REDD-Monitor’s round-up of the week’s news on forests, the climate crisis, REDD, and natural climate solutions. For regular updates, follow @reddmonitor on Twitter.
27 April 2020
The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from?
By Shannon Osaka, Grist, 27 April 2020
Pedestrians have taken over city streets, people have almost entirely stopped flying, skies are blue (even in Los Angeles!) for the first time in decades, and global CO2 emissions are on-track to drop by … about 5.5 percent.
Wait, what? Even with the global economy at a near-standstill, the best analysis suggests that the world is still on track to release 95 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in a typical year, continuing to heat up the planet and driving climate change even as we’re stuck at home.
Public support universal basic income, job guarantee and rent controls to respond to coronavirus pandemic, poll finds
By Jon Stone, Independent, 27 April 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has produced an unprecedented surge in public support for a range of radical economic policies, a new survey has found.
Pollsters YouGov found that a majority of the public support paying people a universal basic income to ensure their financial security, introducing a jobs guarantee to keep employment stable, and bringing in rent controls to limit housing costs.
Study Says Relentless Deforestation Demands New Carbon Credit Accounting
Planetary Emissions Management Inc. press release, 27 April 2020
Planetary Emissions Management Inc. (PEM) today announces the publication of a study describing established universal scientific methods for forest carbon accounting, endorsing direct measurement of CO2 over estimation protocols for forest carbon credits. “The Direct Measurement Forest Carbon Protocol: A commercial system-of-systems to incentivize forest restoration and management,” described in the journal PeerJ, illustrates how the problems of existing protocols, which are uncertain, expensive and biased against landowners, can be resolved with innovative use of existing technology.
First Things First: Avoid, Reduce … and only after that–Compensate
By Martha Stevenson and Chris Weber, WWF, 27 April 2020
The temptation to skip to steps lower in the hierarchy that are easier or cheaper will at best provide a temporary bandaid to these complex global challenges and at worst, cannibalize efforts for meaningful change.
Reflected in the number of companies setting science-based targets (SBTs) in line with climate science within the SBTI (Science-Based Targets Initiative), corporate climate progress has been striking, and we are seeing encouraging signs in the nature space as well (e.g., Fashion pact, Act4Nature, and OP2B, etc.). Key questions in corporate climate and nature actions are the necessity to reduce impact in line with scientific and societal need and the potential role of offsetting schemes in such action. This has led to significant discussion around so-called “mitigation hierarchies.”
Will COVID-19 Help or Hinder Efforts to Develop Natural Climate Solutions?
By Steve Zwick, Ecosystem Marketplace, 27 April 2020
It’s an article of faith among optimistic environmentalists that the global response to COVID-19 will hasten the demise of the science denial movement and accelerate efforts to meet the climate challenge. An overwhelming majority of veteran environmentalists surveyed by Ecosystem Marketplace, however, fear that the convulsive response to COVID-19, which is expected to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by just over 5 percent this year, will detract from the emerging structured response needed to meet the Paris Climate Agreement’s 1.5°C (2.7°F) target, which requires emissions to fall 7.6 percent annually for the next decade.
Debt-For-Climate Swaps: Solving Both The Coronavirus Debt Emergency And The Climate Crisis?
By Nishan Degnarain, Forbes, 27 April 2020
The world is in the early stages of an unprecedented global Sovereign Debt Crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. This will disproportionately impact low and middle income countries with secondary effects on wealthier nations and debt-holders. Already three countries have defaulted on their debt and many more are expected in the upcoming weeks and months, in spite of an emergency G20 agreement to suspend debt payments for 77 countries.
Climate crisis will make insurance unaffordable for people who need it most
By Adam Morton, The Guardian, 27 April 2020
The climate crisis will make insurance unaffordable for many people, particularly those in regional areas, as the damage from extreme weather events increases, a consumer group has warned.
In a submission to the royal commission into natural disasters sparked by last summer’s unprecedented bushfires, the Consumer Action Law Centre calls for an urgent independent inquiry into the cost of insurance in light of heightened risks linked to global heating.
Climate crisis: Sweden closes last coal-fired power station two years ahead of schedule
By Harry Cockburn, Independent, 27 April 2020
Sweden has closed the country’s last coal-fired power station two years ahead of schedule.
It becomes the third European country to exit coal completely after Belgium closed its last coal power station in 2016, and Austria ended its final coal-fired energy operations earlier this month.
