By Ajit Niranjan
When private equity giant Blackstone invested in alternative milk maker Oatly this summer, furious customers pledged to boycott the dairy-free drink.
<p>"Blackstone investments have been linked with deforestation activities in Brazil," wrote British local produce shop Buth Bharraigh in a tweet announcing they would stop selling Oatly products.</p><p>"I don't want my money going to the destruction of the planet ... just so that I can have a creamy coffee in the morning!" wrote <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sustainability" target="_self">sustainability</a> influencer Laura Young in Instagram and Twitter posts that were shared thousands of times.</p><p>They criticized Oatly for enabling Blackstone — an investment firm managing $564 billion (€478 billion) in assets — to greenwash climate-damaging investments. "Learn how we're backing sustainable, plant-based alternatives to dairy with our investment in @oatly," Blackstone wrote on its Instagram page.</p><p>The social media spat between a corporate giant, a "woke" food brand and disenchanted customers is part of a wider debate about the role of <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/oil-giants-face-shareholder-pressure-on-climate-emissions-greenhouse-gas-targets/a-48802418" target="_blank">capital in fighting climate change</a>. It has grown more significant in the food sector as investors start to divest from the highly polluting <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/meat-production-coronavirus-farming-cattle/a-54381190" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">meat and dairy industries</a>, and consumers look for sustainable alternatives.</p>
<h3>Divesting From Deforestation</h3><p>Meat production is the biggest driver of tropical <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/mass-deforestation-how-trade-fells-trees-in-brazil-and-indonesia/a-48280649" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">deforestation</a>. Driven by demand for foods like burgers and milk, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rainforests">rainforests</a> are burned to create land for cattle ranches, and to grow soy that is then mostly fed to livestock.</p><p>Blackstone, which has invested billions of dollars in the fossil fuel sector, partly owns Hidrovias do Brasil, a Brazilian logistics company that was linked to deforestation in the Amazon rainforest by U.S. news organization The Intercept last year. A spokesperson for Blackstone told DW the deforestation claims were "completely false and wholly fabricated."</p><p>Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman is a major donor to U.S. President Donald Trump, a <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/trump-climate-change-denial-emissions-environment-germany-fake-heartland-seibt/a-52688933" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate-science denier</a> who has rolled back environmental regulations and brought the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.</p>
<h3>'Systemic Risks'</h3><p>Pressured by customers, campaigners and policymakers, some food companies are starting to assess their own ecological footprints.</p><p>In 2018, McDonald's pledged to clean its supply chains and cut its emissions. In July, Brazilian food processing giant Marfrig said it would remove deforestation from its production chain by the end of the decade.</p><p>Then, in September, JBS, the world's biggest meat-processing company, said it would monitor its entire supply chain to cut out <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/european-nations-warn-brazil-over-amazon-deforestation/a-54954854" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">deforestation</a> by 2025. Its announcement came two months after investor Nordea Asset Management said it would divest holdings of about €40 million in the company because of a lack of engagement on environmental issues.</p><p>Last year, after fires devastated the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-rainforest-fire-deforestation-mining-slash-and-burn-brazil/a-54486689" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Amazon rainforest</a>, a group of 251 investors called for a reduction in deforestation, identifying its environmental impacts as "systemic risks" to their portfolios.</p><p>Biodiversity and climate change matter to agricultural markets at risk of extreme weather and environmentally conscious consumers, said Matt McLuckie, research director at Planet Tracker, a UK-based nonprofit that aims to redirect capital toward sustainable development. "The trends are not looking positive for these agricultural producers, particularly in the beef sector."</p>
<h3>Alternative Sources of Protein</h3><p>The IPCC, the gold-standard on climate science, has said climate change could in part be slowed by switching to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/vegan-meat-the-future-of-planet-saving-plant-based-eating/a-51054861" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">plant-based diets</a>, particularly in richer countries. This is where oat milk comes in.</p><p>Oatly, the biggest player in the alternative milk industry, is valued at $2 billion, and is considering an initial public offering that could push that up to $5 billion, Bloomberg News reported in September. For a business whose core product is made by mixing two cheap and readily available ingredients — oats and water — the Swedish food company founded in the 1990s has seen incredible growth since entering the U.S. market four years ago.</p><p>While campaigners have spent years pressuring the financial world to take their money out of dirty investments like fossil fuel companies, little attention has been paid to finance in the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/food-sustainability-organic-discounter-cheap-environmental-costs-prices-factory-farming/a-54919142" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">agriculture sector</a>, which is responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.</p><p>Shareholders are also typically the ones pressuring companies they own to improve their environmental record, and not the other way around.</p><p>The backlash against Oatly's partnership with Blackstone is fascinating because it's "looking through the other end of the telescope," said Daniel Firger, managing director at climate finance consultancy Great Circle Capital Advisors. "The target of so many people's anger here is Blackstone, a private equity group. And private equity, as compared to other parts of the financial markets, has not really had as much scrutiny."</p>
<h3>Diverting Capital to Climate Change</h3><p>By accepting a $200 million investment from a group led by Blackstone and including U.S. talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, musician Jay-Z and actor Natalie Portman, Oatly said it was diverting capital to sustainable causes. The returns Blackstone makes from the investment could inspire other private equity firms to green their portfolios, it said in a statement justifying its decision.</p><p>"We have to have a fundamental shift in basically everything we do: the way we eat, the way we move, the way we live," Ashley Allen, chief sustainability officer at Oatly, told DW. "The only way to do that, in my mind, is to incentivize finance toward those solutions and disincentivize finance toward high-carbon, high-risk, high-polluting entities."</p><p>Asked whether Oatly would set red lines on who could invest in it — for instance, fossil fuel companies — Allen said she wasn't sure. "I haven't been part of any discussions on that."</p><p>Oatly is not the first ethical food brand to anger customers by accepting money from an investor with a poor environmental record. U.S. ice cream producer Ben and Jerry's — which champions its commitment to social justice — was bought out in 2000 by Unilever, a global conglomerate that has come under fire from campaigners for deforestation and plastic pollution.</p><p>In recent years Unilever has begun to engage more with critics on environmental issues, threatening to sell off brands that do not contribute positively to society. But is still a major contributor to plastic pollution, for instance, responsible for more than 70,000 tons of plastic pollution a year, according to a report published in March by NGO Tearfund.</p><p>While it's important for activists to draw attention to inconsistencies in investments, said Firger, the scale of the climate emergency means hundreds more companies like Oatly need to grow as fast as they possibly can. "I'm not one for purity tests. I feel like we don't have time to waste."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/oatly-deforestation-dairy-brazil-blackstone-stephen-schwarzman-environment-climate-private-equity/a-55138702?maca=en-VAM_volltext_ecowatch-28485-html-copypaste" target="_blank">DW</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Some 269 million people around the world indulged in drugs in 2018, according to the United Nations. PxHere / CC0
By Tim Schauenberg
Whether they smoked a joint on the couch or sniffed a line in a club, some 269 million people around the world indulged in drugs in 2018, according to the United Nations.
<p><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/cocaine-opium-production-hits-record-highs-un/a-44408807" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cocaine production is at record levels</a>, opium has been on an upward trend for the past decade, the market for synthetic drugs is growing in the Netherlands and some countries are legalizing cannabis. In short, business is booming.</p><p>It is no secret that drug trafficking and cartel wars cost human lives but so far there has been little focus on how this global trade impacts the environment.</p>
Cannabis Vs. Potatoes: Which Has a Bigger Carbon Footprint?
<p>With 192 million users in 2018, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/global-marijuana-use-rose-by-60-percent-over-the-past-decade/a-49358921" target="_blank">cannabis is by far the most popular drug worldwide</a> — excluding alcohol and tobacco.</p><p>Efforts to legalize marijuana are continuing to gather pace in the United States, where the drug has already become a billion-dollar market. But cultivating the plants in greenhouses, with optimum light, ventilation and temperature, guzzles an enormous amount of resources.</p><p>According to estimates, cannabis production in the U.S. already accounts for around <a href="https://www.swansea.ac.uk/media/Environmental-Impacts-of-the-Legalization-of-Cannabis-in-California.pdf" target="_blank">1% of the country's total energy consumption</a>.</p><p>"Within a single year, approximately 16.5 tons of carbon dioxide are emitted in the United States as the result of indoor cannabis production, equivalent to the annual emissions of 3 million cars," according to a <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4w64g29s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">report by the University of California, Davis.</a></p><p>That means that a single joint has a similar carbon footprint to about 6.6 pounds of potatoes.</p>Cannabis Plants Add to Water Stress
<p>Cannabis is also an extremely thirsty plant, needing twice as much water as tomatoes or grapes.</p><p>About 70% of the cannabis consumed across the country is grown in California. Such large-scale cultivation of a crop that requires up to 6 gallons of water per day per plant has only intensified the region's water shortages during dry seasons.</p><p>Scientists from the Californian Department of Fisheries and Wildlife estimate that illegal outdoor cultivation has lowered the water level in some flowing streams by up to a quarter.</p>Clearing Forests to Plant Coca
<p>The ecological footprint of the world's <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/2020-may-set-eu-record-for-cocaine-seizures/a-54585695" target="_blank">19 million cocaine users</a> is particularly apparent in Latin America. According to the United Nations, <a href="https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf" target="_blank">Colombia had the potential to produce 1,120 tons of pure cocaine in 2018</a> — a record crop for the South American country.</p><p>Since 2001, about 741,000,000 acres of forest have been cleared for the cultivation of coca — the plant that produces cocaine. </p><p>Following a temporary decline, "we can see actually the same peak of coca that we were watching 20 years ago," Paulo Sandoval, a geographer at the University of Oregon, told DW.</p><p>Sandoval's latest satellite data shows that around 123,000 acres of coca are currently being cultivated in Colombia's Amazon region alone — about half of it in nature reserves that are home to a rich diversity of species.</p><p>But the plantations he surveyed account for only 20% of the total cultivated area.</p>Colombia's Approach 'Harms' the Environment
<p>Until now, the Colombian government has relied on a strategy of eradication in its fight against coca cultivation. As part of its campaign, aircraft sprayed plantations with the highly concentrated herbicide glyphosate. This method effectively destroyed many coca plantations, but it also damaged neighboring forests and farmland.</p><p>Elizabeth Tellman, a geographer at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York, says this approach harms rather than helps the environment. And once the fields are destroyed, the cartels simply clear more forests elsewhere and plant new coca crops.</p><p>"We do know that it [the destruction of cultivated areas] has not only had no effect (...) it's been really counterproductive," she told DW in an interview. </p><p>Coca leaves aren't just grown in the jungle; they're also processed into cocaine in secret laboratories there. This process requires highly toxic chemicals such as ammonia, acetone and hydrochloric acid. Scientists estimate that several million liters of these substances end up in soils and rivers each year. There are now few aquatic plants or animals living in those contaminated waters, according to a 2015 EU report.</p>MDMA, Ecstasy and Co.
