagers not to speak to journalists about the pipeline.

But he took Climate Home to the office of village chairperson Abdallah Said Kanuni to seek permission to comment on the record. “We have been given clear instructions to neither speak with journalists nor allow them to interview villagers on matters relating to the pipeline, unless the journalists have official permits from the regional [government] office,” Kanuni said.

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Compensation battles are playing out far beyond this area.  A Total spokesperson told Climate Home nearly 19,000 households have been compensated for the effects of the pipeline and the associated Tilenga oil field on them and about 750 replacement houses have been handed over.

But Diana Nabiruma, communications officer for the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), said her organisation had spoken to hundreds of people who had received compensation and had yet to meet any that said it was adequate.

She said a major problem has been that people were paid in 2023 based on their land’s value in 2019. As in Chongoleani, the price of land rose in those four years, partly because of EACOP and the promise of paved roads. Many people have not been able to replace the property they lost, she said.

Ugandan riot police officers detain an anti-EACOP activist in Kampala, Uganda, on October 4, 2022. (REUTERS/Abubaker Lubowa)

Nabiruma added that many people want to seek top-up compensation but are scared – and unable to afford – to challenge EACOP and the government in court. In Uganda’s capital Kampala, police have beaten and arrested activists protesting against the pipeline.

The Total spokesperson said EACOP will improve living conditions, adding that Total complies with local regulations and international standards and there is a fair grievance management mechanism in place for local people.

An EACOP spokesperson said that since last year, the project has provided households affected by leasing of their land in Chongoleani with food baskets and cash transfers, adding that the villagers are given preferential access to unskilled or semi-skilled work on the project.

The Tanzania Ports Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by CHN staff and Joe Lo, editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation appeared first on Climate Home News.

La più grande foresta tropicale e uno dei principali serbatoi di anidride carbonica al mondo, l’Amazzonia gioca un ruolo chiave nel mantenere abitabile il nostro pianeta. Sebbene la minaccia ambientale ai danni del bacino amazzonico sia nota, i dati scientifici da soli non bastano a cambiare percezioni e comportamenti. Lo scambio culturale, quando va oltre i pregiudizi e le prospettive coloniali, aiuta a colmare quel vuoto.  

Lo spettacolo teatrale Antigone in Amazzonia, del regista svizzero Milo Rau, è la riproduzione e il racconto di un adattamento della tragedia di Sofocle che è stato realizzato in Brasile con interpreti indigene. Questo sdoppiamento degli eventi è rispecchiato da uno sdoppiamento sensoriale: parte dell’azione è svolta da attori europei sul palco, mentre la parte amazzonica è registrata e proiettata su uno schermo, introdotta e commentata dalla testimonianza degli attori presenti. La scena di Antigone che muore si vede due volte, in video e dal vivo.  

Nel raccontate il mito di Antigone, Milo Rau lo sovrappone anche a un evento storico recente: la strage di Eldorado do Carajás, nello stato del Parà, dove la polizia, nel 1995, uccise 19 manifestanti del Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (“Movimento dei Lavoratori Agricoli Senza Terra”, MST). Durante lo spettacolo, uno striscione del movimento è appeso sopra l’ingresso della platea. 

La storia dei lavoratori del MST uccisi dopo aver occupato un ranch privato è molto diversa da quella di Antigone, entrata in contrasto con le leggi della città di Tebe per aver deciso di dare sepoltura al fratello Polinice, reo di aver combattuto contro la città. Entrambi i casi, tuttavia, riguardano il conflitto tra ordine civile e principi di giustizia che lo mettono in discussione.  

La trasposizione del classico greco in un contesto geografico e storico diverso serve quindi a metterne in evidenza l’attualità e la rilevanza politica: oggi, le lotte dei lavoratori e dei popoli indigeni contro l’appropriazione e lo sfruttamento dell’Amazzonia hanno un’importanza decisiva per le sorti del pianeta.  

L’azione teatrale subisce però un’interruzione: dal palco viene letta la dichiarazione di una delle interpreti indigene, che afferma di aver rifiutato di venire a recitare la sua storia in uno spettacolo destinato al pubblico europeo. Si pone così un problema: come raccontare oggi la più grande foresta del pianeta? Chi può farlo? Come tenere insieme la prospettiva di osservatori esterni al mondo amazzonico e quella dei popoli indigeni che da secoli lo abitano? 

Politica e savanizzazione 

L’Amazzonia, la più grande foresta tropicale della Terra, ospita il 10 per cento delle specie viventi. Sul piano ecologico, il bacino amazzonico ha una funzione fondamentale per l’umidificazione e il raffreddamento dell’atmosfera, e nel suo bacino immagazzina l’equivalente di 15-20 anni di emissioni globali di CO2.  

Da decenni, tuttavia, oltre il 20 per cento del territorio amazzonico è stato disboscato o si è inaridito a causa dello sfruttamento agricolo (piantagioni e pascoli per l’allevamento intensivo) e dell’estrazione mineraria. Questo processo, insieme al riscaldamento globale già in atto, ha ridotto l’umidità della foresta e la sua capacità di assorbimento. Diversi studi prospettano il rischio che circa la metà del territorio amazzonico diventi una savana arida nel giro di trent’anni, con conseguenze su tutto il pianeta. Inoltre, l’industria dell’allevamento, presente soprattutto nell’Amazzonia brasiliana, è responsabile del 3,4 per cento delle emissioni globali. 

La presidenza di Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) ha consentito un’accelerazione senza precedenti della deforestazione. Il governo Bolsonaro ha ignorato le appropriazioni illegali di terreno, legalizzando successivamente molte di esse in base a una retorica della “bonifica” di un territorio presentato come incolto e non civilizzato (negando quindi l’esistenza delle civiltà che da millenni abitano la foresta).  

Il negazionismo climatico e il razzismo di Bolsonaro, sostenuto dagli interessi di aziende multinazionali che operano in Amazzonia, sono un modello della linea adottata da altri esponenti politici, come l’ex-Presidente e attuale candidato alla Casa Bianca Donald Trump. Con il ritorno al potere di Lula nel 2023 il ritmo del diboscamento è calato, e le comunità indigene hanno ottenuto maggiore rappresentanza, ma lo sfruttamento della foresta non si è interrotto, e rimane un caso esemplare dello stretto rapporto tra politica, economia e ambiente che riguarda tutta la Terra.  