Homegrown trees provide additional income in Thailand
EU FLEGT Facility, 27 April 2020
In the late 1980s, increasingly aware of the adverse effects of the rapid decline of its natural forest resources, the Government of Thailand imposed a logging ban in all natural forests. Together with the depletion of forest resources, the ban led to a drop in domestic supply. The Government therefore looked for ways to involve the private sector and in particular local communities in generating alternative wood supplies. Nonetheless, up until recently, even if Thai people could grow commercial trees on the land they own, forest laws prohibited them from cutting and transporting important timber species unless their land was registered, inspected and local authorities informed before harvests.
Changes introduced in 2019 in the law governing forestry may finally promote reforestation efforts.
[Ukraine] Chernobyl forest fires pose no health risk from radiation, says IAEA
World Nuclear News, 27 April 2020
The recent fires in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine have not led to a hazardous increase in air-borne radioactive particles, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on 24 April. The State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU) has regularly provided information on the fires through the IAEA’s Unified System for Information Exchange in Incidents and Emergencies (USIE).
28 April 2020
What CORSIA eligibility decisions mean for carbon markets
By Margaret Kim (Gold Standard), The Asset ESG Forum, 28 April 2020
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) announced March 13 that credits from Gold Standard and five other standards will be eligible, with varying further limitations, in their pilot phase 2021-2023. Gold Standard are currently clarifying some specifics with the Technical Advisory Board and will share projections on supply in due course. Yet some key takeaways are already very clear, and stand to set a new minimum bar in carbon markets.
Oil Crisis Prompts Call to Bolster World’s Top Carbon Market
By Ewa Krukowska, Bloomberg Quint, 28 April 2020
The oil market collapse is opening a new debate in Europe about strengthening the carbon market, a key tool in the region’s bid for climate neutrality.
European Union energy ministers on Tuesday discussed security of supplies and the role of industry in a plan for economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson called on national governments to keep the Green Deal the centerpiece of the rescue packages.
Planting trees is good. Saving existing forests is better. Protecting people and nature is best.
By Martha Stevenson and Linda Walker, WWF, 28 April 2020
While uncertainties and disruption associated with COVID-19 abound, many leadership companies are still moving forward with the important process of drafting their 2020-2030 sustainability goals. Companies leading the pack recognize the importance of integrating sustainability and business goals, given the close link between environmental and business risks highlighted by the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2020.
Pandemic ends offsets boom. Is a bust in the offing?
By Corbin Hiar, E&E News, 28 April 2020
At the end of last year, the market for projects to prevent carbon dioxide emissions was booming. The growing demand for the carbon offset credits such projects produced was driven by companies and consumers that — due to regulations or virtue — sought to balance their pollution by preventing emissions elsewhere.
Then the novel coronavirus spread across the globe, parking cars, planes and cruise ships. It also shuttered many industrial facilities, battering balance sheets and causing carbon emissions to plummet worldwide.
Al Gore says climate crisis and coronavirus ‘linked’: Pollution makes preconditions worse
By Rebecca Klar, The Hill, 28 April 2020
Former Vice President Al Gore said Monday that the climate crisis and issues surrounding environmental injustice are linked with the coronavirus pandemic.
“This climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are linked in some ways,” Gore said on MSNBC. “The preconditions that raise the death rate from COVID-19, a great many of them, are accentuated, made worse by the fossil fuel pollution.”
Climate experts call for ‘dangerous’ Michael Moore film to be taken down
By Oliver Milman, The Guardian, 28 April 2020
A new Michael Moore-produced documentary that takes aim at the supposed hypocrisy of the green movement is “dangerous, misleading and destructive” and should be removed from public viewing, according to an assortment of climate scientists and environmental campaigners.
The film, Planet of the Humans, was released on the eve of Earth Day last week by its producer, Michael Moore, the baseball cap-wearing documentarian known for Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine. Describing itself as a “full-frontal assault on our sacred cows”, the film argues that electric cars and solar energy are unreliable and rely upon fossil fuels to function. It also attacks figures including Al Gore for bolstering corporations that push flawed technologies over real solutions to the climate crisis.
UK military’s beef supplier buys from Brazilian farmers guilty of illegal deforestation, fires and fraud
Illegal Deforestation Monitor, 28 April 2020
UK armed forces in the Middle East are being served beef from a Brazilian company whose suppliers have illegally cleared more than 8,000 hectares (ha) of land – including swathes of the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, a new Earthsight and Repórter Brasil investigation can reveal.
Through Freedom of Information (FOI) data, analysis of sanctioned cattle ranchers, slaughterhouse purchases, and shipment records, our research shows how the UK government is at risk of fuelling Brazil’s deforestation crisis.
[Indonesia] Gov’t to Use Artificial Rains to Prevent Peat Wildfires
By Diana Mariska, Jakarta Globe, 28 April 2020
The Environment and Forestry Ministry said it will use artificial rains to extinguish escalating forest and land fires in Sumatran peatlands in May.
