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World governments have acknowledged for the first time that ‘first peoples’ can play a leadership role in protecting forests and limiting global warming
Indigenous groups claimed a victory at the UN climate talks in Bonn on Wednesday as governments acknowledged for the first time that they can play a leadership role in protecting forests and keeping global temperatures at a safe level.
Long marginalised and often criminalised in their home countries, the “first peoples” – as they often refer to themselves – also achieved breakthroughs in terms of official international recognition of their rights, autonomy and participation in negotiations.
Continue reading...Traditional farming strategies could protect humanity against global warming and prevent deadly wildfires. Yet scientists seem determined to ignore them
Prejudice against indigenous people is visible and ingrained in cultures everywhere, from US football team names (the Washington Redskins for example) to Hindu folk tales where the forest peoples are rakshasas, or demons.
But it’s arguable that these prejudices also influence our science and policy. Take, for example, the specialised method of rotational farming used by many indigenous farmers all over the world but particularly in the global south. Farmers use seasonal fires to clear and farm parcels of natural landscapes and rotate their crops while the previously farmed parcel is allowed to regain fertility and natural vegetation – a method known as swidden agriculture. This technique helps preserve the soil quality and creates variation that helps counter the dominance of a few species and promotes biodiversity. It also helps prevent larger wildfires of the type that ravaged California recently, leaving 41 people dead and causing financial losses worth $30bn (£22.7bn). After decades of neglect, the US Forest Service is now embracing the Native American methods of fire management.
Related: Meet India's female 'seed guardians' pioneering organic farming
Continue reading...Government proposal to give tax relief for offshore oil would increase emissions and contradicts the nation’s progressive stance in Bonn
Brazil is planning a fire-sale of its oil resources before shrinking global carbon budgets push down demand and prices, environmental groups have warned.
The focus of concern is a government proposal for up to $300bn in tax relief to companies that develop offshore oilfields that opponents claim would use up 7% of humanity’s emission budget if global warming is to be kept below 2C.
Continue reading...Al Gore’s new film is worth watching
Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ is, in some ways, similar to his groundbreaking Inconvenient Truth project, but different in other ways. Those key differences are why I recommend you watch it.
This movie successfully accomplishes a number of interweaving tasks. First, it gives some of the science of climate change. Gore gets his science right. I remember his first movie, which I thought was more steeped in science and data than this one, so based on my recollection this new picture is somewhat abbreviated. That’s a good thing because the science is settled on climate change. That is, the science is settled that humans are causing current climatic changes and the science is settled that we are observing these changes throughout the natural world.
Continue reading...Women bear the heaviest brunt of global warming, and are less empowered to contribute to solutions. A new action plan agreed at the Bonn climate talks aims to reverse this inequality, writes Hilda Heine, Marshall Islands president
The women of the Marshall Islands and the Pacific have been fighting colonialism and injustice for a long time. They bore the brunt of the long term effects of nuclear testing, and women leaders like Lijon Eknilang and Darlene Keju-Johnson brought these issues to the international stage.
Continue reading...Report shows around £15bn of assets worldwide have been shifted away from coal companies in the past two years as concern over climate risk rises
A growing number of insurance companies increasingly affected by the consequences of climate change are selling holdings in coal companies and refusing to underwrite their operations.
About £15bn has been divested in the past two years, according to a new report that rates the world’s leading insurers’ efforts to distance themselves from the fossil fuel industry that is most responsible for carbon emissions.
Continue reading...My friend Robert Hutchison, who has died aged 76, was a promoter of culture and the arts with exceptional versatility and range. The Winchester poetry festival, Wilfred Owen Association and Winchester Action on Climate Change are three of the recent successful ventures he led.
The youngest of three children of Terence Hutchison, and his German-born wife, Loretta (nee Hack), Robert was born in Baghdad, where his father, later an eminent economic historian, was teaching English. The family fled to India when he was two weeks old, to escape the approaching German army.
Continue reading...A scheme unveiled at the UN climate summit aims to help protect 400 million poor people from extreme weather by 2020 - but not everyone is convinced
“I was wondering if it was a dream,” said Walter Edwin, who sells honey from more than 50 beehives in Dennery on the Caribbean island of St Lucia. He had just received a phone call telling him to go to the bank for an automatic insurance payout following the major hurricane that struck in 2014.
“I used that very same money to get some syrup to look after my bees,” he said. Storms destroy the flowers the bees need for food, and falling branches damage the hives. Edwin is one of millions of people around the world vulnerable to the impacts of extreme weather already benefiting from low-cost insurance schemes.
Related: In an era of dire climate records the US and South Asia floods won't be the last
Continue reading...Tar sands have been dubbed the largest – and most destructive – industrial project in human history. And Canada is on the forefront of their exploitation
This week, the Canadian government will be in Bonn touting Canada’s climate plan. It will be joined by Canadian oil companies working to put a green hue on Canadian tar sands – but the world shouldn’t be fooled.
The truth is, Canada cannot yet meet its own arguably weak climate targets. The country plans to expand oil and gas production despite evidence that this is inconsistent with Paris goals. Then, there is the issue of the toxic sludge of waste products from Canada’s tar sands destruction, which form what are known as tailings ponds.
These open, unlined ponds currently cover 220 sq km, an area of land equivalent to 73 New York Central Parks
Related: Shell’s sale of dirty tar sands assets cleans up debt and spruces image
Continue reading...The Paradise Papers have exposed the hypocrisy of universities that teach sustainability while financing climate destruction offshore. We’re calling on them to come clean
Students at Oxford and Cambridge are taught about the dangers of economic inequality, climate change, and the limits of burnable carbon. But the Paradise Papers have revealed that behind the scenes, the universities are investing tens of millions in projects that systematically exacerbate inequality and climate disaster.
The scandal is not simply tax avoidance. It is the hypocrisy of universities that espouse their commitment to sustainability while financing environmental destruction offshore.
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