Ascoltare le voci amazzoniche 

In questo contesto, l’obiettivo primario dello spettacolo di Milo Rau è il pubblico occidentale. Il regista sostiene che “l’ordine simbolico dell’Occidente debba essere messo in discussione e cambiato dall’esterno, dalle periferie del sistema capitalistico.”  

L’approccio di Rau si pone in continuità con una tradizione secolare di discorsi e rappresentazioni che hanno mirato a far pensare l’europeo evocando figure altre: dai cannibali del saggio di Montaigne al “nobile selvaggio” del teatro di John Dryden, dall’americano del romanzo L’ingenuo di Voltaire all’“uomo naturale” del Discorso sull’origine della disuguaglianza di Rousseau, fino a tanti personaggi esemplari dell’etnologia del Novecento.  

Comprendere la realtà delle persone a cui quei discorsi si riferivano, delle loro civiltà distrutte, del loro territorio occupato, pone il compito di ricostruire il loro autentico pensiero oltrepassando i limiti delle narrazioni tutte europee. Tentativi recenti in questo senso sono  la ricerca storica di David Graeber e David Wengrow sulle testimonianze dei missionari sugli indigeni nordamericani ne L’alba di tutto, o il film Todos Los Males della compagnia Anagoor, che cerca di ricostruire le figure degli Incas partendo dal libretto dell’opera-balletto settecentesca Le Indie galanti del compositore Jean-Philippe francese Rameau. Ma quel che si ricava dall’esperimento di Milo Rau è che ascoltare direttamente la parola dei nativi dell’Amazzonia è ormai un passaggio inevitabile per evitare di ricadere in schemi di pensiero d’origine coloniale. 

Questo rischio è ancora evidente in molta etnologia contemporanea, anche quando questa intende rovesciare il senso di superiorità che attraversava la disciplina un secolo fa, “decolonizzare il pensiero”, e rivalutare le prospettive amazzoniche sulla realtà. Un esempio è la ripresa della categoria di “animismo” nell’opera di uno dei più importanti etnologi francesi, Philippe Descola. Per Descola, l’animismo è uno “schema” di pensiero radicalmente diverso dal “naturalismo” scientifico dominante in Occidente, il, e consiste nell’attribuire agli altri animali un pensiero in tutto e per tutto analogo a quello degli umani. Questa concezione intende salvaguardare l’irriducibile originalità della visione indigena, che già il maestro di Descola, Claude Lévi-Strauss, ammirava per il fatto che nega l’eccezionalità dell’uomo in natura.  

Simili rivalutazioni, che hanno portato diversi etnologi a celebrare la saggezza “ecologica” dei popoli amazzonici, risentono però di una tendenza a ridurre la dinamica storica di questi ultimi. Come hanno mostrato studiosi come Susanna Hecht e Alexander Cockburn, conoscere la storia millenaria delle civiltà amazzoniche mette in luce profondi mutamenti che hanno coinvolto le popolazioni native in secoli di incontri e scontri con gli occidentali. Chi oggi va in Amazzonia osserva il risultato di queste vicende: le varie forme tradizionali di “animismo” non sono che un elemento, spesso enfatizzato in contesti turistici, di società composite e in rapida trasformazione, dove saperi e tecnologie d’origine coloniale sono quasi sempre fatte proprie.  

Io stesso l’ho osservato in diverse regioni: oggi le comunità amazzoniche usano vestiti di fabbricazione industriale, cellulari, pannelli solari e barche a motore, gestiscono ecolodge per il turismo sostenibile, organizzano procedimenti legali contro chi ha inquinato il loro territorio, gestiscono piattaforme giornalistiche. I loro portavoce scrivono libri, rilasciano interviste, parlano in radio, , espongono dipinti nei musei delle città di tutto il mondo. 

Del resto – come riconoscono gli stessi etnologi – animismo e scienza non possono essere considerati come forme di pensiero esclusive che apparterrebbero rispettivamente alla mentalità amazzonica e a quella europea. Da un lato i popoli della foresta comprendono la mentalità scientifica; dall’altro, pensiero magico, miti e animismo attecchiscono profondamente nelle nostre società. Il rischio è che, invece di “decolonizzare il pensiero”, l’apologia dell’animismo e la sua rivalutazione in chiave ecologica finiscano per rirpodurre fantasie d’età coloniale sulle società arcaiche dei “selvaggi”, tanto immutabili quanto affascinanti. 

Dalla foresta alla città (e ritorno) 

Da secoli va avanti un doppio movimento di persone: quello degli indigeni che vanno a studiare, a vendere e comprare merce nelle città, e quello dei bianchi – funzionari, missionari, minatori, giornalisti, etnologi, turisti – che entrano nella regione con diversi scopi. Solo a partire da questo scambio è possibile una comprensione reciproca, come confermano diversi episodi. 

Un esempio è il lavoro congiunto dello sciamano Davi Kopenawa e dell’etnologo Bruce Albert, confluito tra l’altro nei volumi La caduta del cielo (2020) e Lo spirito della foresta (2023). Kopenawa appartiene al popolo Yanomami, che vive tra Venezuela e Brasile, ed è stato uno dei protagonisti di una lotta che nel 1992 ha portato al riconoscimento delle terre indigene da parte dello stato brasiliano. Nel corso della sua vita ha imparato il portoghese e appreso il cristianesimo, ha vissuto con i bianchi lavorando come lavapiatti, poi come interprete per la FUNAI (la Fondazione Nazionale dell’Indio). Ha osservato quella società diversa, poi ha deciso di tornare nella foresta. Il risultato di questa esperienza è un confronto che Kopenawa ha sviluppato in discorsi pubblici, divenendo una personalità nota a livello internazionale. A fronte del continuo disboscamento e dell’occupazione illegale delle terre Yanomami per l’estrazione mineraria, Kopenawa ha deciso di far trascrivere le sue parole su dei libri, o “pelli di carta”, con la collaborazione di Albert.  