Indonesia experienced its worst forest fires last year, with close to 152,000 spots ablaze across forests in Sumatra and Kalimantan – the country’s key palm oil-producing regions.
The fires destroyed more than 857,000 hectares of forest and peatland, 13 times the size of Jakarta, while the smoke and haze from the fires caused acute respiratory illnesses for more than a million people.
29 April 2020
Self-isolation is why uncontacted tribes survive today
By Fiona Watson, Survival International, 29 April 2020
“Cough, catarrh and chest pain killed everybody. Everybody died… They weren’t buried. They were too weak to bury the dead. They were very ill so they didn’t bury them. The vultures ate them from the ground because they weren’t buried.”
Imagine the mental strength to keep going when, all around you, your loved ones are dropping dead for no apparent reason as strange epidemics ravage your community in a matter of days. The devastating effects of new diseases are all too grimly familiar to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, up to 90% of whom were killed by diseases introduced by colonizers in the last 500 years.
Tropical deforestation releases deadly infections
By Jan Rocha, Climate News Network, 29 April 2020
As forest destruction continues unabated in Brazil, scientists are alarmed that, as well as spurring climate change, it may unleash new and deadly infections on humankind.
There is growing awareness that large-scale tropical deforestation, as in the Amazon, not only brings disastrous consequences for the climate, but releases new diseases like Covid-19 by enabling infections to pass from wild animals to human beings.
As one well-known Amazon scientist, biologist Philip Fearnside, puts it: “Amazon deforestation facilitates transmission both of new diseases and of old ones like malaria.
“The connection between deforestation and infectious diseases is just one more impact of deforestation, added to impacts of losing both Amazonia’s biodiversity and the forest’s vital climate functions in avoiding global warming and in recycling water.”
IMF chief: $1 trillion post-coronavirus stimulus must tackle climate crisis
By Megan Darby, Climate Home News, 29 April 2020
As it gears up to lend $1 trillion to governments hit by the coronavirus pandemic, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is giving guidance on using the cash to tackle climate change.
Economic activity has slumped worldwide amid travel restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid-19. More than 100 countries have applied to the IMF for emergency finance.
Money to rebuild after the public health crisis should be directed into green investments and not subsidise fossil fuels, according to IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva.
Economic development racking up unpayable debt to nature, researchers warn
By Thin Lei Win, Thomson Reuters Foundation, 29 April 2020
Many parts of the world may not have enough suitable land for green efforts to make up for the environmental damage caused by planned development like clearing forests for new roads or more plantations, researchers warned on Wednesday.
In East Kalimantan, Indonesia, for example, planting new vegetation to compensate for biodiversity losses from proposed mining and palm oil projects would require twice the amount of land available, they found in a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Airlines and oil giants are on the brink. No government should offer them a lifeline
By George Monbiot, The Guardian, 29 April 2020
Do Not Resuscitate. This tag should be attached to the oil, airline and car industries. Governments should provide financial support to company workers while refashioning the economy to provide new jobs in different sectors. They should prop up only those sectors that will help secure the survival of humanity and the rest of the living world.
They should either buy up the dirty industries and turn them towards clean technologies, or do what they often call for but never really want: let the market decide. In other words, allow these companies to fail.
Airline bailouts set to double to €26bn as countries fail to impose binding green conditions
By Eoin Bannon, Transport & Environment, 29 April 2020
Airline polluters are now seeking more than €26 billion in taxpayers’ money – double the amount of just a week ago – according to the European airline bailout tracker compiled by Transport & Environment, Carbon Market Watch and Greenpeace. Governments have agreed €11.5 billion in financial aid and a further €14.6 billion is under discussion. None come with binding environmental conditions for airlines to clean up their act.
Airlines may not recover from Covid-19 crisis for five years, says Airbus
By Jasper Jolly, The Guardian, 29 April 2020
The planemaker Airbus has warned that the aviation industry could take as long as five years to recover to the levels seen before the coronavirus pandemic, as customers such as British Airways try to secure their survival by cutting thousands of jobs.
The Airbus chief executive, Guillaume Faury, warned on Wednesday it could take “three to five years” for passengers to be as willing to fly as before the crisis.
Air France Must Cut Emissions, Domestic Flights for Aid: Minister
Reuters, 29 April 2020
Air France will have to cut its carbon emissions and domestic flights as conditions for government financial support, France’s finance minister said on Wednesday.
With the air travel industry among the worst hit by the fallout from the coronavirus crisis, the government offered the airline a 7 billion euro ($7.6 billion) package on Friday made up of state-guaranteed bank loans and loans directly from the state.