<p>So-called party drugs — from pills to a line of powder in a nightclub bathroom — have grown in popularity in recent years.</p><p>The Netherlands and Belgium are <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/dutch-police-find-netherlands-largest-cocaine-lab/a-54529270" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">hotspots for synthetic drugs</a>. The production of a kilo of pure MDMA, the main substance in ecstasy, results in 10 kilos (22 pounds) of toxic waste — or 30 kilos (66 pounds) in the case of amphetamines. This might include sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acids and acetone, substances that would normally have to be disposed of as hazardous waste using protective suits.</p><p>The Dutch Water Research Institute (KWR) estimates that in 2017, around 7,000 tons of these substances were either dumped somewhere in drums or leaked into the ground and rivers. "That's unbelievable," says Eric Emke, a scientist at the KWR.</p><p><a href="https://nos.nl/artikel/2264440-politie-ontmantelt-drugslab-in-rijen-dit-was-heel-erg-gevaarlijk.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A report aired by Dutch public broadcaster NOS</a> showed just how abrasive these liquids can be. In it, a scientist immerses a chicken leg in a yellow sodium hydroxide solution. After two days, the meat has completely dissolved, leaving just the bone behind.</p><p>Emke says the waste is sometimes dumped into containers used to collect cattle excrement, becoming mixed with the dung that is spread on corn crops.</p><p>"And so five years ago, they discovered amphetamine and ecstasy residues in corn lice."</p><p>Jeremy Douglas, the regional representative of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia, says Thailand, Laos and Myanmar have also become a hub for "industrial scale" global synthetic drug production in recent years.</p><p><span></span>"The spillover damage to groundwater and habitats is severe, and frankly it is nothing short of an ecological and public health disaster," he said.</p>Groundwater Sinking in Afghanistan
<p>Around 337,000 football fields, or 23 times the size of Paris — that's the amount of land that was used to cultivate opium worldwide in 2019, according to the UN. The main producers are Myanmar, Mexico and Afghanistan — which accounts for 84% of global cultivation.</p><p>Poppy fields spread mainly across the country's southwest in areas where, until the 1990s, there was nothing but arid desert. Today, some 1.4 million people live there, making a living from cultivating opium and agriculture. That's all possible thanks to more than 50,000 solar-powered water pumps that have greened the desert. But that is not as green as it sounds.</p><p><a href="https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/2006E-When-the-Water-Runs-Out.pdf" target="_blank">A report by socio-economist David Mansfield</a> found that the region's groundwater is sinking by 9.8 feet per year. Wells as deep as 426 feet are now being drilled to find water.</p><p>"Each year, more people are arriving in the desert and installing solar deep wells. There are local fears that there will fast become a time when agricultural production will no longer be viable."</p><p>The poppy farmers also use chemical fertilizers and strong pesticides to control weeds. Groundwater tests have shown that nitrate levels are significantly higher than what is deemed safe. This can increase the risk of blue-baby syndrome, which leads to heart defects and death in newborns.</p><p>Mansfield warns that if water in the region does eventually run out, it will likely force large numbers of people from their homes, sparking a rural exodus.</p>From Your Site Articles
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A grim new assessment of the world's flora and fungi has found that two-fifths of its species are at risk of extinction as humans encroach on the natural world, as The Guardian reported. That puts the number of species at risk near 140,000.
<p>The new report, <a href="https://www.kew.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/Kew%20State%20of%20the%20Worlds%20Plants%20and%20Fungi.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">State of the World's Plants and Fungi 2020</a>, and an accompanying <a href="https://youtu.be/fTHKjZyuUos" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">short video</a> were published by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and depict an international effort from hundreds of scientists from 42 countries who analyzed the health of thousands of animal species. The researchers looked at how people are interacting with plants, how plants and fungi are being used, and what opportunities people are missing, as <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/two-fifths-of-world-s-plants-at-risk-of-extinction-report-warns-1.4368362" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Irish Times</a> reported.</p>
<p>The report highlights that plants are crucial to sustaining life as they provide food, medicine, raw materials, fuel and food. And yet, the report notes, "Never before has the biosphere, the thin layer of life we call home, been under such intensive and urgent threat. Deforestation rates have soared as we have cleared land to feed ever-more people, global emissions are disrupting the climate system, new pathogens threaten our crops and our health, illegal trade has eradicated entire plant populations, and non-native species are outcompeting local floras. <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity">Biodiversity</a> is being lost – locally, regionally and globally."</p><p>The report notes that scientists are racing against the clock to rescue plant and fungi species and they are also working to figure out how to leverage plants and fungi to combat the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis">climate crisis</a> and food insecurity, according to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54344309" target="_blank">BBC</a>.</p>
<p>When Kew issued its first report in 2016, it found that 20 percent of plant species were at risk. That number has doubled in just four years. However, that does not mean that twice as many plant species are at risk. Instead, the huge jump in percentage is due to advances in assessments that now make a more accurate account for plants that were over- or underrepresented in the 2016 report, according to The Irish Times.</p><p>The fact that 40 percent of plant species are at risk paints "a very worrying picture of risk and urgent need for action," according to Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, as The Irish Times reported.</p>
<p>"We are also losing the race against time, species are probably disappearing faster than we can find and name, and many of them could hold important clues for solving many of the pressing challenges of medicine and perhaps even some of the emerging or current pandemics," he added.</p><p>The scientists involved in the research noted that more than 4,000 plant and fungi species were discovered last year. These plants are an untapped resource that holds tremendous promise as food, medicine and biofuels, according to the paper, as The Guardian reported. Some of the new species discovered include members of the onion family, plants similar to spinach, and relatives of the staple crop cassava.</p>
<p>Around the world, billions depend on plants as their primary source of medicine. The report noted that 723 species used as therapeutic treatments are threatened with extinction.</p><p>"We would not be able to survive without plants and fungi. All life depends on them, and it is really time to open the treasure chest," said Antonelli, as The Guardian reported. "Every time we lose a species, we lose an opportunity for humankind."</p>
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Countries Pledge to Reverse Destruction of Nature After Missing Biodiversity Targets
28 September
Politics
A sea turtle and tropical fish swim in Oahu, Hawaii. M.M. Sweet / Moment / Getty Images
By Ajit Niranjan
Leaders from across the world have promised to turn environmental degradation around and put nature on the path to recovery within a decade.
<p><br/></p>
<p>"We are in a state of planetary emergency," the 65 leaders, who include German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, wrote ahead of a UN <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/biodiversity" target="_self">biodiversity</a> summit on Wednesday. "We commit ourselves not simply to words, but to meaningful action and mutual accountability."</p><p>The commitments, which come two days before a UN biodiversity summit in New York, include eliminating <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastics" target="_self">plastic</a> leakage to the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">oceans</a> by 2050 and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/the-time-has-come-for-humanity-to-go-through-its-next-evolution/a-53589043" target="_blank">incentivizing banks and businesses</a> to value the natural world. The leaders identify unsustainable production and consumption as a key driver of environmental crises that "require urgent and immediate global action."</p><p>But strongmen leading some of the world's biggest polluters — <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-emissions-paris-agreement/a-55044341" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">U.S., China, India, Russia and Brazil</a> — are not among the signatories.</p>
<h3>Missed Targets</h3><p>The pledge follows the September publication of a landmark assessment of biodiversity which showed humanity had failed to fully achieve any of the 20 global biodiversity targets set by the UN ten years ago. Just six of them had been "partly achieved," the report said. For one goal, on protecting <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/great-barrier-reef-suffers-third-mass-bleaching-in-5-years/a-52921894" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coral reefs</a>, the world was found to be moving in the opposite direction.</p><p>Data from individual governments shows that a third of national biodiversity targets, which are set by the countries themselves, are on track to be met or exceeded. But these are less ambitious than the UN targets and less than a quarter match up well with the global goals to protect nature.</p><p>The vision for biodiversity set out in 2010 is only achievable if the world responds to "compelling evidence" that "transformative change" is required, said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, executive secretary of the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity, which prepared the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO) report.</p>
<h3>Global Decline in Biodiversity</h3><p>The charge sheet is long. Pollution from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/environment-conservation-plastic-oceans/a-54436603" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">plastics</a> and pesticides have not been brought down to safe levels. Governments still subsidize businesses that <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/insect-apocalypse-dying-ecosystem-species-loss-a-52160360/a-52160360" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">damage ecosystems</a>. Coral reefs, which are dying across the world, are struck by the triple-threat of human action: climate change, pollution and overfishing. Some of those drivers are getting worse.</p><p>And even where there is progress, it is rarely enough. <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/illegal-logging-mining-threaten-an-amazon-river-community/a-45631645" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Deforestation</a> should have been halted by now, but has only been cut by a third, with Asia and Europe gaining forests while Africa and South America lose them at a faster rate.</p><p>Conservation efforts have saved species like the Puerto Rican amazon parrot and the Mongolian Przewalski's horse. But they have failed to keep others like the Western Black Rhino or the Christmas Island pipistrelle from being wiped out forever.</p><p>While the big trends in biodiversity loss were already known, the UN report included "systematic analysis" on how well the world has achieved the 2010 targets, said Josef Settele, an ecologist at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research in Germany, who contributed research to the report but was not involved in writing it.</p>
<h3>Conservation Progress</h3><p>"There is also some brightness," Settele added. "The things we are doing are not completely in vain."</p><p>For instance, almost 100 countries have incorporated biodiversity values into national accounting systems. Over the last 20 years, the world has increased the share of <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/mauritius-oil-spill-compensation-pay/a-54725675" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">protected areas</a> from 10% to 15% on land and from 3% to 7% in water.</p><p>There are now more fish in waters managed by good fishing policies. Governments are increasingly eradicating invasive species from islands. And since 1993, conservation actions have prevented the extinction of between 28 and 48 bird and mammal species, according to a study published this month in the journal <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12762" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Conservation Letters</a> — though many remain highly threatened and may still become extinct.</p><p>"The progress toward conserving life on earth has been much greater than it would have been [without action]," said Thomas Brooks, chief scientist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, who was a co-author of the Conservation Letters study but was not involved in the GBO. "The absolutely key question is how to scale up from where things currently are, in terms of responses, to meet targets comprehensively."</p>
<h3>Protecting Wildlife, Not Just Individual Species</h3><p>The way to get that scale, according to the GBO report, is by "mainstreaming" the opportunities and responsibilities from protecting nature. That means every level of society — from individuals and local communities to businesses and national governments — would need to factor biodiversity into their economic decisions.</p><p>Like climate change, ecological collapse is happening at breakneck speed. A 2019 report by IPBES, the UN panel of biodiversity experts, found that humans are altering the natural world at an "unprecedented pace" and threatening 1 million animal and plant species with extinction.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQ0MzgxNC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzIwOTYzN30.FCDShn8HREGKfOXpVICLoFTFn5Ua_QZDoq-LTH1ZJpI/img.png?width=980" id="d848f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="560723442ef37fb766ae77a14a2830de" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<p>Scientists say both issues require systemic changes, but individual actions can help. Agriculture is one of the greatest drivers of biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions. A study published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2705-y" target="_blank"><em>Nature</em></a> this month found that more than two-thirds of future biodiversity losses could be avoided by conserving and restoring land, reducing food waste and switching to more plant-based diets.</p><p>They are among many actions laid out in the GBO report to reduce and eventually restore lost biodiversity.</p><p>If we do not act faster, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Program, "biodiversity will continue to buckle" under the weight of overexploitation, climate change, pollution, invasive alien species and changes to land and sea. "This will further damage human health, economies and societies — with particularly detrimental effects on <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/environment-nature-rights-indigenous-activism-legal-personhood/a-52186866" target="_blank">indigenous peoples</a> and local communities."</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/global-biodiversity-outlook-targets-extinction-summit-new-york-pledge/a-54932895?maca=en-VAM_volltext_ecowatch-28485-html-copypaste" target="_blank">DW</a>.</em><br/></p>From Your Site Articles
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An aerial view captures the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. ubasi / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 2.0
The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau are a tribe of less than 300 people in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest who first came into contact with people outside their community in the early 1980s, according to the Povos Indigenas No Brasil. While they still maintain many of their tribal ways, they and other tribes have recently begun using modern drones to detect and fight illegal deforestation in their territory.