Nei suoi discorsi, Kopenawa contrappone le parole dei bianchi, “popolo della merce”, a quelle tradizionali del suo popolo, che ispirano la protezione della foresta. Teme che i giovani indigeni siano sedotti dai beni materiali, che “si preoccupino troppo di discorsi e delle merci dei bianchi”, e prendano “paura della forza della polvere yãkoana”, col risultato di non vedere più gli spiriti. La polvere yãkoana è una sostanza psichedelica ricavata da una pianta, che tradizionalmente è assunta per produrre le visioni degli spiriti della foresta. Queste visioni costituiscono il fondamento di tutta la cosmologia Yanomami, fondata sul rispetto per una foresta vivente popolata dagli spiriti.  

Insomma, Kopenawa teme che i giovani si facciano tentare da un impiego tra i bianchi, per potersi comprare delle merci, e abbandonino il consumo degli psichedelici. Questa posizione si comprende nel suo contesto storico: il risultato distruttivo dell’arrivo dei bianchi con la loro civiltà fondata sul valore della merce, dalle epidemie che hanno decimato gli indigeni alla deforestazione, è la prova che conservare la “parole” Yanomami è questione di sopravvivenza. Ma il discorso di Kopenawa non è rivolto solo ai giovani Yanomami: il confronto tra società fondate su diversi principi – il valore della merce e quello della foresta, la produzione di beni e lo scambio con gli altri esseri viventi – è parte di un dialogo e di una sfida alle civiltà d’origine europea. 

La cosmologia Yanomami assume in questa doppia prospettiva un valore anche ecologico e politico. Kopenawa sottolinea questo punto, giocando con abilità con una nostra parola, ecologia: “Nella foresta, siamo noi esseri umani a essere l’ecologia. Ma, come noi, lo sono anche gli xapiri [gli spiriti della foresta], la selvaggina, gli alberi, i fiumi, i pesci, il cielo, la pioggia, il vento e il sole! È tutto quello che è venuto all’esistenza nella foresta, lontano dai Bianchi; tutto ciò che non è stato ancora circondato da recinzioni. Le parole dell’ecologia sono le nostre antiche parole. Gli xapiri difendono la foresta da quando esiste. I nostri anziani non l’hanno mai devastata perché li hanno al loro fianco. I Bianchi, che in passato ignoravano queste cose, oggi iniziano a capirle […]. Adesso dicono di essere gente dell’ecologia perché sono preoccupati di vedere che la loro terra sta diventando sempre più calda.”  

Alcuni etnologi, come Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, hanno sottolineato la difficoltà di una traduzione tra diverse prospettive sul mondo. Come mostra il caso del discorso ecologico di Kopenawa, la traduzione delle parole non è mai priva di scelte e possibili fraintendimenti – com’è inevitabile – ma la traduzione è senz’altro possibile, in base all’omogeneità di specie che rende capaci di oltrepassare o trasformare gli schemi di pensiero.  

Violenza di stato 

Eliane Brum, giornalista e scrittrice brasiliana bianca, segue un cammino inverso a quello di Kopenawa: dalla metropoli di San Paolo si trasferisce ad Altamira, nel cuore dell’Amazzonia. Altamira è una cittadinatr di sfruttatori della foresta e di sfollati, vittime della costruzione della diga di Belo Monte sul fiume Xingu, che ha cancellato le loro case. Brum va quindi a vivere alla frontiera di una terra contesa e brutalizzata, dove lei stessa è straniera, trovandosi come vicini di casa gli stessi perpetratori dei crimini di cui si occupa come giornalista e attivista. La sua esperienza, raccontata nel libro Amazzonia. Viaggio al centro del mondo (2023), è prima di tutto corporea: ammalarsi, com’è inevitabile nella foresta, è un risveglio del “corpo cittadino, abituato a fingere di non esistere, così da potersi robotizzare davanti a un computer.”  

Brum descrive la violenza subita dalla foresta come uno stupro, simile a quelli praticati su tante donne indigene durante la dittatura militare che ha governato il Brasile dal 1964 al 1985. In proposito, Brum riporta la retorica degli sfruttatori, che hanno descritto la foresta come un “deserto umano”, negando la civiltà indigena. Erwin Kräutler, missionario e vescovo dello Xingu dal 1981 al 2015, celebrò la costruzione del primo tratto dell’autostrada Transamazzonica, che doveva finalmente portare vita in quel deserto, abbattendo un albero di noce alto cinquanta metri. Brum ricorda con parole aspre questo episodio simbolico, osservando che il luogo di quella celebrazione è noto ad Altamira “con un nome rivelatore: Pau del Presidente, il Cazzo del Presidente.”  

L’Amazzonia è descritta così come la vittima di una violenza sessuale di Stato, che Brum vive in prima persona: “La deforestazione, la distruzione della natura, la contaminazione del fiume con il mercurio e gli agrotossici sono diventate un’esperienza vissuta come violenza anche sul mio corpo, in me.”  

Per Brum, la vicenda che ha come epicentro Altamira – non lontana dal luogo del massacro dei lavoratori del MST – ha un rilievo globale. L’Amazzonia è il centro di una guerra tra “forze di distruzione”, incarnate dalla politica e dall’industria dei bianchi, e “forze di resistenza”, incarnate dai popoli della foresta, sia quelli originari sia quelli arrivati in seguito attraverso migrazioni interne al Brasile, come gli abitanti dei fiumi, i beiradeiros. La foresta è anche il luogo di un conflitto di interpretazioni e valori, per cui la ricchezza degli occidentali è considerata povertà, poiché è povero non chi manca di ricchezza accumulata ma chi è alienato dai propri desideri, per esempio sottoposto a un padrone per il proprio lavoro. Per gli abitanti della foresta, “la vita è vivere, non accumulare.” Povertà non è quindi scarsità di merce, ma “non avere scelta”. 