Here’s What CEOs Should Do Right Now to Up Their Company’s Environmental Game
By Mark Tercek, Medium, 29 April 2020
I’ve been emphasizing in recent blogs that business leaders can and should do more right now to improve their companies’ environmental initiatives. The timing is right. We need more engagement, help, and leadership from business. And, importantly, investing in sustainability like this will also improve the overall value of companies who do this well.
I’ve been challenged by some CEOs to be more specific about how to do this. The most important thing to do is to have more dialogue with more key constituents on this overall opportunity.
Still Fighting for People and Planet
By Michael Brune, Medium, 29 April 2020
These are extraordinarily challenging times. Many of us are grieving losses large and small, and are filled with anxiety about the future. But the Sierra Club continues to work for a future that includes everything we need to flourish — a stable climate, clean air and water, clean energy, and thriving wildlife and public lands — and we’re achieving important victories. As always, they couldn’t have been achieved without the visionary leadership of our partners. I’m proud to share them with you — and glad I can bring a little good news to a dark time.
Brazil to deploy troops to protect Amazon as deforestation surges
By Eduardo Simões and Jake Spring, Reuters, 29 April 2020
Brazil plans to deploy its armed forces to fight deforestation and fires in the Amazon jungle, Vice President Hamilton Mourão said on Wednesday, in an effort protect the world’s largest rainforest where destruction has surged since last year.
Mourão said the country would invoke the same measure that deployed troops to fight forest fires last year, a so-called Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) decree to be signed by President Jair Bolsonaro.
As deforestation surges, Brazil moves to weaken indigenous and environmental safeguards
By Lucy Jordan and Ana Terra Athayde, Unearthed, 29 April 2020
With attention focused on the escalating healthcare crisis in Brazil, the administration of Jair Bolsonaro is attempting to push through new rules which would weaken safeguards against the invasion of indigenous lands and the deforestation of the Amazon.
Despite the pandemic, congress may soon take a hasty online vote on legislation that would effectively hand over swathes of illegally seized and deforested land to large-scale illegal land-grabbers, while Brazil’s Indigenous agency Funai has slashed its protection for undemarcated indigenous lands.
[Cambodia] Carbon credits up in forests
By Soth Kaomsoeun, The Phnom Penh Post, 29 April 2020
Minister of Environment Say Sam Al has urged relevant stakeholders to take part in protecting and conserving natural resources in wildlife sanctuaries. This, he said, will facilitate carbon credit sales to raise money to support local communities.
Sam Al made his suggestion when he led experts and relevant local authorities on a visit to Mondulkiri province to examine the protection and conservation of the Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Nicaragua is promoting illegal land grabs in indigenous territories – report
Associated Press, 29 April 2020
Nicaragua’s government is actively promoting illegal land grabs and granting concessions to mining and timber companies in indigenous territories, according to a report released on Wednesday.
Since 2015, more than 40 members of indigenous communities along Nicaragua’s northern Caribbean coast have been killed and many more wounded and kidnapped, according to the Oakland Institute, a California-based thinktank.
[Tanzania] Tourism has crashed: Are carbon credits the future for funding conservation in Africa?
By Mantoe Phakathi, Mongabay, 29 April 2020
The abrupt collapse of tourism due to the coronavirus pandemic has again highlighted the inadequacy of resources for conservation in Africa. Carbon credits have been advanced as one possible source of new funding, but this market’s real potential to protect biodiversity is yet to be established.
A 2018 study of nearly 300 protected areas across the continent found that 90 percent of parks it looked at were severely underfunded. The parks surveyed have an estimated total spending shortfall of between $1 and $2 billion: there are 8,000 other protected areas in Africa.
[UK] Yorkshire Tea achieves carbon-neutral certification for operations and products
edie, 29 April 2020
Yorkshire Tea, which is owned by Taylors of Harrogate, confirmed that all of its five billion tea bags sold across 28 countries annually are 100% carbon neutral, as well as its business operations.
The milestone follows a give year partnership with Natural Capital Partners, which helped Yorkshire Tea measure and verify carbon emissions across every stage of the supply chain.
A carbon-neutral logo will now be placed on Yorkshire Tea products and on Taylors of Harrogate coffee products which are also carbon neutral.
[USA] As a campaigner against deforestation, almost dying of COVID-19 was ironic
By Etelle Higonnet, Mongabay, 29 April 2020
I have been sick with COVID-19. When I started writing this, holed up in my New York apartment, I could feel the shakiness, sharp headache, muscle and joint pain that I came to associate with my coronavirus fever during the first week. As the writing and my illness progressed, the virus attacked tissue around my heart, sending me to the emergency room of the nearest hospital, where I was separated from my husband and contemplated the possibility of dying alone while I wrote my will.