<p>"Nature is everything to us," Awapy Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/01/americas/amazon-drones-brazil-deforestation-cte-spc-intl/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a>. "It is our life, our lungs, our hearts. We don't want to see the jungle chopped down. If you chop it all down, it will definitely be hotter, and there won't be a river, or hunting, or pure air for us."</p><p>Awapy is a member of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau tribe. Last December, he and other young leaders from six Indigenous communities learned how to operate drones to track deforestation, <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/amazon-tribes-use-drones-to-watch-over-the-forest" target="_blank">Interesting Engineering</a> reported. The training was held by <a href="https://www.wwf.org.uk/philanthropy/forests#the-heart-of-the-amazon" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">World Wildlife Federation</a> (WWF) and the <a href="https://www.devex.com/organizations/associacao-de-defesa-etnoambiental-kaninde-kaninde-104815" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kanindé Ethno-Environmental Defense Association</a>, a local NGO dedicated since 1992 to protecting the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau and the environment in their home state of Rondônia, Brazil.</p><p>"They really accepted the technology with open arms, and really started to use it," WWF Brazil Senior Conservation Analyst Felipe Spina Avino told CNN.</p>
<p>Avino added that the Indigenous trainees became hooked when they realized they could see the forest from above and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/indigenous-people-amazon-2645327056.html?rebelltitem=7#rebelltitem7" target="_self">keep patrol over much greater areas than ever before</a>.</p><p>According to CNN, the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau tribal lands lie within a roughly 7,000-square-mile protected area of dense jungle that can be difficult to traverse and monitor on foot. Drones allow them to cover more territory faster and avoid potentially dangerous confrontations with loggers, miners and land-grabbers.</p><p>Within the first month of drone surveillance, the tribe discovered an area of about 494 acres being illegally deforested within their reserve, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-forest-drones-feature/flying-high-brazilian-tribe-keeps-watch-over-forest-with-drones-idUSKBN20S1N8" target="_blank">Reuters</a> reported. Days later, a helicopter spread grass seed on the plot, indicating that the land would be used for cattle pasture; Awapy's team caught it all on drone video, reported CNN.</p>
<p>"The technology today, for territorial monitoring, is very worthwhile," said Bitate, a 19 year old from Awapy's tribe who was also trained in drone operation, reported Reuters. "Without a drone, that deforestation — which was already advanced — would still be unknown to us."</p><p>They called FUNAI, the Brazilian governmental agency in charge of Indigenous affairs, to stop the illegal land-grab, supplying video evidence and GPS coordinates, but the latter did not respond before the destruction was done, reported Reuters. Awapy hopes technology will help tribes stop deforestation sooner, as it is already too late once trees have been felled and burned, Reuters reported.</p><p>So far, the WWF-Kaninde project has donated 19 drones costing around $2,000 each to 18 organizations focused on the Amazon, Interesting Engineering reported.</p>
<p>Aerial drones have been used by Indigenous peoples in Ecuador, Peru and other places for about three years after becoming more affordable, reported Reuters. The images illustrate the damage of deforestation.</p><p>"Seeing the extent of deforestation from above is much more impactful than standing in the middle of it," Jessica Webb, senior manager for global engagement with Global Forest Watch told Reuters.</p><p>The high-resolution images, video and GPS mapping data from drones can also be submitted in court as evidence of illegal activities, CNN reported. Drones are likely to become more widespread as technology advances allow for longer range and stronger batteries.</p>
<p>"The key is not to think of the technology as a silver bullet," Webb told CNN, advocating to pair the new technology with Indigenous knowledge to create more powerful protections for the forest.</p><p>Keeping remaining rainforest intact is crucial to slow global warming since trees act as a carbon sink. Conservation also protects the Amazon's rich biodiversity, and is critical to food security, water services and the preservation of Indigenous cultures, noted WWF.</p><p>Despite this, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/brazil-amazon-deforestation-coronavirus-2645950493.html" target="_self">consistently pushes to develop Indigenous lands</a> and allow mining and commercial farming to deforest the Amazon. Last year, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-rainforest-fire-invisible-damage-2647014608.html" target="_self">Brazilian Amazon suffered its highest level of deforestation since 2008</a>, with this year poised to become worse, WWF reported.</p><p>Awapy and his team have faced death threats from illegal loggers and land-grabbers for their work protecting the forest, CNN reported, but they remain determined to use this new technology to protect their home for future generations.</p><p>"My hope is that while I am alive, I want to see the jungle standing, the jungle intact. That is my hope," Awapy told CNN.</p>
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New Online Platform Shows How to Protect Biodiversity and Avoid Ecological Collapse
08 September
Climate
A new online platform shows where exactly conservation action should be prioritized. ANDREYGUDKOV / Getty Images
By Morgan Erickson-Davis
As the world heads towards 2021 with COVID-19 still raging overhead, it might be easy to forget about the other global crises. But a new app, debuted today, aims to light the way to a brighter future, showing how we can stop global warming, halt extinctions and prevent pandemics – all in one fell swoop.
<p><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Research shows</a> that global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius will likely result in the collapse of ecosystems around the world. Scientists say that not only would this result in mass extinctions, but it would also have dire consequences for humans in terms of food and water security, community resilience against environmental disasters, public health and other societal needs that are intrinsically tied to a healthy environment.</p><p>But, according to the numbers, we're running out of time to do this. Studies indicate that in order to achieve a good likelihood of staying below the 1.5-degree threshold, the majority of the world's greenhouse gas emissions need to be avoided. Deforestation is one of the biggest emitters of excess CO2 and reducing it is one of the key components to international strategies aimed at mitigating global warming. However, researchers say that if deforestation and other industry emissions continue at current rates, we'll be on track to reach the 1.5-degree threshold by 2030.</p><p>In other words, we have less than 10 years to turn things around.</p><p>To this end, a team a team of researchers led by Eric Dinerstein, a wildlife scientist and director at the conservation organization RESOLVE, has created the first comprehensive estimate of the total land area that needs to be protected in order to fix both biodiversity loss and climate change. Called the "Global Safety Net," the effort combines data on protected areas, intact landscapes, biodiversity importance, and carbon absorption and storage, to show where exactly conservation action should be prioritized. It is visualized on an <a href="https://www.globalsafetynet.app/" target="_blank">open-access online platform</a>.</p>
‘Conserve at Least Half and in the Right Places’
<p>The Global Safety Net combines six primary data layers: existing protected areas, habitats where rare species live, areas of high biodiversity, landscapes inhabited by large mammals, large areas of intact wilderness and natural landscapes that can absorb and store the most carbon.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzc5NTczMC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMzE4OTI5Mn0.h_clcf6OzZN712SwPBUKFvsV9s7FiGsUDUd4uWhukp4/img.png?width=980" id="d9e69" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="f489045cac457a4011270a29e89c672f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Areas of the terrestrial realm where increased conservation action is needed to protect biodiversity and store carbon. Numbers in parentheses show the percentage of total land area of Earth contributed by each set of layers. Unprotected habitats drawn from the 11 biodiversity data layers underpinning the Global Safety Net augment the current 15.1% protected with an additional 30.6% required to safeguard biodiversity. Additional CSAs add a further 4.7% of the terrestrial realm. Also shown are the wildlife and climate corridors to connect intact habitats (yellow lines). Data are available for interactive viewing at www.globalsafetynet.app. Dinerstein et al., 2020.