Da scrittrice e bianca, Brum si pone però un problema analogo a quello di Antigone in Amazzonia: chi può raccontare la foresta? La scrittura è stata il mezzo di un potere oppressivo, che col diritto e altri codici ha costruito barriere escludenti e legittimato l’appropriazione – un processo che non si è mai arrestato. Fare della scrittura uno “strumento per denunciare la violenza” apre una contraddizione inevitabile.  

Lo storico Carlo Ginzburg sostiene nel saggio “Etnofilologia” che scienze provenienti dalle civiltà dei colonizzatori, come filologia e storia, possono nondimeno essere rivolte a una migliore conoscenza di quelle oppresse. Ma il lavoro sul campo di Brum mira a favorire una presa di parola diretta dei “popoli-foresta” attraverso progetti come Sumaúma, una piattaforma giornalistica indipendente web e radio, trilingue, basata “sia sulla scienza climatica all’avanguardia, sia sul pensiero indigeno tradizionale”. L’ambizione di Brum è portare la democrazia a chi non l’ha mai davvero vissuta: non soltanto ai popoli-foresta, ma anche alle altre entità che compongono la foresta. A questo scopo è necessario che avvocati e pubblici ministeri non si occupino soltanto dei diritti delle popolazioni umane, ma possano “agire in nome di una persona non umana o di una foresta o di un fiume o di una montagna o anche degli oceani.” 

Qui animismo e diritto occidentale si fondono. Ma il progetto di Brum passa anche per una scrittura narrativa in prima persona, in cui i discorsi si incarnano nelle storie e le sensazioni degli individui. 

Dalla parola all’azione 

Kopenawa e Blum indicano una via alla diffusione di una nuova sensibilità rispetto all’Amazzonia che ha implicazioni e potenzialità politiche globali. Riattivare un dialogo interculturale andando oltre miti del passato, tradurre i saperi indigeni per innestarli nell’educazione della cittadinanza occidentale, e riconoscere la dinamica sociale e economica che ci lega all’Amazzonia sono passaggi indispensabili per un’azione politica che non si limiti alla riduzione dei danni ecologici. 

Come ha affermato il filosofo e attivista americano Dale Jamieson, fondatore del Dipartimento di Environmental Studies alla New York University, di fronte al cambiamento climatico “non c’è alternativa ai fatti, nessun sostituto per l’evidenza, nessun rimpiazzo per la ragione.” Eppure, sostiene Jamieson, “anche se riusciamo a pensare che qualcosa sia una minaccia, siamo meno reattivi che se sentiamo che è una minaccia.” Solo la ragione ci fa capire davvero cosa sta succedendo; ma senza il sentimento la ragione è inerte. A formare un diverso sentimento della natura dovranno contribuire non soltanto le conoscenze ecologiche, ma anche l’arte e la narrativa, i discorsi degli sciamani, gli spettacoli, le voci del giornalismo e dell’attivismo. 

Calling all wild swimmers, surfers, paddlers Channel News brendan 12th July 2024 Teaser Media

China is erecting twice as much wind and solar capacity as every other country put together, according to a new analysis of large renewable energy projects. Increasingly, wind and solar are edging coal off the power grid.

Read more on E360 →

Despite growing at an unprecedented rate last year, renewable energy sources are still not being deployed quickly enough to put the world on track to meet an international goal of tripling renewables by 2030, new data shows.

At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, nearly 200 countries committed to tripling global renewable energy capacity – measured as the maximum generating capacity of sources like wind, solar and hydro – by 2030, in an effort to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

According to figures published on Thursday by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), renewables are the fastest-growing source of power worldwide, with new global renewable capacity in 2023 representing a record 14% increase from 2022.

But IRENA’s analysis found that even if renewables continue to be deployed at the current rate over the next seven years, the world will fall 13.5% short of the target to triple renewables to 11.2 terawatts.

A higher annual growth rate of at least 16.4% is required to reach the 2030 goal, IRENA said.

Renewable electricity generation by energy source

Chart courtesy of IRENA

IRENA Director-General Francesco La Camera warned against complacency. “Renewables must grow at higher speed and scale,” he said in a statement, calling for concrete policy action and a massive mobilisation of finance.

The United Arab Emirates’ COP28 President Sultan Al-Jaber called the report “a wake-up call for the entire world” and urged countries to add strong national energy targets to their updated national climate action plans (NDCs) due by early next year.

Geographical disparities

Bruce Douglas, CEO of the Global Renewables Alliance, a coalition of private-sector organisations working on renewable technologies, highlighted imbalances in the global picture of record renewables deployment.

“We shouldn’t be celebrating,” he said. “This growth is nowhere near enough and it’s not in the right places.

Africa saw only incremental growth of 3.5% in new renewables capacity last year compared with around 9% growth in Asia and North America, and 12% growth in South America.

And despite those higher increases in Asia and South America, data released last month by international policy group REN21 shows that less than 18% of renewables capacity added in 2023 was in Asia (excluding China), South America, Africa and the Middle East, despite these regions collectively representing nearly two-thirds of the global population.

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Slow growth in Africa is failing to live up to the huge potential for renewables on the continent, whose leaders last year pledged to scale up renewables more than five-fold by 2030, to 300 gigawatts.

“The justice piece is huge and too often overlooked,” Douglas said, adding that finance is “by far” the biggest challenge to getting renewables off the ground in the Global South.

Africa, for example, has received less than 2% of global investments in renewable energy over the past twenty years, according to IRENA.

“That’s not acceptable in terms of an equitable transition,” Douglas said, noting that when countries miss out on renewables financing, they are also missing out on the development benefits, jobs creation and improved access to affordable energy that clean energy can bring.

Finance not flowing

The scarcity of financing for renewables in developing countries is in large part due to investors being put off by the high borrowing costs and risk profiles of many such markets, Douglas said.

William Brent, chief marketing officer at Husk Power Systems, which installs and runs solar micro-grids in rural communities in Nigeria and Tanzania, explained: “Most sources of big capital in the West seem largely uninterested in Africa.”

“Despite being home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world, Africa is perceived as having a much higher risk profile and returns that cannot match the Americas, Asia or Europe,” Brent said.

New South African government fuels optimism for faster energy transition

Sonia Dunlop, CEO of the Global Solar Council, a body that represents the solar industry, told Climate Home that financial incentives provided by the public sector could help de-risk renewables projects for private investors.