30 April 2020
Global CO2 emissions to see historic drop in 2020 amid virus crisis -IEA
By Stian Reklev, Carbon Pulse, 30 April 2020
Countermeasures to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic including complete lockdowns in a number of countries are causing unprecedented drops in global energy demand and will likely drive a massive fall in worldwide greenhouse gas emissions this year, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.
In its Global Energy Review, the agency found that the coronavirus will bring about a 6% drop in energy demand this year – a decline seven times larger than was seen during the financial crisis a decade ago.
Airline bailouts set to double to €26bn as countries fail to impose binding green conditions
Carbon Market Watch, Greenpeace, Transport and Environment press release, 30 April 2020
Airline polluters are now seeking more than €26 billion in taxpayers’ money – double the amount of just a week ago – according to the European airline bailout tracker compiled by Carbon Market Watch, Greenpeace and Transport & Environment. Governments have agreed €11.5 billion in financial aid and a further €14.6 billion is under discussion. None come with binding environmental conditions for airlines to clean up their act.
Climate crisis: Coronavirus causing collapse in demand for fossil fuels while renewables make major gains, according to major global report
By Harry Cockburn, Independent, 30 April 2020
Global energy demands are set to plunge amid the worst shock to the sector in 70 years due to the coronavirus crisis, with fossil fuels on course for a historic decline and renewables set to gather greater momentum, according to the world’s energy watchdog.
The International Energy Agency said the world’s CO2 emissions are expected to fall by 8 per cent this year as a result of the pandemic, which has shut down much of the global economy and caused a collapse in energy demand seven times greater than the decline after the 2008 global financial crisis.
Biodiversity and the blind spot of nature conservation policy
By Esther Turnhout, Political Ecology Network, 30 April 2020
The IPBES Global Assessment has made clear that the causes of biodiversity loss are located outside of protected areas, yet this remains the focus of much of conservation policy. Addressing this blind spot is challenging, but necessary for effective and just biodiversity governance and nature conservation.
[Brazil] Razing the stakes
Global Witness, 30 April 2020
Mr Odey, founder of Mayfair-based Odey Asset Management, is one of the most high profile hedge funders in the UK. In March, the Guardian revealed his company held a “sizeable stake” in the Brazilian firm SLC Agricola. The producer of soy, cotton and corn has cleared at least 30,000 hectares of the Cerrado, a forested savannah region equal in size to Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the UK combined.
EU ETS emissions to fall at least 14pc in 2020: Sandbag
Argus Media, 30 April 2020
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary installations covered by the EU emissions trading system (ETS) will end this year down by at least 14pc on the year, and more than a quarter below the system’s supply cap, environmental think tank Sandbag said this week.
In an analysis of the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on EU ETS emissions published this week, Sandbag examined two scenarios. Both assume that initial lockdown measures in Europe will be lifted from 15 May, but the second maps out how emissions will be affected if there is a second ‘wave’ of the pandemic and another lockdown, imposed from 15 September until the end of this year.
How Dying Forests and a Swedish Teenager Helped Revive Germany’s Clean Energy Revolution
By Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News, 30 April 2020
Twenty years ago, before climate change was as widely seen as the existential threat it is today, Germany embarked on an ambitious program to transform the way it produced electric power.
Over the next two decades, it became a model for countries around the world, showing how renewable energy could replace fossil fuels in a way that drew wide public buy-in by passing on the benefits—and much of the control—to local communities.
New ISPO regulation underpinning Indonesian palm oil diplomacy branded as “regressive”
Illegal Deforestation Monitor, 30 April 2020
Indonesia’s recent “reform” of its palm oil sustainability certification scheme has been criticised for threatening forests and human rights – just as major export markets seek to better protect them.
In March Indonesian President Joko Widodo issued a new regulation on the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification scheme that environmental and rights campaigners say weakens forest and right protections.
[UK] BA job cuts signal depth of crisis for airline sector
Financial Times, 30 April 2020
Willie Walsh is no stranger to controversy. The head of International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways, has made his name as a ruthless operator over a decades-long career in aviation. When it comes to cost-cutting, he has form. Yet the news that BA plans to cut up to 12,000 workers — close to 30 per cent of its total workforce — as it reels from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has come as a hammer blow to its employees.
[UK] EasyJet lobbied against green taxes before receiving £600m government loan
By Zach Boren, Unearthed, 30 April 2020
The UK’s transport secretary assured easyJet that an environmental tax on flights is “not the way forward,” according to documents obtained by Unearthed.