<p>In a study accompanying the release of the platform published today in <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/36/eabb2824" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Science Advances</em></a>, the researchers describe what we need to do in order to stave off the worst effects of global warming and extinction. Overall, they found that in addition to the 15.1% of the world's land that is already protected, 35.3% will need to be added to fold over the next 10 years. This means that ultimately 50% of the planet's land area will need to be protected from further degradation to keep it under the 1.5-degree threshold and stave off ecological collapse.</p><p>The researchers were surprised how well their numbers lined up with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Earth" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">previous estimates</a> of how much of the planet needs to be set aside for nature.</p><p>"Without trying, the analysis landed on 50.4% of the terrestrial surface requiring protection," said study coauthor Karl Burkart, managing director of the NGO One Earth. "Of course conservation is much more nuanced now and strictly protected areas are just one type of land designation that can contribute towards this goal."</p><p>Zooming in, the study finds 30% of land area is of "particular importance for biological diversity." An additional 20% of land area is needed to maintain ecosystem intactness and provide additional carbon storage and absorption. The authors also note that restoration of degraded areas could help meet carbon sequestration and wildlife conservation goals.</p><p>Dinerstein and his colleagues write that the Global Safety Net can be used as a roadmap to achieving climate and biodiversity targets.</p><p>"Staying below the 1.5°C limit will require much of the world's remaining habitat—and a significant amount of restored habitat in forest biomes—be put under some form of conservation by 2030," the authors say. "Advances being championed under the two conventions responsible for biodiversity and climate— the Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—must be accelerated if we are to protect the abundance and diversity of life on Earth and stabilize the climate.</p><p>"A holistic solution is emerging that will accelerate both efforts: conserve at least half and in the right places."</p><p>The researchers identified 50 different ecoregions – areas defined by their unique ecologies and geologies – and 20 countries that hold the lion's share of conservation potential.</p><p>Among them is the Sahelian Acacia Savanna, a vast grassland that stretches across the top of Africa from Senegal to Sudan, the <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/new-guinea/" target="_blank">Central Range Papuan Montane Rainforests</a> shared between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/sulawesi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Indonesia's Sulawesi Montane Rainforests</a>, Madagascar Humid Forests, and Mindanao-Eastern Visayas Rainforests in the Philippines. These areas occupy the top five spots in terms of the amount land that could protected in future, together totaling some 183,000 square kilometers (70,658 square miles) of protection potential and nearly 2% of the planet's land area.</p><p>The app also <a href="https://www.globalsafetynet.app/rankings/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ranks countries</a> on how much of their biological important land areas are under official protection, which is broken down into three lists based on the size of the country. For "large" countries, Nigeria scored the top spot in terms of protection level, Brazil is #15, the U.S. is #34, Indonesia is #47, and Somalia was ranked lowest at #70.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzc5NTg2OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNjc2NTg1N30.3-DNDx178mq3RYVRgguTYZJqCNWc8giZNYoMom2S_2U/img.jpg?width=980" id="06d42" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5cd48628e90ca0835f1b8e3ddb2e9827" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Somalia has large areas inhabited by rare species – but very few protected areas. Global Safety Net
<p>It should be noted that these rankings do not take into consideration deforestation within protected areas. If so, countries like <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/05/takeover-of-nigerian-reserve-highlights-uphill-battle-to-save-forests/" target="_blank">Nigeria</a> and <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/brazilian-amazon-protected-areas-in-flames-as-land-grabbers-invade/" target="_blank">Brazil</a>, where protected areas are increasingly beset by illegal clearing, might not rank so high on the list. Still, the researchers say protected areas provide needed accountability and a metric with which to measure conservation effort.</p><p>"Protected Areas (or area-based targets) are certainly no guarantee of conservation outcome, as we can see with the fires burning in Brazil as we speak," Burkart told Mongabay via email. "But without them we are lost at sea."</p><p>Both Burkart and Dinerstein view area-based targets as the "North Star" of biodiversity preservation and climate protection, and say they are an important part of creating a framework for action that civil society can use to help motivate and mobilize conservation efforts.</p><p>"We've got to take conservation out of the ivory towers of academic institutions (or basements of government ministries)," Burkart said. "It is the public good we're talking about, so we need an open and transparent stocktaking of where we are right now, and what we need to immediately prioritize. Area-based targets are just the beginning, a 'blueprint' if you will of the cathedral we need to build."</p>Will It Happen in Time?
<p>If more than tripling the amount of land under official, effective protection in less than 10 years sounds daunting, you're not alone. But Dinerstein and his colleagues say it is possible.</p><p>One avenue they recommend is safeguarding Indigenous territories. The Global Safety Net shows important conservation areas often overlap with areas occupied by Indigenous communities or regarded as ancestral land, which previous research indicates contain around 80% of the planet's remaining biodiversity and contribute significantly to carbon storage. Putting land under the management of Indigenous and local communities has been shown to <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2014/07/true-stewards-new-report-says-local-communities-key-to-saving-forests-curbing-global-warming/" target="_blank">be an effective way</a> to protect it.</p><p>"Addressing indigenous land claims, upholding existing land tenure rights, and resourcing programs on indigenous-managed lands could help achieve biodiversity objectives on as much as one-third of the area required by the Global Safety Net," the researchers write in their study. "Simultaneously, this focus would positively address social justice and human rights concerns."</p><p>Protecting such a large amount of land will take a lot of money. But researchers say that the COVID-19 pandemic is showing just how quickly countries can allocate large amounts of resources if needed. And since <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02341-1" target="_blank">research shows</a> deforestation can increase the risk of outbreak of deadly diseases like Ebola and COVID-19, Dinerstein and his colleagues say there is added incentive for funding such efforts.</p><p>"The need for an ambitious global conservation agenda has taken on a new urgency in 2020 after the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus," they write in their study.</p><p>The researchers were surprised to find that only 2.3% of the planet's land area would needed to be further protected to safeguard the species most at risk of extinction. This, they say, could be accomplished within five years.</p><p>Overall, they say the investment spent on preserving these important areas of land would be offset by the trillions of dollars worth of benefits provided by a healthy environment.</p><p>"Literally billions of dollars are being spent trying to invent technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere with very little to show for it. Meanwhile we can protect the spectacular diversity of life on this planet while simultaneously providing all the ecosystem services humanity needs by protecting and conserving the 50% of lands identified in the GSN," Burkart said. "Based on a new economic analysis, we estimate that the global safety net would cost about $200 [billion per year] to manage. This is a tiny investment for a massive return, as nature provides $33 trillion in ecosystem services every year."</p><p>For their part, Dinerstein, Burkart and their colleagues are continuing to improve the GSN, and are planning on releasing an updated version next year that will include more data layers and higher resolution. They are also developing technology to help monitor elephant populations in the hopes of reducing human-elephant conflict and prevent poaching, as well as a system that detects logging trucks before they get a chance to start cutting down trees.</p><p>"Protecting forests begins with early detection and then enforcement," Dinerstein said. "We think our ForestGuard AI is an important piece of this."</p><p>But the main thing, the researchers say, is that governments must act – and soon.</p><p>"Human societies are late in the game to rectify impending climate breakdown, massive biodiversity loss, and, now, prevent pandemics," they write. "The Global Safety Net, if erected promptly, offers a way for humanity to catch up and rebound."</p>From Your Site Articles
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Maisa Guajajara, march of indigenous women, Brasilia, 2019. Marquinho Mota / FAOR
By Rosamaria Loures and Sarah Sax
On an early December morning last year in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, half a dozen members of the Indigenous Guajajara people packed their bags with food, maps and drone equipment to get ready for a patrol. They said goodbye to their children, uncertain when, or whether, they would see them again. Then, they hoisted their bags over their shoulders and set out to patrol a section of the 173,000 hectares (428,000 acres) of the primary rainforest they call home.
<p>This is the Caru Indigenous Territory, where the Amazon peters out toward the northeastern coast of Brazil, and it contains some of the last stretches of intact, contiguous forest in Maranhão. It is also under increasing threat: this part of Brazil has been ravaged by some of the country's highest rates of deforestation and land conflicts over the past decade. Patrols led by Indigenous groups like theirs, known often by the moniker of "Forest Guardians," have been instrumental in enforcing protections and preventing loggers from entering Indigenous territories. Patrols and their enforcement tactics, which have been ramping up over the past decade, have also resulted in community members being threatened, attacked, and killed — as in the case of Paulo Paulino <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/guardian-of-the-forest-ambushed-and-murdered-in-brazilian-amazon/" target="_blank">Guajajara</a> last year, who was murdered in a neighboring Indigenous territory.</p><p>But members of the patrol that set out through the forest last December don't call themselves guardians; they prefer warriors. And they differ in one other notable aspect: they are all women.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NDQwMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNDQ1MTIzMX0.AkVqG_3D6cdcY7NHyt2UXYTSb0Ofr1JSye0mjWlQw6w/img.jpg?width=980" id="0a47f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7c5fba3813d842215435c6180ee9d5e4" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Women warrior Rosilene Guajajara sits in her home village. Sarah Shenker / Survival
<p>"Why did we take the initiative? Because we are mothers. If we don't act, there would be no forest standing," said Paula Guajajara, one of the "women warriors of the forest," in a public event last year.</p><p>Called <em>guerreiras da floresta</em> in Portuguese, this is the name these women have given themselves. They are in many ways an embodiment of what policymakers, politicians and scholars around the world say is a necessary shift toward gender equality in environmental movements. And they are contributing not just womanpower to the patrols — they are also helping to diversify the tactics and forge new partnerships.</p><p>In Brazil in particular, where protecting intact forests is one of the cheapest, easiest and most effective solutions for<a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank"> combating climate change</a>, the work they are doing is literally saving the world.</p><span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="244a0eac1110c46f755b64bd798f35ac"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QqKrthJmcN0?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
Creating a Space and Finding Their Voice