“We need to get MDBs (multilateral development banks) leaning into big renewables projects and taking on some of the risk, which can then attract private finance,” she said, adding that governments in all countries must also play their part in creating policy environments that support and incentivise investment.

Grids and permitting barriers

Grids and permitting for renewables projects also pose major practical challenges, particularly in developed countries.

According to REN21, the potential renewable capacity that is ‘stuck’ waiting to be connected to grids around the world is equivalent to three times the amount of wind and solar power installed in 2023.

For Dunlop, the solution to grid congestion is more storage – batteries for short-term storage and other technologies for longer-term storage, such as storing electricity as heat or pumping water uphill that can then be released to produce hydroelectricity.

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Complex planning processes can also mean it takes longer to get planning permission for projects, such as wind farms, than it does to build them – if they even get approval at all.

For Douglas, something as simple as hiring more staff to process project applications in grid and planning authorities could begin to unlock thousands of gigawatts of renewable power.

Energy efficiency overlooked

Although renewables are growing faster than any other energy source, companies and governments are boosting investments in fossil fuels at the same time.

The use of fossil fuels for electricity generation continues to grow, while renewables only provide 6.3% of the energy required for heat, which is mainly used in buildings and industrial operations.

Electricity generation by energy source

Chart courtesy of IRENA

“We are not moving fast enough to fully meet the staggering rise in energy demand, let alone replace existing fossil fuels,” said REN21 Executive Director Rana Adib in a statement on the group’s recent statistics.

Another – neglected – solution is energy efficiency, experts said. The Global Renewables Alliance is running a ‘double down, triple up’ campaign, which calls on countries not only to triple renewables by 2030, but also to double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency, to reduce emissions and help stem energy demand – another goal countries signed up to at COP28.

“We absolutely need that doubling of energy efficiency as well,” said Dunlop. “That isn’t discussed enough.”

(Reporting by Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)

The post Global goal of tripling renewables by 2030 still out of reach, says IRENA  appeared first on Climate Home News.

In recent years, the EU has faced criticism for its approach towards greening trade, with third countries accusing Brussels of imposing rules on them unilaterally and without sufficient consultation. In light of this dissatisfaction from partner countries and fierce competition from the US and China, the EU needs to offer better solutions to its partners and take bolder steps to help them in their green transition. An interview with Hanne Knaepen and Alfonso Medinilla of the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM).

Xenia Samoultseva: In April, the EU reached an agreement on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which will oblige businesses to conduct environmental and human rights due diligence in their value chains. How will ​this ​affect the EU’s climate diplomacy? 

Alfonso Medinilla: We have already seen a lot of opposition from third countries. ​T​his resistance is not linked solely to the directive, but more broadly to the EU’s trade​-related climate​ measures and bills. These measures are usually applied unilaterally by the EU, but they may disproportionally affect businesses in third countries. There is a sense of under-consultation​,​​​​​ with countries and businesses feeling that they are being rushed into a transition process they ​​may not be ready for.  

The big challenge for Brussels is to balance the goals of these green initiatives with effective climate diplomacy ​in order to ​get ​other ​countries on board. Ultimately, we need a collaborative approach and a significant investment in accompanying measures.  

Compared to European companies, the administrative burden of the EU’s climate measures can be much heavier on local suppliers, especially in developing countries. In light of the bloc’s growing tendency to externalise European policies and regulations, it is important to create more space for dialogue with developing countries and step up efforts to pair EU trade measures with other solutions.  

Hanne Knaepen: That’s true. There is currently a perception of regulatory imperialism, with the EU imposing ​its ​measures and regulations on other countries. 

Another thing that affects the perception of the EU among third countries is that even within the EU there has been a lot of internal disagreement among member states about climate-related measures. Initially, CSDDD extended to companies with at least 500 employees, but this faced resistance from Germany and Italy, which were worried about increased red tape for business. Now, only enterprises with a workforce of 1000 and a turnover of 450 million euros will be required to follow the law, which will take effect in 2029.  

Another landmark piece of legislation, the Nature Restoration Law, also faced fierce opposition from some member states like Hungary and the Netherlands. Germany and Belgium were blocking discussions as well because they were afraid that some businesses would have difficulty getting permits. It has been difficult for member states to reach common ground in environmental and ecological disputes, and this can affect the credibility of the whole bloc in the eyes of its partners.  

So, the EU has been imposing rules without providing enough input to third countries, listening to their needs, exploring options to help with their green transition, and making sure they can comply with the bloc’s regulations. At the same time, extensive internal discussions and disagreements have weakened the credibility and, by extension, the global leadership position of the EU. 

The rise of various international players has given developing countries a more diversified pool of partners to pick from, diminishing the EU’s influence. Additionally, the bloc’s protectionist policies such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (​​CBAM) and its normative approach have contributed to rising tensions. How serious is this and is the EU doing anything to address it? 

Alfonso​ ​​Medinilla​: CBAM and the perception of protectionism that it conveys have become problematic for the EU’s partner countries. I think that, in a way, the bloc has been going through different phases as it learns from its past experiences.   

For instance, the story of the Global Gateway [an EU strategy to invest in infrastructure projects worldwide, with a key focus on advancing the green transition] started as a geopolitical competition narrative from the EU. initially, Brussels expressed a sense of loss of control in the developing world and stressed the need to come up with a competing offer to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, the EU toned down its language after this bad framing, focusing more on enhancing its offering rather than emphasising competition.  

That said, given the state of play with the US I​nflation ​R​eduction ​A​ct (IRA)​, the narrative that Europe must shift its industrial policy to become more competitive is becoming increasingly prominent. This perspective is likely to define the ​EU’s ​external engagements in the next couple of years, and I think we will have to deal with this new reality regardless of how it is perceived by the bloc’s partners.  

One big flaw in this framing is that the situation is presented as an either-or, as if developing countries must choose between trade with the West or with China. This is ridiculous and unrealistic because even Europe itself has very deep trade relations with Beijing. The EU has not yet fully followed the US model of extremely high tariffs on Chinese products. Instead, it sits in the middle. And that’s exactly why we need to look more carefully at how developing countries can position themselves within big green tech value chains.  