In a meeting with the airline’s CEO Johan Lundgren in September last year, Grant Shapps agreed with criticism of European governments for introducing new taxes aimed at curbing the sector’s carbon emissions.
[UK] Burning Trees – Green Solution or Greenwash?
By Katy Brown, Nerve Magazine, 30 April 2020
If you’ve ever stood waiting for a train at Edge Hill station, or passed through on your travels there’s a good chance you’ll have spotted the Drax trains that spend a few days a week in the sidings there and regularly pass through loaded with their cargo from the docks. If you’re one of the few still travelling this route for work, or other reasons, you may have noticed them continuing to make their regular journeys.
[USA] Mnuchin’s Big Oil Bailout will Line the Pockets of CEOs Instead of Helping American Families
By Jamie Henn, Stop the Money Pipeline, 30 April 2020
Environmental groups expressed outrage on Wednesday evening at the news that the Trump Administration is moving forward with a bailout for oil and gas companies instead of prioritizing direct aid to American families and workers who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Big Oil is looking to steal as big a piece of the stimulus as possible. While first responders work without hazard pay or PPE gear, polluters are looking for a lifeline from taxpayers for their failing industry,” said Lukas Ross, Friends of the Earth Senior Policy Analyst.
[USA] Is meat really “essential,” though?
By Emily Atkin, Heated, 30 April 2020
COVID-19 has infected more than a million people across the world. It has fundamentally altered the lives of billions. And it has shown us the dire consequences of failing to act quickly and decisively on scientific warnings about global threats.
We would be wise to learn from this mistake and apply it to the climate crisis. Because the climate crisis is not slowing down while we deal with the pandemic, and our window of time to address it is running out. If we don’t act quickly and decisively to reduce carbon emissions, climate scientists tell us millions of lives will be lost; billions more will be fundamentally altered; and economies across the world will crumble. This time, our entire habitat is at risk.
[USA] UK Bitcoin Scammer Gets Bail In NYC Because Of Virus Risk
Law360, 30 April 2020
Fraudster Renwick Haddow will be released on bail from a New York City detention center pending his scheduled sentencing for offenses including duping investors in a $37 million bitcoin scam, a federal judge said Thursday, citing the danger the British citizen faces from coronavirus.
Haddow, 51, was scheduled to be released Friday from a privately run detention facility in Queens on $400,000 bail. He will be subject to home confinement, according to strict bail conditions approved by U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain.
Judge Swain said the release was granted “in light of the pandemic” and directed Haddow to be given detailed instructions on how to adhere to his bail conditions ahead of his scheduled July 10 sentencing.
1 May 2020
Stop blaming each other for the climate crisis – coronavirus shows what we can achieve together
By Oliver Taherzadeh and Benedict Probst, The Conversation, 1 May 2020
How can I reduce my carbon footprint? As sustainability researchers, we regularly field this question, from friends and family but also journalists. The answer is simple: cut down on flying, driving and eating animal products. Google is awash with the same advice and the science backs it up.
Of course, changes to our diet, travel and lifestyle are entirely necessary to avert climate breakdown. These are most needed in high income countries, given their disproportionate responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions.
Leading scholar says current pandemic could be a tipping point in the climate crisis
By Peter Bolton, The Canary, 1 May 2020
The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has brought economies across the globe to a standstill. As The Canary has previously argued, this has forced both political leaders and the public to confront fundamental questions about how we live and how we organize society. Now, in an exclusive interview with The Canary, one of the world’s leading experts on natural resources, conflict, the global economy, and the climate crisis – Michael T. Klare – has spoken about the potential environmental implications of the pandemic, along with the effects it has had on the global energy trade.
Global fossil fuel demand’s ‘staggering’ fall
By Kieran Cooke, Climate News Network, 1 May 2020
One of the pillars of industrial society is tottering: global fossil fuel demand is buckling, with only renewable energy expected to show any growth this year.
Oil prices are going through the floor. The market for coal and gas is shrinking fast. And global emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases are set to fall in 2020 by 8%, the largest annual decrease in emissions ever recorded.
The Chain: Biodiesel Markets Hit From COVID-19 Economic Fallout
Chain Reaction Research, 1 May 2020
The global biodiesel market has taken major hits from weaker demand, a sharp drop in crude oil prices, and growing palm oil oversupply. The decline in transportation demand as the novel coronavirus has forced global travel to pause has cut into use of biofuels derived from palm oil, a major blow to the industry. At the same time, crude prices in the United States turned negative for the first time in history, making biofuels markets less attractive. This combination has led to a large glut of biofuels, which could amount to a substantial surplus for an extended period of time.