<p>Actively patrolling their land for invaders is nothing new to the Guajajara; Indigenous people have more than 500 years of experience in this. Today, they use satellite technology and coordinate efforts with outside law enforcement to achieve their goals. This approach is relatively new, but its use has been on the rise in recent years.</p><p>"Across the country more of these groups are forming because of government inaction — or worse, because the government is actively trying to exploit their lands," Sarah Shenker, campaign coordinator for Survival International's <a href="https://www.survivalinternational.org/uncontactedtribes" target="_blank">Uncontacted Tribes team</a>, said in an interview. These groups are primarily men, although women are sometimes included in the patrols. But according to Shenker, as well as other experts interviewed for this article, to have "forest guardian" groups made up solely of women is unique.</p><p>The women warriors were formed six years ago, an offshoot of a program developed by Indigenous organizations and the Brazilian government and implemented by the Ministry of the Environment to enhance the territorial and cultural protection of Indigenous people, called Projeto Demonstrativo de Povos Indígenas (PDPI) in Portuguese. At the time, the predominantly male forest guardians were attempting to end illegal logging and the sale of wood from their territory — a task that was proving extremely difficult. Seeing this, the women stepped in and formed their own group consisting originally of 32 women.</p><p>"In order not to let the project end, we, the Guajajara women, entered and took over the project," Cícera Guajajara da Silva, one of the women warriors, said in an interview.</p><p>But the path to being taken seriously and treated as equals has been long.</p><p>"To seek partnership, we walked, talked, slept on the floor — all in order to seek improvement for our community," Paula Guajajara said, recalling the initial difficulty in being heard and taken seriously inside and outside of the communities. Their patience has paid off, and the women are quick to point out the support and close collaboration of the male forest guardians that has allowed them to combat the greater goal of stopping illegal logging. "Today we have the women warriors who work together with the forest guardians," Paula Guajajara said. "We've already evicted a lot of loggers. If we hadn't acted, there would be no forest standing."</p><p>Many of the married women had already been acting independently, accompanying their husbands in some activities, according to Gilderlan Rodrigues da Silva, the Maranhão coordinator of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic Church-affiliated organization, who has worked with the women warriors. "But, from the moment they created the women's group, they gained strength and visibility," he said in an interview. "Once they were formed, there was this very strong change. Both in the context of decreasing the invasions and waking up to the collective awareness to protect the territory."</p>The Direct and Indirect Impacts of Greater Inclusion
<p>The results are clearly visible. In 2018, there was only 63 hectares (156 acres) of deforestation in the reserve, compared to 2016, when deforestation reached a high of 2,000 hectares (4,940 acres), according to <a href="https://www.globalforestwatch.org/map/country/BRA/10?analysis=eyJzaG93RHJhdyI6ZmFsc2V9&mainMap=eyJzaG93QW5hbHlzaXMiOnRydWUsImhpZGVMZWdlbmQiOmZhbHNlfQ%3D%3D&map=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%3D&mapPrompts=eyJzdGVwc0tleSI6InJlY2VudEltYWdlcnkiLCJzdGVwc0luZGV4IjowLCJvcGVuIjpmYWxzZSwic3RlcEluZGV4IjowLCJmb3JjZSI6dHJ1ZX0%3D&menu=eyJkYXRhc2V0Q2F0ZWdvcnkiOiJsYW5kVXNlIiwibWVudVNlY3Rpb24iOiIiLCJzZWxlY3RlZENvdW50cmllcyI6WyJCUkEiXX0%3D&treeLoss=eyJpbnRlcmFjdGlvbiI6e319" target="_blank">Global Forest Watch.</a> "The biggest achievement I see today in my village is because of the territorial protection, there are no loggers within our territory, and we managed to combat the sale of wood," Cícera Guajajara da Silva said.</p><p>The women's association has also been instrumental in connecting with other Indigenous groups similarly seeking to protect their territories, such as the Ka'apor, Awa-Guaja, and other Guajajara communities.</p><p>"There are 16 Indigenous territories in Maranhão — we have to seek unity to move forward in our struggle," said Maísa Guajajara, one of the original women warriors. Through coordination with other women's groups, like the Articulation of Indigenous Women of Maranhão (AMIMA), they were able to <a href="http://www.funai.gov.br/index.php/comunicacao/noticias/4678-amima-realiza-i-encontro-de-articulacao-de-mulheres-indigenas-do-maranhao?highlight=WyJwcm90ZVx1MDBlN1x1MDBlM28iLCJ0ZXJyaXRvcmlhbCIsInByb3RlXHUwMGU3XHUwMGUzbyB0ZXJyaXRvcmlhbCJd" target="_blank">bring 200 </a>Indigenous women from around the state together for the first time in 2017 to talk about various issues, including territorial protection, reforestation, and environmental education.</p><p>"This whole movement is extremely important because it shows this strength, and that women have a lot to contribute to the movement because they are part of the territory and are concerned with it, and with future generations," Rodrigues da Silva told Mongabay.</p><p>They don't just coordinate with other Indigenous groups; they also conduct training with neighboring communities about the importance of environmental conservation. "Not all women do surveillance work because we know it is dangerous work, but there are always some who do," Maísa Guajajara said. "The warriors generally do more surveillance activities outside the territory, we give lectures around our territory to talk about the invasions within our territory, and we raise awareness in the villages by talking about the importance of keeping nature standing." For example, the women warriors are partners in the Mãe D'água (Mother of Water) project that, together with the Brazilian NGO Fórum da Amazônia Oriental (FAOR), provides support for Indigenous women to strengthen their collective actions against ongoing deforestation and water pollution. These actions include visits to nearby riverine communities in which the women warriors explain their ways of living, such as hunting and rituals, to their neighbors. For the women warriors, the more that their neighbors know about Guajajara culture, the more they will respect their actions to defend their territory.</p>Why Women Are Key to Forest Conservation
<p>In Brazil, and around the world, <a href="https://catarinas.info/43-mulheres-indigenas-do-brasil-e-da-america-latina-para-se-inspirar/" target="_blank">Indigenous women</a> are increasingly at the forefront of environmental movements.</p><p>"The struggle of Indigenous women happens in different ways, day by day. If I am here today, I am the fruit of the women who came in front of me," Taynara Caragiu Guajajara, a member of the Indigenous women's collective AMIMA, said during a live online event in April. "In the context of the world we live in today, we have been conquering space inside and outside the community. We Indigenous women have not always had that voice … but today the struggle is driven by Indigenous women, we are the ones who are in charge of the struggle."</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NDQyNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwODU3Mzg3Nn0.tOmJ5rRpzd5YHOVbW4gkCJgwoSCeIi9bz-X-VzNa77E/img.jpg?width=980" id="bf09d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="c9fd70128e206770b386d470cdc4f733" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Maisa Guajajara, march of indigenous women, Brasilia, 2019. Marquinho Mota / FAOR
<p>Women are increasingly leading the struggle on issues like climate change, but <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/02/gender-bias-persists-international-reporting-atlantic/582235/" target="_blank">their voices are heard much less often then men's </a>— to the detriment of everyone. This is partially a byproduct of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/02/gender-bias-persists-international-reporting-atlantic/582235/" target="_blank">gender bias</a> in <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90401548/theres-a-gender-crisis-in-media-and-its-threatening-our-democracy" target="_blank">journalism itself</a>.</p><p>In 2015, of every four people interviewed, mentioned or seen in the news worldwide, only one was a woman, according to a report by the <a href="http://whomakesthenews.org/gmmp" target="_blank">Global Media Monitoring Project</a>, which releases its findings every five years. A closer look at the data shows that even when women are interviewed, it is for personal quotes, rather than for their expertise. It's a figure that <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/02/gender-bias-persists-international-reporting-atlantic/582235/" target="_blank">seems to have barely budged</a> over the past few years, although some newsrooms are starting to actively change that.</p><p>Studies show that, in general, women receive <a href="https://niemanreports.org/articles/where-are-the-women/" target="_blank">greater exposure in newspaper</a> sections led by female editors, as well as in newspapers whose editorial boards have higher female representation. But men are <a href="https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2017/women-dominate-journalism-schools-but-newsrooms-are-still-a-different-story/" target="_blank">disproportionately represented</a> from editors through to reporters, meaning that critical issues for women often go unreported. One of these areas is precisely the connection between conservation solutions and gender equality.</p><p>Women are disproportionately affected by climate change and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/asia/environment-gender-violence-study-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">environmental degradation</a>. <a href="https://www.unenvironment.org/resources/report/global-gender-and-environment-outlook-ggeo" target="_blank">Mounting evidence </a>shows that gender gaps and inequalities, such as inequitable land tenure and women's reduced access to energy, water and sanitation facilities, negatively impact human and environmental well-being. The climate crisis will only make <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/03/womens-rights-in-review" target="_blank">gender disparities worse</a>.</p><p><a href="https://justassociates.org/sites/justassociates.org/files/jass_mch6._rethinking_protection_power_movements_4.pdf" target="_blank">Gender-based violence</a> against women environmental human rights defenders in particular is <a href="http://im-defensoras.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/283951300-Informe-2012-2014-de-Agresiones-contra-Defensoras-de-DDHH-en-Mesoamerica.pdf" target="_blank">on the</a> <a href="https://defenddefenders.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/FINAL-REPORT_pdf-3-1.pdf" target="_blank">rise</a>, and increasingly <a href="https://justassociates.org/sites/justassociates.org/files/jass_mch6._rethinking_protection_power_movements_4.pdf" target="_blank">normalized</a> in both public and private spheres, making it more difficult for women to get justice. As Indigenous communities are often on the front lines of defending their territories, resources and rights from extractive projects and corporate interests, Indigenous women in particular face a two-headed beast of gender-based violence and racism.</p><p>"We fought to defend our territory against invasions and we sought this autonomy to fight for rights," Taynara Caragiu Guajajara said in an interview. "Being a woman is difficult within the macho society, but being an Indigenous or black woman becomes even more difficult, because the prejudice is so great."</p><p>Having more women involved in everything from environmental decision-making to climate politics benefits society at large. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0438-4" target="_blank">Higher female </a>participation in policymaking increases the equality and effectiveness of climate policy interventions;<a href="https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/271/hdr_2011_en_complete.pdf" target="_blank"> evidence</a> shows that high gender inequality is correlated with higher rates of deforestation, air pollution and other measures of environmental degradation.</p><p>Yet <a href="https://www.greengrants.org/what-we-do/womens-environmental-action/" target="_blank">less than 1% </a>of international philanthropy goes to women's environmental initiatives, and women are continuously<a href="https://genderandenvironment.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CI-REPORT.pdf" target="_blank"> left out </a>of decisions about land and <a href="https://www.wri.org/publication/making-womens-voices-count" target="_blank">environmental resources</a>.</p><p>"The global community cannot afford to treat nature conservation and the fight for women's equality as separate issues — they must be addressed together," <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/secretariat/202003/iucn-acting-director-generals-statement-international-womens-day-2020" target="_blank">said</a> Grethel Aguilar, the acting director-general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), on international women's day this year.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU5NDM3NS9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NjM5NDE0Mn0.n5vyjCQm5G8uiinRRX4wi_9jSlqmueI3r2KcvjUDYAk/img.png?width=980" id="50e14" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="15ca14a4768bfb8892e12430cdbe467a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Map of Maranhão state in northeastern Brazil.