Rather than determining whether developing countries should pick China or the West, perhaps we should ask: how can developing countries attract meaningful investments in domestic industries through their diverse partnerships? And how can they work with different partners to reach those goals? Instead of simply looking at the security of European supply and value chains, we must focus on fostering processing and manufacturing capacities within developing countries and building stronger trade relations with them. 

In other words, to benefit both sides, we must explore ways to form a collaboration that is not purely extractive but works for the EU’s partners and aligns with their industrialisation objectives.  

Can Global Gateway compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? 

Alfonso Medinilla: We’re comparing apples and oranges when we’re talking about the BRI versus Global Gateway. The two projects have a very different model of mobilising finance.  

BRI, especially in the heyday of Chinese infrastructure finance, was closely linked to public funding but also with Chinese engineering, procurement and construction companies. Developing countries generally perceive that Chinese initiatives move much faster than those offered by Western counterparts. 

Another point to keep in mind about BRI’s financing, specifically concerning energy, is that the project previously focused on fossil fuels, low-income enterprises, and large-scale projects. There is now a shift towards renewables, which was already a focus of European energy finance. Now, the question for the Global Gateway is how the EU can adapt its offers rather than emulate what the Chinese are doing, so it can better secure its interests and meet the demands of those third countries. 

At the moment, there is a massive shortage of investment in some of our partners’ energy infrastructure, with many of them having outdated energy systems. In this context, the EU’s piecemeal approach is not going to cut it. Developing countries are looking for large-scale investments that can take them to the next stage. They require speed and scale, both of which Western finance has struggled to deliver in the past.  

Besides the Global Gateway, what initiatives has the EU undertaken to assist developing countries’ green transition and specifically adaptation efforts and how successful have they been? 

Hanne Knaepen: A lot of the EU’s finance goes to climate-related objectives. Under the current Multiannual Financial Framework for the period 2021-2027, there is a 30 per cent climate spending target. In 2022, the EU and the member states together mobilised 28.5 billion euros in public funding for developing countries. Over 54 per cent of that amount went to adaptation and cross-cutting, including climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives.  

There exist success stories of European adaptation finance. The EU supports many adaptation projects in, for example, African agriculture, but they are quite scattered.   

Generally, climate finance is an area where the EU has met criticism from African partners about a lack of transparency. If Brussels says 54 per cent of climate spending goes to adaptation and cross-cutting, it’s very difficult to understand how much exactly went to adaptation. Ideally, it should be 50-50. 

In addition, there are concerns about the quality of finance as well. One criticism here is that the EU packages funding already allocated or in the pipeline as if it’s new funding under a big flagship initiative. This is the case with projects like the Team Europe on Adaptation (amounting to one billion euros) or initiatives announced under the Global Gateway. 

African partners are tired of not having clarity and transparency about where the EU’s money flows from or how much of the committed funding will actually be disbursed. The EU has regularly talked about pooling efforts under Team Europe headings. But how beneficial will this be?  

To benefit both sides, we must form a collaboration that is not purely extractive but works for the EU’s partners and aligns with their industrialisation objectives.

To carry out adaptation successfully, it is required to have access to concessional adaptation finance. At the same time, there are a lot of discussions on involving the private sector in adaptation, for instance through blending mechanisms or the EU providing various types of guaranteed windows for the private sector to (co-)invest in climate-sensitive sectors such as water or agriculture in Global South countries.  

However, there are few good examples of how the EU, as a public sector, has involved the private sector in adaptation. Let’s not forget that the private sector aims to generate profit, so more effort is needed to prove that investing in adaptation can be bankable in the longer term, for instance through weather-based insurance mechanisms.  

Moving forward, it is essential for the EU to couple extraction with regeneration. For example, Europe needs to work on water diplomacy efforts, such as investing in large-scale water retention and landscape restoration projects. This will enable industrial expansion in water-stressed areas and, at the same time, will create the environment needed to work on adaptation. Currently, there remains a gap between these different areas of work. 

Do you think finance should be the central pillar of the EU’s climate diplomacy? 

Hanne Knaepen: Although the EU member states are the biggest climate finance providers, their contributions are insufficient in the face of the challenge of climate change. Just consider the scale of the needs and the support that is required for resilience, adaptation, and the energy transition. It’s impossible to expect the EU to close the gap in finance that African countries have. Still, the EU should make its climate target more ambitious, work on mobilising the private sector to scale up finance, etc. 

Climate action should be part of the entire socio-economic transition of countries. It must go beyond individual projects and instead become part of a completely integrated approach whereby climate, resilience, and energy efficiency become a central pillar of all the activities that countries undertake.  

I think that Europe and Africa are not there yet, but some Asian countries are more advanced in this regard. For instance, in Bangladesh, six to seven per cent of all government spending must be on climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Climate awareness exists on the highest political level because they feel the effects of climate change on a daily basis. You can consider this a success story.  

Vietnam is another good example as climate considerations are at the centre of all the country’s activities and line ministries. For the EU, it is instructive to study and understand what has triggered this attitude and how we can work towards similar models and mechanisms in African societies. 

Alfonso Medinilla: This reminds me of the overall tension that we are seeing in the EU’s approach to climate action and climate financing, between narrative and practice. The narrative has evolved to emphasise the need to plan strategy-driven finance that can transform economies in a way that links them to the European market, ultimately creating opportunities for industrialisation and economic development on both sides.  

The main intention here is to closely integrate European private-sector finance into climate-related projects through various means, but we are only at the start of this transition. In practice, institutions still view things through the lens of a portfolio of projects that are supposed to come together in a coherent strategic framework.  

Hanne Knaepen: Of course, we are criticising the EU from our own perspective, but African countries also need to have a clear picture of their partnership with Brussels. They must be able to clearly communicate their needs and their potential to address them, as well as their expectations from the EU. There should be a two-way dynamic in all climate-related projects, and in climate diplomacy more broadly.  

Could the rise of conservative factions after the European elections significantly alter the bloc’s climate diplomacy? 