No silver lining, but a golden opportunity to build back better
By Rachel Kyte, Climate Home News, 1 May 2020
The blue skies above our quiet cities are not a silver lining.
We never wanted a lesson in decarbonisation and our lack of resilience that condemned hundreds of thousands to death.
But the cleaner air that followed the coronavirus outbreak does represent a golden opportunity: our last best chance to shift our economies away from fossil fuels and reset the governance and institutional rules we need to deepen international cooperation.
Blow for commercial aircraft electric propulsion as Airbus and Rolls-Royce cancel E-Fan X programme
GreenAir, 1 May 2020
Airbus and Rolls-Royce have announced an ending to their joint hybrid-electric E-Fan X demonstrator programme, a pioneering project directed towards the electrification of commercial passenger aircraft. A BAe 146 RJ100 test aircraft with one of its four jet engines replaced by a 2.5MW motor was due to embark on its first flight in 2021. With the industry in Covid-19 crisis mode, both parties have decided the actual requirement to carry out the test flight was “not critical at this time”. Airbus Chief Technology Officer Grazia Vittadini said as the aircraft manufacturer started “to navigate the realities of a post-Covid-19 world”, it needed to refocus and reprioritise its efforts to decarbonise the aviation industry. Rolls-Royce CTO Paul Stein said the company would continue with ground testing of the power generation system it had developed for the programme.
Australia urged to suspend logging in wake of devastating fires
By Bill Code, Al Jazeera, 1 May 2020
Pressure is mounting on authorities in Australia to curb the logging of native forests in the wake of the country’s devastating southern summer bushfires.
With conservationists saying restrictions on movement because of COVID-19 are preventing protests against the resumption of logging, people have instead gone online with more than 22,000 signing a petition calling on the New South Wales (NSW) government to declare a moratorium on logging in the state’s native forests.
Bolivia NGO warns of increase in forest fires
Bandkok Post, 1 May 2020
Environmentalists in Bolivia warned Thursday of a marked increase in forest fires this year that threaten a repeat of the environmental disaster that ravaged much of the Amazon in 2019.
Bolivia registered 15,354 forest fires in the first four months of the year — a 35 percent increase on the same period last year, the Friends of Nature Foundation (FAN) said.
FAN said it had monitored information from NASA satellites to record fires between January and April 21.
Two forest fires break out in China’s Greater Khingan Range
Xinhua, 1 May 2020
Two forest fires broke out in parts of the Greater Khingan Range in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autotomous Region on Friday, local firefighters said.
At 1 p.m. Friday, forest rangers spotted a forest fire in the Ergune nature reserve in an aerial patrol. The fire brigade of the Greater Khingan Range then sent 150 firefighters to put out the fire.
Poaching fears rise after coronavirus empties Kenya’s national parks
By Antoaneta Roussi, Financial Times, 1 May 2020
Joseph Sanamwala used to begin patrol in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve just before dawn when the park’s wildlife is most active. He would spend the day driving the area’s dirt tracks, seeking out injured animals, lost tourists and poachers.
Now, since the coronavirus pandemic brought the world to a halt, tourism has collapsed, poaching is rising and he and hundreds of thousands of other Kenyans dependent on the sector must find new ways to survive.
[New Zealand] Coronavirus: can carbon offsetting still thrive?
By Olivia Wannan, Stuff, 1 May 2020
As emissions plunge courtesy of Covid-19 restrictions, forests and wind turbines relying on carbon offsets face an uncertain future.
Airlines have been offering flyers the option to buy voluntary carbon offsets for years, and online shops such as Placemakers are starting to get in the game. If you tick the box, the cash might support native forest restoration in New Zealand, a wind farm in New Caledonia or a solar power plant in Mexico.
The Amazon Commonwealth: A new partner for sustainable development in the Peruvian Amazon
By Gustavo Suárez de Freitas, Earth Innovation Institute, 1 May 2020
On April 24 Peru’s government announced its formal recognition of the Amazon Commonwealth. The move caps a near decade-long process initiated by the six jurisdictions that together oversee the world’s second-largest expanse of Amazon rainforest to align themselves behind a sustainable growth agenda. The announcement comes at a critical moment for Peru’s Amazon region, one of the nation’s poorest and one that is contending with continued threats from deforestation and the looming impacts of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Below, Gustavo Suarez de Freitas discusses how the Amazon Commonwealth came to be and what this moment represents for one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots. Suarez de Freitas leads EII’s programs in Peru.