Why the Fight for Indigenous Territorial Rights in Brazil Matters to Conservation
<p>Tracking tree cover loss in Maranhão over the past two decades shows the crucial importance of Indigenous territories in protecting intact forest. Viewed from space, as the forest cover rapidly disappears, the outlines of Indigenous territories become more and more distinct.</p><p>"These Indigenous territories are islands of green in a sea of deforestation in one of the worst deforested places in Brazil," Shenker said.</p><p>The Caru Indigenous Territory, for example, has seen 4% forest loss in comparison to the state of Maranhão, which has lost almost a quarter of its tree cover since 2000, according to Global Forest Watch data. Alongside the various other benefits that come with forest preservation, the forests in the Caru Indigenous Territory are also home to some of the last uncontacted Awá people; video of of two Awá men taken in the neighboring Araribóia Indigenous Territory <a href="https://www.survivalinternational.org/news/12171" target="_blank">made international headlines last year</a>.</p><p>These patches of intact, tropical forests are also the crux of "natural climate solutions" protection. These solutions essentially entail stopping deforestation, improving management of forests, and restoring ecosystems, and could provide more than one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed between now and 2030 to stabilize warming to below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit).</p><p>According to one of the seminal <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank">papers on natural climate solutions,</a> the single most effective approach in the tropics has proven to be actively protecting intact forests. Protecting intact forests offers twice as much of the cost-effective climate mitigation potential as the second best pathway, reforestation. The Amazon as a whole plays a vital role in mitigating climate change by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide in its forests. When cut down, burned, or degraded through logging, the forest not only ceases to fulfill this function, but can become a source of carbon emissions.</p><p>"Protecting and or conserving intact ecosystems is the number-one priority," said <a href="https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/individuals/dr-kate-dooley" target="_blank">Kate Dooley,</a> a research fellow at the Australian-German Climate & Energy College at the University of Melbourne, who has <a href="https://www.iatp.org/documents/missing-pathways-15degc" target="_blank">authored several papers</a> on the potential of forests as a natural climate solution. "Way-way-way down the line is planting trees. And even then, it needs to be the right kind of trees."</p><p>Of all the countries in the world with some kind of tropical rainforest, Brazil holds more mitigation potential than 71 of the 79 countries combined, <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank">according to a recent paper on this topic</a>. It isn't too hyperbolic, then, to say that groups like the women warriors are protecting humanity's last best hope for a livable future.</p><p>"Plenty of research showing that forests are more intact in collectively held lands," Dooley said. "With or without secure land tenure those lands are more intact and less degraded." According <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2019.0126" target="_blank">to a report in 2018 by the Rights and Resources Initiative</a>, almost 300 <em>billion metric tons of carbon</em> are stored in collectively managed lands across all forest biomes, and <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2016/10/protecting-indigenous-land-rights-makes-good-economic-sense" target="_blank">numerous</a> <a href="https://rightsandresources.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Toward-a-Global-Baseline-of-Carbon-Storage-in-Collective-Lands-November-2016-RRI-WHRC-WRI-report.pd" target="_blank">studies</a> have found that the best way to protect forests is to empower the people who live in them, granting them land rights and legal standing.</p><p>This is <a href="https://blog.globalforestwatch.org/people/geospatial-data-indigenous-community-land-forest-management?utm_campaign=BLOG:+LandMark+Data&utm_medium=bitly&utm_source=MonthlyRecap" target="_blank">especially true for Indigenous-held lands in places like Brazil</a>. Between 2000 and 2015, legally designated Indigenous territories in Brazil <a href="http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/indigenous-territories-barrier-to-deforestation.pdf" target="_blank">saw a tenth </a>the amount of forest loss than non-Indigenous territories. Brazil is home to approximately 900,000 Indigenous citizens from 305 peoples, most of who live in Indigenous territories. Even so, more than half of the locations claimed by Indigenous groups have not yet received formal government recognition.</p><p>"Surveillance and inspection by Indigenous peoples is extremely important, as they are the ones who know the territory and the region best," Rodrigues da Silva said. "On the other hand, unfortunately they are left alone, the Indigenous body responsible for inspection ends up not fulfilling the role and leaving only the Indigenous people."</p>Prevailing Amid Growing Threats
<p>Despite an increasingly hostile government, the women warriors say they are committed to continuing their monitoring, surveillance and educational activities, and are hoping to inspire other groups to do the same.</p><p>"Today women act 100% in defense of the territory," Paula Guajajara said. "Today we are serving as an example."</p><p>But the work is daunting.</p><p>Brazil has the rights of Indigenous people written into its constitution of 1988, and is a signatory to the International Labour Organization's (ILO) <u>Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention.</u> Yet, the current administration of President Jair Bolsonaro has made it clear that Indigenous peoples won't be allowed to<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/01/bolsonaro-government-reveals-plan-to-develop-the-unproductive-amazon/" target="_blank"> comment</a> on infrastructure projects<a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2019/03/brazil-to-build-long-resisted-amazon-transmission-line-on-indigenous-land/" target="_blank"> affecting</a> Indigenous territories in the Amazon. Bolsonaro's administration has also <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/02/bolsonaro-sends-congress-bill-to-open-indigenous-lands-to-mining-fossil-fuels/" target="_blank">proposed opening up</a> Indigenous territories to extractive activities — something the constitution specifically prohibits.</p><p>Hundreds of people have been killed during the past decade in the context of conflicts over the use of land and resources in the Amazon — many by people involved in illegal logging — according to the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a Catholic Church-affiliated nonprofit that follows land conflicts.</p><p>But perpetrators of violence in the Brazilian Amazon are rarely brought to justice.</p><p>Of the more than <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/11/15/brazils-amazon-and-its-defenders-are-under-attack-illegal-loggers" target="_blank">300 killings that the CPT</a> has registered since 2009, only 14 ultimately went to trial. Maranhão, where the Guajajara live, is among the most dangerous states for Indigenous people in Brazil: more <a href="https://www.cptnacional.org.br/" target="_blank">attacks on Indigenous groups</a> were reported here than anywhere else in 2016, according to data from the CPT.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2020/05/11/coronavirus-Latin-America-Amazon-indigenous-communities" target="_blank">coronavirus poses an additional threat</a> to Indigenous peoples throughout the Amazon and especially in Brazil, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/23/world/coronavirus-indigenous-death-apib-intl/index.html" target="_blank">where the death rate from COVID-19</a> is much higher than the national rate.</p><p>"The surveillance expeditions are stopped by the pandemic, we are not doing surveillance, to care for everyone in the village," Cícera Guajajara da Silva said. "Especially in order to protect our health, because nobody knows who the types of people [invaders] are inside the forest, they may even be infected with the virus, the invader himself can bring the virus to our territory, and that's why we stopped [the expeditions], we are now only sheltering in the village."</p><p>But despite the mounting difficulties, the women warriors are committed to continuing their work.</p><p>"We have the courage to defend our territory," Maisa Guajajara said. "I am a woman and I will fight against all the threats that are in our territory."</p>From Your Site Articles
- Brazil's Bolsonaro Unveils Bill to Open Indigenous Lands to Mining ... ›
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While these forests may still appear untouched when viewed from above, the green landscape seen from a plane or satellite can be deceptive. Melanie Jüngling / EyeEm / Getty Images
By Martin Kuebler
2020 is shaping up to be another destructive year for the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Deforestation — a grim precursor to the fires used to clear the land for development — has increased significantly, according to observers. And many experts fear the region could see a repeat of the destructive wildfires of last August and September.
<p>Satellite data released by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) on August 1 showed <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-amazon-rainforest-fires-surge-in-july/a-54405259" target="_blank">more than 6,800 fires across the Amazon region in July</a>, an increase of 28% compared with last year. And it's still early — August is generally considered to be the start of the fire season, which typically hits during drier months. More than 10,000 fires were recorded in the first 10 days of this month, up 17% from the same period last year, according to INPE.</p><p>Last year's deforestation toll on the world's biggest rainforest — 60% of which is in Brazil — was an estimated 10,000 square kilometers (3,800 square miles), roughly the size of Lebanon. That's the highest level since 2008, according to INPE. With increased deforestation comes a greater risk of wildfires, since many of the those that ravaged the rainforest last year spread from land being cleared for illegal mining, agriculture and cattle ranching.</p>
Degradation Below the Canopy
<p>President Jair Bolsonaro — who has repeatedly called for more of the Amazon region to be cleared for economic development — disputed the recent fire data in a speech to other South American leaders on August 11.</p><p>"Tropical rainforest doesn't catch fire. So this story that the Amazon is burning is a lie, and we have to fight it with real numbers," he told the meeting of the Leticia Pact, a group launched last year to protect the rainforest.</p><p>Bolsonaro challenged the leaders to fly over the rainforest from Boa Vista to Manaus, a distance of some 750 kilometers (460 miles), and see for themselves. "They won't find any spot of fire, nor a quarter of a hectare deforested," he said.</p><p>While these forests may still appear untouched when viewed from above, the green landscape seen from a plane or satellite can be deceptive. A typical wildfire burning through the understory — the vegetation growing beneath the forest's main canopy — of a virgin rainforest can wipe out small shrubs, plants and between 40 to 50% of all trees. </p><p>"A considerable part of the Amazon forest has been consecutively degraded, and it's invisible to our eyes," said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), a Brazilian non-governmental organization. "In fact, the quality of these forests has been degraded due to these forest fires."</p><p>When much of the undergrowth and smaller trees are eliminated, it makes it difficult to maintain the moist understory microclimate that helps protect rainforests from fires. These microclimates are already suffering, with the average temperature in the Amazon basin having risen by at least 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1980, according to climate data from USAID. The dry season has become longer and severe droughts are now more frequent, with three reported since 2005.</p><p>The damage doesn't end with the initial blaze, either. Larger trees, which may be harmed in a fire but survive thanks to the moist environment, could finally succumb to the trauma years later. "Initially, it's the small trees which die because they are most vulnerable to the heat stress, but over time it's actually the larger trees which die and fall over, taking with them many other trees," said Jos Barlow, a British conservation science professor who has worked in Brazil since 1998.</p><p>"This opens up additional gaps in the canopy, allowing sunlight to reach the understory and further dry it out."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU2MzkwNy9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1ODcyNzc3OH0.A-Aa8nQnv4eguq7jkKfZ9pCI6_Q_MLluFOojU8o3ohA/img.png?width=980" id="2d2e1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a578debcf9bfe42f4201f076ca68bf17" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" /><p>The recovery of mycorrhizal networks — underground systems of soil fungi that help trees to exchange nutrients and water — after a wildfire is still unclear and a subject of research, though it's known that the uppermost layer of very fine roots also suffers in the initial blaze. Some studies, <a href="https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.4996/fireecology.130237746" target="_blank">including a 2017 article in <em>Fire Ecology</em></a>, have suggested that the "resiliency of soil fungi likely contributes to the overall rapid ecosystem recovery following fire." For forest ecosystems, however, rapid can still mean several decades, <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaau3114.full" target="_blank">according to a 2019 report in the journal Science Advances</a> — at the earliest. </p>
Wildfires Increasing in Recent Years
<p>Another danger, said Barlow, is that more and more fires are reigniting areas already damaged by fire, particularly along the edges of the rainforest near new roads, clear-cut fields and pastures, both legal and illegal. This could permanently change the landscape.</p><p>"If you have recurrent fires of two or three burns, then you move into an alternative ecosystem where you have almost no large [trees] at all, dominated by scrubby species and bamboo and grasses," said Barlow.</p><p>Paulo Massoca, a Brazilian researcher and doctoral candidate at Indiana University Bloomington studying rainforest regrowth, said recurrent fires act as a sort of "filter," gradually eliminating plants that are not adapted to frequent fires and selecting the most resistant species, leaving "a fraction of the whole pool of plants in the region."</p><p>"After repeated burnings, soils get impoverished, plants grow slower, and vines/lianas and other non-woody plants, in addition to trees, settle in the area," he told DW, adding that this wide-ranging change in the ecosystem "slows and hinders the capacity of secondary forests damaged by repeated fire events to grow back and accumulate carbon."</p><p>It doesn't help that the Amazon soil, already poor, loses even more valuable nutrients after a fire. In a rainforest, the nutrients provided by dead organic matter are quickly reabsorbed by living plant life, leaving little on the ground. </p><p>"Burnings both kill the plants that sustain the topsoil and eliminate the topsoil that supports the plants," said Massoca. "Fires immediately release the nutrients and carbon stored in the topsoil, which are either washed out after the first rain or released to the atmosphere." </p><p>Those suspended soot particles in the vast clouds of smoke then billow up over healthy forests, potentially affecting cloud formation and rainfall patterns, according to Divino Vicente Silverio, a biologist at the Amazon Rural Federal University in Belem, northern Brazil. </p><p><span></span>In an <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02537-0" target="_blank">August 2019 interview with <em>Nature</em> magazine</a>, he said this atmospheric aerosol burden could lead to changes in how forests cycle water, creating drier conditions and disrupting weather patterns in the Amazon and even farther afield. </p>'There Are No Natural Fires in the Amazon'
<p>Nearly all the fires in the Amazon can be linked to human activity. Trees cleared to make way for economic development are cut down and left to dry and then set alight — a technique known as slash and burn. Additional fires are set to eliminate weeds from existing pastures and clear out old agricultural areas. And, as happened in 2019, those fires can spread to surrounding forests.</p><p>"There are no natural fires in the Amazon," said Alencar of IPAM. "Even if it's very, very dry, we need to have somebody using the match."</p><p>Faced with criticism over the government response to the 2019 fires, President Bolsonaro has banned agricultural burning in the Amazon forest and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-next-fire-disaster-in-the-pantanal-wetlands/a-51199164" target="_blank">Pantanal wetlands</a> until November, the end of the dry season, and deployed troops to prevent illegal deforestation.</p><p>In his speech at the meeting of the Leticia Pact last week he said the government efforts had been effective, pointing out that forest clearances had dropped in July by more than 25% when compared with July 2019, the first decline in 15 months.</p><p>"We are making big, enormous efforts to fight fires and deforestation, but even so, we are criticized," he said. </p><p>Experts, however, have accused Bolsonaro of cherry-picking the data. INPE says deforestation increased by 25% year-on-year in the first half of the year, and that at least 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 square miles) had been cut down by June. Alencar said if the current rate continues, 2020 would be Brazil's worst year for deforestation in more than a decade.</p><p>In states with historically high deforestation rates — Mato Grosso, Para and Rondonia — the number of fires detected so far in 2020 is already higher than in the same period in 2019. Alencar said the increase so early in the season shows that the government response has been ineffective — and she believes it's already too late. </p><p>"For this fire season, it seems that we lost the battle against deforestation," she told DW. "We had two days, July 30 and August 1 … with more than 1,000 hot pixels, which are a measurement of fire activity in the region. And those were very high for that period." </p><p>Added to that are NASA observations that show a potentially active Atlantic hurricane season, like 2005 and 2010, which contributed to major drought in the southwestern Amazon as storms sucked moisture from the forest.</p><p><span></span>"They are predicting that it's likely to have the same pattern happening this year, which is going to be catastrophic if it's true," said Alencar. </p>From Your Site Articles
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A team of scientists are using the sound of the Borneo rainforest as an indicator of its health and the state of its biodiversity. berkeley_geography / Wikimedia Commons
By Sean Fleming
The Borneo rainforest is a treasure trove of biodiversity. It is home to 221 species of land-living mammals and 420 species of birds, not to mention 15,000 species of flowering plants and 3,000 species of trees.