Alfonso Medinilla: Conservatives can be a significant blocking factor in Europe against climate measures. We have seen this already with the role of, for instance, Hungary and Poland on key green issues in the past. 

I think European progressives have been trying to appeal to certain concerns around the European Green Deal by emphasising its affordances for fostering industrialisation and economic competitiveness. They have also sought to assuage fears that the landmark deal will increase net costs for societies, a concern raised often by European right-wing parties. However, I am not sure if these attempts are sufficient to bring back alienated voters.  

Killing the Green Deal would render Europe globally less competitive.

European progressives are generally preparing for the worst in the climate movement.  There has been a number of very important pieces of legislation, which will be difficult to dismantle. But the Right can create extended delays, and that has increasingly damaged the EU’s international credibility. It is especially bad when the EU enters global climate negotiations divided because this division will exacerbate some of the existing accusations and tensions.  

What’s more, I think a lot of internal European issues linked to the energy transition, nature restoration, and agriculture will increasingly dominate the political agenda. This may further dilute external international efforts, making them harder to sustain and manage. 

Hanne Knaepen: Europe already has some challenging political priorities, such as the various ongoing international conflicts and the need for the EU to build a stronger defence strategy as member states are wary of the risk of Russia’s war on Ukraine spilling out. These concerns have put a strain on the EU’s budget, and climate development assistance is likely to continue to fall victim to shifting priorities. 

This reality is apparent in the EU’s strategic agenda for 2024-2029, where there is little talk about climate change, ecological transition, or biodiversity. Instead, the agenda’s focus is mostly on defence and illegal migration.  

Still, now that the EU elections have wrapped up and Ursula von der Leyen seems likely to keep her job as Commission President, we can expect that the European Green Deal will stay on its course. Rolling back the measures laid out in the deal would be a major setback for European industries that have already started to invest in green and climate-proofed products. Killing the Green Deal would also render Europe globally less competitive vis-à-vis “green” frontrunners such as the US and China. 

Hopefully, this economic narrative can help convince the most stubborn among us in Europe. 

Climate will run AMOC across Europe Channel News brendan 10th July 2024 Teaser Media

Last November conservationists carefully carried 70 young, critically endangered Mojave Desert tortoises to the reptiles’ natural habitat on Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. The tortoises had been hatched and reared in captivity, and the team — a collaboration between U.S. Air Force officials at the base, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in Palm Springs — were hopeful that the animals would survive the rigors of life in the wild, where ravens would try to peck through their shells and coyotes could attack them.

It would take a while to learn how they fared: Soon after their release, the reptiles would hide in underground burrows and go into brumation, a state of inactivity, for the winter.

But six months later, this past April, news of their fate came out: The tortoises had emerged from their burrows healthier and stronger than ever, a notable milestone in the ongoing tortoise conservation story.

Photo: San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

The news quickly made headlines around the country. Local outlets covered the outcome, as did the Associated Press, which transmitted it internationally. Even celebrity-focused People magazine profiled the project. The media blitz demonstrated that even though conservation projects can be expensive and time- and energy-intensive, concerted efforts to help species come back from near extinction, and even thrive, can work.

Dozens of conservation success stories come out every year, from bald eagle population surges to black-footed ferret births, zebra shark releases to red wolf habitat protections. Yet few get as much publicity as the tortoises did in the spring.

So why did the story of the tortoises resonate so widely when so many other conservation stories fail to reach the public? The answer may reflect not only the state of human views on our effect on the environment, and our opinions of animals, but also the state of the news industry and what we cover.

“A Huge Downer”

Research published in 2022 by Carlos Corvalan, an advisor on risk assessment and global environmental change at the World Health Organization, suggested that people often feel overwhelmed by today’s biodiversity and climate change crises, which can lead to feelings of helplessness and result in people taking less action, not more.

Bad news about habitat destruction, the effects of greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere, and struggling species abound. The public, it seems, is hungry for positive stories.

“In this time, in all times, conservation can be a huge downer,” says James Danoff-Burg, director of conservation at The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens. The tortoise story, however, was about how the reptiles did well in their new environment after months in brumation. “This,” he says, “is a success.”

Another reason that the tortoise story got so much traction may be because they’re cute and unthreatening. Unlike endangered predators, tortoises won’t hurt anyone or take down prey with their fangs. Studies on stories about hyenas and sharks, for example, show that conservation focused on those species is less popular among certain age groups who think of them as scary.

Although tortoises may not qualify as charismatic megafauna — typically thought of as popular, attractive, and well-known animals — they have endearing features and are charmingly awkward.

“We relate to those big eyes,” says Danoff-Burg. “Tortoises, they’re just so funny and odd and alien, but adorable. I think that sold the story as much as anything.”

Photo: San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

The groups involved also have communications departments that helped narrate the story of the species the organizations care for. Typically it’s up to the researchers themselves to relate successes in the field, but media departments can help tell those stories to a wider audience, says Melissa Merrick, associate director of recovery ecology at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

“They really did a great job in elevating the work that we’ve been doing,” she says. “Not every organization is fortunate to have such a great communications team, and that’s really something that’s overlooked in a lot of conservation work, the importance of getting the story out there and letting people know some of the wins.”

Can the Tortoises’ Media Success Be Duplicated?

If conservationists or public relations professionals want to replicate the Mojave Desert tortoise story success, the task may be difficult, says Betsy Hildebrandt, senior vice president of external affairs for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. “A great, compelling story often doesn’t land, while one that seems insignificant can have legs,” she says.

In her more than three decades in communications, she’s seen how uncontrollable factors often influence the amount of publicity a study or a success will have in the media. Those can include a heavy news cycle, whether a reporter or editor has interest in a particular species, or whether viewers think the species is cute and cuddly.

“The best a PR department can do is put together a compelling pitch, be smart and target reporters who may have covered something similar in the past, [and] try an ‘exclusive,’ which you can then promote on social media to get further pickup,” she says.

Success Stories Have Power

In the void of good news, the doom and gloom stories often earn more attention, so the conservation community should promote even small victories.

“There are so many successes out there,” Danoff-Burg says. “We just don’t tell those stories very well.” We often fail to advertise minor wins in a conservation success story, such as efforts to mitigate threats like roads or poaching.