[USA] California’s experience with buyer liability shows how aviation can help ensure environmental integrity
By Katelyn Roedner Sutter, Environmental Defense Fund, 1 May 2020
The International Civil Aviation Organization is preparing to stand up its market-based emissions reduction program, the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, or CORSIA. As it does so, ICAO must maintain CORSIA’s environmental integrity.
To that end, airlines should not be allowed to count, for CORSIA compliance, carbon credits that have been found to be invalid, e.g., fraudulently issued or otherwise not meeting CORSIA’s standards for credit quality. To ensure that all credits represent actual emission reductions, such substandard credits should be invalidated – even if the fraud isn’t exposed until after airlines have canceled the credits in CORSIA. The emissions for which the credits had been tendered have occurred, and still need to be covered by valid reductions in order to meet CORSIA’s promise of “carbon neutral growth.”
[USA] Climate Crisis: The $600B Problem One Company Is Trying To Weather
By Elizabeth Howell, Forbes, 1 May 2020
Even while we work as a country to address the novel coronavirus pandemic, there’s another large crisis bearing down on us that we must address quickly — climate change.
It was one year ago this week that the journal Nature Climate Change (a spinoff of the more famous Nature) warned of dire economic consequences if the U.S. does not address climate change immediately. Already, extreme weather events brought on by climate change is costing the U.S. alone $600 billion a year, according to satellite and analytics company Spire Global.
Wildfires Pose Heightened Risk to Venezuelan Crude Output
By Mircely Guanipa and Luc Cohen, Claims Journal, 1 May 2020
Wildfires during Venezuela’s dry season are posing heightened risk to crude output this year due to lack of maintenance in state-owned oil company’s PDVSA’s oilfields and fuel shortages leaving firefighters without fuel, according to interviews with a half-dozen workers and other industry sources.
The fires come as Venezuela’s crude output has already fallen by 20% so far this year to around 700,000 barrels per day (bpd), its lowest level in decades, due to years of underinvestment, U.S. sanctions on cash-strapped PDVSA, and more recently the collapse in crude prices as demand falls due to the coronavirus pandemic.
2 May 2020
[UK] Climate crisis: EasyJet ‘lobbied against environmental tax’ on flights before £600m bailout loan
By Harry Cockburn, Independent, 2 May 2020
Budget airline easyJet has been accused of lobbying the government against environmental taxes on flights before it received a £600m loan from the Treasury and Bank of England’s emergency coronavirus fund.
Documents acquired by a Freedom of Information request by Greenpeace reveal UK transport secretary Grant Schapps told the airline an environmental tax on flights is “not the way forward”.
Siberian Wildfires Have Burned an Area More Than Three Times the Size of Delaware
By Brian Kahn, Gizmodo, 2 May 2020
It’s spring in an era of rapid climate change so that means Russia is being lit up by monster fires. But in an era of coronavirus, a confluence of factors has made the wildfires even worse.
Russia has had a rough go of it this year. It set a record for its hottest winter ever and Moscow basically skipped the season entirely. The heat has continued into spring, and now, the Siberian countryside is on fire. Emergencies Minister Yevgeny Zinichev called it a “critical situation,” according to the Siberian Times.
3 May 2020
Emissions cuts: ‘Carbon market’ envisaged to generate credits
By Sohail Sarfraz, Business Recorder, 3 May 2020
The government has decided to establish ‘carbon market’ in Pakistan with the basic objective of increasing source of revenue; spurring investment into innovative technologies, and engaging the private sector in addressing the climate change issues.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday that the decision was taken during the first meeting of the National Committee on the Establishment of Carbon Market (NCEC), which was held at the Ministry of Climate Change (MoCC) office.
‘We are on the eve of a genocide’: Brazil urged to save Amazon tribes from Covid-19
By Tom Phillips, The Guardian, 3 May 2020
Brazil’s leaders must take immediate action to save the country’s indigenous peoples from a Covid-19 “genocide”, a global coalition of artists, celebrities, scientists and intellectuals has said.
In an open letter to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, figures including Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, David Hockney and Paul McCartney warned the pandemic meant indigenous communities in the Amazon faced “an extreme threat to their very survival”.
We Should Probably Talk About the Huge Wildfires in Siberia Right Now
By Brian Kahn, Gizmodod, 3 May 2020
It’s spring in an era of rapid climate change so that means Russia is being lit up by monster fires. But in an era of coronavirus, a confluence of factors has made the wildfires even worse.
Russia has had a rough go of it this year. It set a record for its hottest winter ever and Moscow basically skipped the season entirely. The heat has continued into spring, and now, the Siberian countryside is on fire. Emergencies Minister Yevgeny Zinichev called it a “critical situation,” according to the Siberian Times.