<p>A team of scientists from Imperial College London, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership has been recording the health of the Borneo rainforest. Known as the SAFE Project, they are using the sound of the forest as an indicator of its health and the state of its biodiversity.</p><h3>Listen Carefully</h3><p>Professor Rob Ewers, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial and Principal Investigator for the SAFE Project, said: "The <a href="https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/190939/livestream-sounds-rainforest-hear-what-changes/" target="_blank">health of a forest ecosystem can often be attributed to how much noise it creates</a>, signaling how many species are around. As well as listening to whole soundscapes, we hope that in the future the system will be able to pick up individual species and record their presence – or absence – from certain areas."</p><p>Like rainforests all over the world, it is under pressure. Between 1985 and 2001, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, Kalimantan, <a href="https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/our_focus/forests_practice/deforestation_fronts2/deforestation_in_borneo_and_sumatra/" target="_blank">lost around 56% of protected lowland tropical rainforests</a> to illegal logging. An area of 29,000km² (almost the size of Belgium) was felled as loggers took advantage of global demand for timber, in the absence of a sufficient economic alternative.</p><p>While laws to protect forests are in effect across the island, they are often violated, according to conservation organization the WWF.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU2MTM5MC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwNjMzNDk5MX0.5juOaSMh0xVqp7m79UK3YHm74R1lx7DKfJwfXoThSWU/img.png?width=980" id="2d63b" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b4a8954e1bfd3ed471d421bbe34266b2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Estimated deforestation by type of forest and time period, pre-1700-2000. FAO/Our World in Data
<p>Due to the challenges of the rainforest's climate, the SAFE researchers couldn't use off-the-shelf products for their project. Heat and humidity can be tough on sensitive electronic equipment.</p><p>So they built their own recorders using the Raspberry Pi hardware platform. The solar-powered devices automatically send data over the mobile phone network, eliminating the need for anyone to collect it in memory cards.</p><p>The team made instructions for building the equipment available to all online, so that other researchers can build their own versions.</p>
The Sound of Progress
<p>Sarab Sethi, a PhD student from Imperial College, was involved in the design of the audio recorders. "If we can get a fingerprint of each audio stream, we can compare how the soundscapes are different between different sites and begin to quantify the changes as land-use changes, for example when forests are logged," he said.</p><p>The SAFE team has also created a website that <a href="http://acoustics.safeproject.net/12:00/10/51442" target="_blank">streams some of the rainforest recordings</a>.</p><p>A similar project from the Rainforest Connection is also using audio to tackle illegal logging. With schemes in South America, Africa and Asia, the organization <a href="https://rfcx.org/home" target="_blank">uses a system based on old mobile phones to record ambient noise in rainforests</a>. It uses a cloud-based AI engine to spot the sound of chainsaws in those recordings. If any are detected, it sends a real-time alert to the relevant authorities.</p><p>About <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank">17% of the Amazon rainforest has been lost in the past 50 years</a>, according to the WWF. It describes the loss of forested areas near population centers as "rampant" and says that cattle ranching is the main cause of the deforestation.</p>From Your Site Articles
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A scenic view of West Papua. Reza Fakhrudin / Pexels
By Arkilaus Kladit
My name is Arkilaus Kladit. I'm from the Knasaimos-Tehit tribe in South Sorong Regency, West Papua Province, Indonesia. For decades my tribe has been fighting to protect our forests from outsiders who want to log it or clear it for palm oil. For my people, the forest is our mother and our best friend. Everything we need to survive comes from the forest: food, medicines, building materials, and there are many sacred sites in the forest.
<p>We have been taught for generations about how to maintain a good relationship with the forest. If it is cut down, it will be the same as cutting down our lives. This has been critical for us during this Covid pandemic because, with the shortage of rice, we have been relying on our traditional staple food, sago, that comes from the forest. And we have gone further by harvesting it to provide food for the surrounding area.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU0ODg4OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxMjc0MjUzMX0.ryirsbiRERuALoNk4rGlvrhXBacs0wi90ZXnMa8jKuo/img.jpg?width=980" id="6aa7c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="065f0a6f305cacc8928f8ee694cefa25" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Map of the Knasaimos traditional lands.
<p>The first threat to our forest was in 1988-89 when I was young. The government wanted to make a transmigration scheme settlement in our area but our elders rejected it because we were worried a lot of new people would harm the forest. Then in the early 2000s companies came wanting to log the valuable trees in our forest. After some years of struggle, we saw them off in 2005 but only after they did some damage to our forest.</p><p>The most recent threat is from oil palm. We heard news reports in 2012 there was an oil palm company going into a neighboring village. The news was quite alarming. Our tribe was sad. We had heard about thousands of hectares being cleared for oil palm plantations in Merauke and Sorong Districts. We thought that if oil palm is planted in a neighboring village, it is certain that the forests around our villages, Sira and Manggroholo, could also be under threat. But we stood firm on protecting our forest for our children and grandchildren. Our people consistently oppose oil palm, because we realize that our economic, customary and cultural lives depend heavily on the forest.</p><p>After our earlier fight with the illegal loggers, we decided in 2006 that we wanted to gain recognition for our customary forests. What has interested me most was getting the rights of the people to manage their forest. We worked with our Non-Government Organization friends, including Bentara and Greenpeace, to do participatory mapping of our own village lands and mark the boundary of all 81,446 hectares of our tribal lands. It is our custom to pass down from generation to generation where the boundaries of our forests are. Everything is collective, or is inherited collectively through the clans; it comes from our ancestors.</p>
<p>In 2008 we made a declaration to reject logging and palm oil. We invited the Regent and local Parliament to tell them that our area is small, if these forests are cut down, where do we go then? Where will we find wood to build our house? Where will we go to make our gardens? Where do we go to get medicines? If forests in these two villages are cut down, where will we move to?</p><p>So then we began the process of getting the recognition for our customary forests so that it will not be continually disturbed by logging licenses or permits for oil palm plantations. In 2014, after a long struggle, we had success with Village Forest permits for 3,545 hectares of customary forests of the two villages Mangroholo and Sira. We celebrated securing permits from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry as part of the government's social forestry program. We now have the legal rights to face the threat of illegal deforestation, oil palm planting that damages the environment.</p><p><span></span>A good example of how different it is now with the Village Forest permit. One day when we were patrolling in our forest we found merbau or ironwood trees (<em>Intsia bijuga</em>) had been illegally cut. Merbau is one of the main trees targeted by the illegal loggers. We caught the people doing this and issued them with a customary fine of Rp40 million ($2,700).</p><p>As well, since we obtained the status of Village Forest and we manage the forest ourselves, we are more organized in using Non Timber Forest Products (NTFP) such as damar (tree resin), agarwood, and sago, from a big palm that grows in our swamp forests. But our people have always made use of forests sustainably by taking forest products as needed. Especially with sago we have done a lot of work to turn it into a small enterprise that makes a good income for the village so we can pay things like school fees. We have had training, received new processing machines to speed up production, and help with local marketing to sell what we make. We have been providing food for the local region during Covid as the local government was buying our sago and giving it to the people. We are proud to make some money from our protected forest using our customary management without harming it. The forest is still here tall and strong.</p>
<p>But we still have a long way to go. We are now fighting for the recognition of the whole Knasaimos tribal area of 81,446 hectares as Customary Forest. We were very happy in 2018 when the Governor of West Papua Dominggus Mandacan made his <a href="https://www.idhsustainabletrade.com/uploaded/2018/12/MANOKWARI-DECLARATION-2018.pdf" target="_blank">commitment</a> to make 70% of West Papua Province protected areas. For us it means the Governor is fighting alongside us.</p><p>For the future we hope that the regent of our District, Mr. Samsudin, will soon issue a regional regulation that recognizes Knasaimos rights and forest, and that the Ministry of Environment and Forestry will support our application for a Customary Forest permit through the government Social Forestry Scheme so we can be on the frontline in supporting the government to protect Papua's forests.</p><p>I hope that every village in the Knasaimos customary area can experience the customary forest program to protect the future of our mother, the forest, and the rights to life of communities in Papua. Getting rights to forests in one's own area is the key to protecting the forest and community-based forest management. That is our aspiration, and this will make me very happy.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/08/i-am-fighting-for-my-tribes-forest-it-gives-us-food-culture-and-life-commentary/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Scientists say it will take a massive amount of collective action to reverse deforestation and save society from collapse. Big Cheese Photo / Getty Images Plus
Deforestation coupled with the rampant destruction of natural resources will soon have devastating effects on the future of society as we know it, according to two theoretical physicists who study complex systems and have concluded that greed has put us on a path to irreversible collapse within the next two to four decades, as VICE reported.