Some in the media understand that dynamic, which has led organizations like the Solutions Journalism Network to advocate for stories with a positive message that can show readers why, and how, people responded to a particular problem.

Sure, sometimes even good-news stories fail to make a splash. But even if a conservation story doesn’t grab the public’s attention the first time there’s a breakthrough, a species’ comeback could become an even more compelling narrative over time.

Take the black-footed ferret, for example. The species was thought to be extinct by the early 1980s, until a rancher’s dog found one in the wild a few years later. Biologists named the ferret Willa and collected her genetic material. Decades later they created her genetic clone in 2021 to help the species recover. The news of the genetic advance made national headlines in places like Science, National Geographic, and Smithsonian Magazine. Biologists just recently used that same genetic material to create two more younger sisters, also clones, generating yet more headlines.

 

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The organizations that contributed to the Mojave Desert tortoise success could have more news to promote in the future, too, as they continue their research, like what makes a tortoise clutch successful, whether specific females are likely to produce young that succeed in cold weather, and whether individual differences in behavior change how they respond to predators. That could all make conservation efforts more effective on a faster timeframe, Danoff-Burg says.

As researchers and biologists increase their knowledge of how to best protect and support lots of other threatened and endangered species — and the habitats they rely on — conservationists will have more tales to tell of their successes. That could benefit both humans and animals alike.

After all, everyone loves a good story.

Scroll down to find our “Republish” button Previously in The Revelator:

Breeding the ‘Snot Otter’

The post What 70 Celebrity Tortoises Can Teach Us About Conservation Stories appeared first on The Revelator.

Adrianna Hardaway is senior policy advisor for climate with humanitarian aid agency Mercy Corps.

As the Loss and Damage Fund’s board meets this week, it is addressing key issues such as selecting a host country, how to disburse its financial resources, and lobbying for more funding from donors. However, the agenda currently doesn’t address the challenges communities in fragile contexts will face in accessing the fund. This oversight mirrors a recurring pattern in international climate talks, where the needs and realities of fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) often receive little to no attention. 

FCS, as defined by the World Bank, experience high levels of institutional and social fragility and violent conflict. These nations, which include Afghanistan, Mali and Niger to name a few, often face extreme climate hazards and struggle to cope due to weak institutions, poor governance, and ongoing conflict.  

Together, fragility and climate risks make these countries particularly vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. Because of their vulnerability, fragile contexts are frequently deemed too risky for climate finance investments, as project partners find it challenging to operate and donors are concerned about their return on investment.   

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While the Paris Agreement prioritizes Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) for international climate finance, LDCs and SIDS with additional challenges like violent conflict and fragility face barriers, receiving significantly less financing than more stable regions.  

Mercy Corps’ analysis reveals that the 10 most fragile states received only $223 million in climate adaptation financing in 2021, less than 1% of total flows. Without prioritizing the unique needs of fragile contexts, the Loss and Damage Fund risks excluding these climate-vulnerable communities once again. 

Action needed from the start

There are no references to fragility or conflict in the COP decision that established the Loss and Damage Fund or the Governing Instrument, which sets the Fund’s rules and practices. Additionally, there is no mention of how fragile or conflict-affected places in more “stable” countries will receive financing through the Fund.  

Fragility and conflict can limit how communities and institutions across a particular country respond to climate impacts. For example, in Northern Kenya, where Mercy Corps implements several climate adaptation and food security programs, unpredictable rainfall affects water resources, creating pressure on pastoral livelihoods and leading to conflict over water and pasture. Relatively weak institutions at the local government and community level lack the capabilities and resources to plan and implement climate adaptation interventions.

If the Loss and Damage Fund does not address how to support both fragile states and contexts like Northern Kenya now, it will be hard to incorporate these considerations later.   

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Advocating for specific challenges in fragile contexts during the Fund’s initial setup is crucial, as evidenced by Mercy Corps’ experience with the multi-billion-dollar UN-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF). Although the GCF has made strides to consider communities affected by climate change, conflict, and fragility through its policies and programs, including endorsing the UAE’s Declaration on Climate, Relief, Recovery, and Peace at COP28 last year, it still struggles to effectively serve communities in fragile contexts.  

Prioritizing finance for those who need it most

At the second meeting of the Loss and Damage Fund’s board this week, its members should take the following steps to realize the Fund’s promise and ensure loss and damage financing reaches those who truly need it most: 

1. Designate a board member for fragile and conflict-affected situations: This idea, initially proposed by Afghanistan for the GCF, was never fully realized. Board Members play an important role in shaping the policies and procedures of the Loss and Damage Fund and in the future, approving projects. Additionally, an active observer from civil society can represent the views of FCS at Board meetings.
2. Develop a framework to identify “particularly vulnerable” countries: The Loss and Damage Fund board will need to determine which countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change and thus, eligible to receive financing. To ensure a comprehensive understanding of vulnerability, the LDF must include fragility metrics such as economic, political, social cohesion, and security dimensions in any forthcoming vulnerability framework. 
3. Develop and approve operational policies and frameworks for fragile contexts: To effectively utilize loss and damage finance, the Fund should adopt policies and tools that allow fragile contexts to flexibly respond to shocks and disrupt the climate-conflict cycle. Mercy Corps’ Assessment for Adaptation to Conflict and Climate Threats, for example, examines the dynamics between climate change and conflict, and identifies entry points and approaches to interrupt the cycle of fragility. In Mali and Niger, where we piloted this tool, program participants identified the rainy season – especially the beginning and the end – as the time when many of the land-based conflicts take place between farmers and herders. It is being used by the UK government to plan ways to resolve tensions and support women who are particularly vulnerable.   

The creation of the Loss and Damage Fund was a significant victory for nations that have contributed the least to climate change yet bear the brunt of its impacts. The board of the Loss and Damage Fund now has a critical opportunity to ensure inclusion and equity by guaranteeing that all communities, especially those in fragile and conflict-affected states, have access to the necessary funding to address loss and damage. It is imperative that no one is left behind in this global effort to combat the climate crisis.

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