<p>The research by the two physicists, one from Chile and the other from the UK, was published last week in<em> <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63657-6" target="_blank">Nature Scientific Reports</a></em>. The researchers used advance statistical modeling to look at how a growing human population can cope with the loss of resources, mainly due to deforestation. After crunching the numbers, the scientists came up with a fairly bleak assessment of society's chance of surviving the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" target="_self">climate crisis</a>.</p><p>"Based on the current resource consumption rates and best estimate of technological rate growth our study shows that we have very low probability, less than 10 percent in most optimistic estimate, to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse," the authors write in the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63657-6" target="_blank">study</a> abstract.</p>
<p>From all the issues that the climate crisis raises like rising sea levels, increases in extreme weather, drought, flooding, and crop failures, scientists zeroed in on deforestation since it is more measurable right now. They argue that forest density, or its current scarcity, is considered the cataclysmic canary in the coal mine, according to the report, as <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/07/29/humanity-likely-faces-rapid-catastrophic-collapse-study-warns/" target="_blank">The New York Post</a> reported.</p><p>"Many factors due to human activity are considered as possibly responsible for the observed changes: among these water and air contamination (mostly greenhouse effect) and deforestation are the most cited. While the extent of human contribution to the greenhouse effect and temperature changes is still a matter of discussion, the deforestation is an undeniable fact," the authors write.</p>
<p>The authors note that the current rate of deforestation would mean that all <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/forests">forests</a> would disappear within 100-200 years.</p><p>"Clearly it is unrealistic to imagine that the human society would start to be affected by the deforestation only when the last tree would be cut down," the authors write, as the <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8571787/Human-civilization-stands-90-chance-collapse-decades-physicists-claim.html" target="_blank">Daily Mail</a> reported.</p><p>The trajectory of such rapid resource use to supply a rapidly growing human population would result in the loss of planetary life-support systems necessary for human survival, including carbon storage, oxygen production, soil conservation and water cycle regulation, according to the Daily Mail.</p><p>In the absence of these critical services, "it is highly unlikely to imagine the survival of many species, including ours, on Earth without [forests]" the study points out. "The progressive degradation of the environment due to deforestation would heavily affect human society and consequently the human collapse would start much earlier," they write, as VICE reported.</p>
<p>The numbers the researchers look at highlight the extent of human greed. Prior to human civilizations, the earth was covered by 60 million square kilometers of forest. As deforestation has ramped up, the new paper points out that there are now less than 40 million square kilometers of forest remaining.</p><p>"Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization," the paper concludes, as VICE reported.</p>
<p>The model developed by the physicists depicts human population growth reaching a maximum level that is undermined by the shrinking of forests, which will not have enough resources left to sustain people. After this point, "a rapid disastrous collapse in population occurs before eventually reaching a low population steady state or total extinction … We call this point in time the 'no-return point' because if the deforestation rate is not changed before this time the human population will not be able to sustain itself and a disastrous collapse or even extinction will occur," the authors write, according to VICE.</p><p>Of course, as with every theoretical paper, there are limitations. The paper assumes that some measurements (such as population growth and deforestation rate) will remain constant, which is certainly not guaranteed. Forest is also taken as a proxy for all resources, which could be seen as too simplistic, as <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/chances-of-societal-collapse-in-next-few-decades-is-sky-high-modelling-suggests/" target="_blank">IFLScience</a> noted.</p><p>The authors point out that it will take a massive amount of collective action to reverse direction and save our society from collapse.</p>
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A floral offering for the Mexican environmental activist Samir Flores Soberanes on Feb. 22, 2019 in Mexico City, Mexico. The activist was found dead in his home before a controversial thermal-electric plant and pipeline referendum that he opposed. Carlos Tischler / Getty Images
While 2019 saw a massive uptick in environmental activism around the world, with climate strikes and the Extinction Rebellion campaign surging in popularity, the work of defending the environment on the front lines became more deadly than ever.
<p>In 2019, a record number of environmental activists were killed for trying to protect land and water resources from mining, agribusiness and fossil fuel interests, according to a <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-tomorrow/" target="_blank">report</a> released Wednesday by <a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defending-tomorrow/" target="_blank">Global Witness</a>, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/world/global-witness-2019-defenders-report-scli-intl/index.html" target="_blank">CNN</a> reported.</p><p>The number of activist deaths that Global Witness recorded was 212, a nearly 30 percent increase from 2018, when the organization recorded 164 deaths linked to environmental activism. The NGO also warned that the true number is likely higher since many deaths go unreported, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/29/record-212-land-and-environment-activists-killed-last-year" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.</p><p>Global Witness says the problem has continued during 2020, as the COVID-19 lockdowns have left environmental activists as "sitting ducks" inside their own homes, as The Guardian reported.</p>
<p>"Agribusiness and oil, gas and mining have been consistently the biggest drivers of attacks against land and environmental defenders – and they are also the industries pushing us further into runaway climate change through <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation">deforestation</a> and increasing carbon emissions," said Rachel Cox, a campaigner at Global Witness, as The Guardian reported.</p><p>"Many of the world's worst environmental and human rights abuses are driven by the exploitation of natural resources and corruption in the global political and economic system. Land and environmental defenders are the people who take a stand against this," she added.</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="440b15c05a0c6bd3d951457c2a2ac16a"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FM7X1tnT4Sc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<p>Colombia replaced the Philippines as the deadliest spot for environmental activists. The report found 64 land rights activists were killed in Colombia last year – up from 25 in 2018 – the highest level Global Witness has ever recorded in the country, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-colombia-violence-environment/colombia-was-deadliest-country-for-land-rights-activists-in-2019-idUSKCN24U16G#:~:text=BOGOTA%20(Reuters)%20%2D%20Colombia%20was,group%20Global%20Witness%20on%20Wednesday." target="_blank">Reuters</a>. The Philippines had 43 killings. Brazil was third on the list with 24 murders. Ninety percent of them took place in the Amazon region, according to CNN. More than two-thirds of the 2019 killings took place in Latin America.</p><p>A change in the power dynamics after the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels has been pinpointed as a potential driver of the rising violence, especially in rural areas, where criminal gangs are repositioning themselves in formerly guerrilla-held regions, according to The Guardian.</p><p>Colombia's Cauca province saw the highest number of killings last year, with 24 land defenders murdered. A report from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre this year found 44 percent of attacks from 2015 to 2019 linked to operations in Colombia were against defenders who raised concerns about five companies including Cerrejón, which is jointly owned by BHP, Anglo American and Glencore, as Reuters reported.</p>
<p>The Philippines was the deadliest country in Asia, and the second deadliest worldwide, according to the report. The policies of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte criminalize environmental activism as a terrorist act against the country, making it increasingly difficult for people to protect forests and waterways.</p><p>"[The Philippines] has been consistently named as one of the worst places in Asia for attacks against defenders," the report says, as <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2020/07/criminalizing-dissent-martial-law-fuel-attacks-on-philippine-environmental-defenders/" target="_blank">Mongabay</a> reported. "The relentless vilification of defenders by the government and widespread impunity for their attackers may well be driving the increase."</p><p>Europe remains the least affected region, with two killings in Romania related to illegal logging. Seven killings were recorded in Africa, but verifying cases is a problem in the region, said Global Witness, as CNN reported.</p><p>"If we really want to make plans for a green recovery that puts the safety, health and well-being of people at its heart, we must tackle the root causes of attacks on defenders, and follow their lead in protecting the environment and halting climate breakdown," said Cox in a press release, according to CNN.</p>
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Earth's temperature is already about 1.2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Neil Nissing / The Image Bank / Getty Images Plus
Just how hot the earth will get if carbon dioxide doubles from pre-industrial times is a question scientists have wondered about for the past 40 years.
<p>They have generally agreed that the planet will warm 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Now, a major new study has narrowed that range, revealing we are unlikely to keep global heating below 1.5-degrees Celsius without immediate and dramatic reductions in emissions. They have tightened their range to between 2.6 and 4.1 degrees Celsius, or 4.1 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, according to <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/after-40-years-researchers-finally-see-earths-climate-destiny-more-clearly" target="_blank">Science Magazine</a>.</p>
<p>The comprehensive international <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019RG000678" target="_blank">study</a> released Wednesday and published in <em>Reviews of Geophysics</em> relies on three strands of evidence: trends indicated by contemporary warming, the latest understanding of the feedback effects that can slow or accelerate <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change">climate change</a>, and lessons from ancient climates, as Science Magazine reported.</p><p>The researchers determined that there was less than a 5 percent chance of a temperature shift below two degrees, and a 6 to 18 percent chance of a higher temperature change than 4.5 degrees Celsius, or 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/climate/global-warming-temperature-range.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>. The scientists pointed out that the earth's temperature is already about 1.2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and that, if current emissions trends continue, the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide could happen well before the end of this century.</p>
<p>The paper was a collaboration of 25 scientists around the world. The lead author, Steven Sherwood, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia said that the group's research suggested that these temperature shifts are now unlikely below the low end of the range, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/climate/global-warming-temperature-range.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>. There is a bright spot, though. The research also suggests that the "alarmingly high sensitivities" of 5 degrees Celsius or higher are extremely unlikely, though they are "not impossible," Sherwood said.</p><p>If global heating reaches the midpoint of this new range, it would be extremely damaging, said Kate Marvel, a physicist at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies and Columbia University, who called it the equivalent of a "five-alarm fire" for the planet, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/07/22/climate-sensitivity-co2/" target="_blank">The Washington Post</a> reported.</p>
<p>"The main message is that unfortunately we can't expect that luck will save us from climate change," Reto Knutti, professor of climate physics at ETH Zurich's Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/22/global-heating-study-narrows-range-of-probable-temperature-rises" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> reported.</p><p>"The good thing is that we've somewhat narrowed the range of future long-term warming, the bad thing is that we can no longer hope or claim that the problem will just magically go away."</p><p>These scientists now say it is likely that human activities — such as burning oil, gas and coal along with <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation">deforestation</a> — will push carbon dioxide to dangerous levels that will usher in catastrophic consequences. They say there needs to be a concerted effort to drastically reduce emissions immediately, as The Washington Post reported. Staying below that level is still possible. If steep emissions cuts are made in the near-term, a doubling of carbon dioxide levels could be avoided.</p>
<p>The study of climate sensitivity is to be used by the United Nations's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when it publishes its next major report in 2021 or 2022. As Science Magazine reported, the estimate will also inform projections for <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise">sea-level rise</a>, economic damage and much else. A clearer picture of those consequences could do a lot to force local governments to cut emissions and adapt to warming, said Diana Reckien, a climate planning expert at the University of Twente. "The decreasing uncertainty could potentially motivate more jurisdictions to act," she said.</p><p>Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the study, called this "a tour de force of climate science." He said via email to The Washington Post that the study "really, really kills the skeptical argument that climate sensitivity is low."</p><p>"It would have been great if the skeptics had been correct and climate sensitivity was, say, 1.5°C, but that's not the world we live in."</p>
<p class=""><em>Correction: </em><em>A previous version of this article said that we are past any hope of keeping global heating below 1.5-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. It has been updated for accuracy to say we are unlikely to keep heating below that threshold.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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