Shark attacks increased around the world in 2021 after years of decline

Associated Press in Miami

‘Shark bites dropped drastically in 2020 due to the pandemic – this past year was much more typical,’ says researcher

A sign on 24 December 2021, in Morro Bay, California, site of the only fatal unprovoked shark attack in the US in 2021. Photograph: David Middlecamp/AP

Shark attacks increased around the world in 2021 following three years of decline, though beach closures in 2020 caused by the coronavirus pandemic could make the numbers seem more dramatic, officials in the US said on Monday.

Researchers with the International Shark Attack File recorded 73 unprovoked incidents last year compared to 52 in 2020, according to a new report administered by the Florida Museum of Natural History and the American Elasmobranch Society.

The International Shark Attack File manager, Tyler Bowling, pointed out that 52 bites in 2020 were the lowest documented in more than a decade. The 73 bites in 2021 more closely align with the five-year global average of 72.

“Shark bites dropped drastically in 2020 due to the pandemic.“ Bowling said. “This past year was much more typical, with average bite numbers from an assortment of species and fatalities from white sharks, bull sharks and tiger sharks.”

Researchers saw 11 shark-related fatalities last year, with nine considered unprovoked. Australia had three unprovoked deaths, followed by New Caledonia with two. The US, Brazil, New Zealand and South Africa each had a single unprovoked fatal shark attack.

Provoked attacks are defined as when humans initiate contact, such as divers trying to touch a shark or fishermen removing a shark from a fishing net, according to the International Shark Attack File.

Florida has led the US and the rest of the world in unprovoked shark bites for decades, and the trend continued in 2021, researchers said.

Florida had 28 unprovoked bites last year, compared to 19 in the rest of the US and 26 total outside the US. This is consistent with Florida’s most recent five-year annual average of 25 attacks. Of Florida’s 28 unprovoked bites, 17 were in Volusia county, which includes Daytona Beach.

The single fatal unprovoked shark attack in the US in 2021 was in California. A man was killed while boogie boarding in Morro Bay on Christmas Eve.

Bringing dry land in the Sahel back to life

UN NEWS
HUMANITARIAN AID

Millions of hectares of farmland are lost to the desert each year in Africa’s Sahel region, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is showing that traditional knowledge, combined with the latest technology, can turn arid ground back into fertile soil.

©FAO/ Giulio Napolitano I Workers preparing tractors to start ploughing in Burkina Faso.

Those trying to grow crops in the Sahel region are often faced with poor soil, erratic rainfail and long periods of drought. However, the introduction of a state-of-the art heavy digger, the Delfino plough, is proving to be, literally, a breakthrough. 

As part of its Action Against Desertification (AAD) programme, the FAO has brought the Delfino to four countries in the Sahel region – Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal – to cut through impacted, bone-dry soil to a depth of more than half a metre. 

The Delfino plough is extremely efficient: one hundred farmers digging irrigation ditches by hand can cover a hectare a day, but when the Delfino is hooked to a tractor, it can cover 15 to 20 hectares in a day. 

Once an area is ploughed, the seeds of woody and herbaceous native species are then sown directly, and inoculated seedlings planted. These species are very resilient and work well in degraded land, providing vegetation cover and improving the productivity of previously barren lands.  

In Burkina Faso and Niger, the target number of hectares for immediate restoration has already been met and extended thanks to the Delfino plough. In Nigeria and Senegal, it is working to scale up the restoration of degraded land.

Farming seen through a half-moon lens

This technology, whilst impressive, is proving to be successful because it is being used in tandem with traditional farming techniques.

“In the end the Delfino is just a plough. A very good and suitable plough, but a plough all the same,” says Moctar Sacande, Coordinator of FAO’s Action Against Desertification programme. “It is when we use it appropriately and in consultation and cooperation that we see such progress.”

The half-moon is a traditional Sahel planting method which creates contours to stop rainwater runoff, improving water infiltration and keeping the soil moist for longer. This creates favourable micro-climate conditions allowing seeds and seedlings to flourish.

©FAO/ Giulio Napolitano I Women dig mid-moon dams to save water in Niger.

The Delfino creates large half-moon catchments ready for planting seeds and seedlings, boosting rainwater harvesting tenfold and making soil more permeable for planting than the traditional - and backbreaking – method of digging by hand. 

“The whole community is involved and has benefitted from fodder crops such as hay as high as their knees within just two years”, says Mr. Sacande. “They can feed their livestock and sell the surplus, and move on to gathering products such as edible fruits, natural oils for soaps, wild honey and plants for traditional medicine”.

Women taking the lead

According to Nora Berrahmouni, who was FAO’s Senior Forestry Officer for the African Regional Office when the Delfino was deployed, the plough will also reduce the burden on women.

“The season for the very hard work of hand-digging the half-moon irrigation dams comes when the men of the community have had to move with the animals. So, the work falls on the women,” says Ms. Berrahmouni. 

Because the Delfino plough significantly speeds up the ploughing process and reduces the physical labour needed, it gives women extra time to manage their multitude of other tasks.

©FAO/ Giulio Napolitano I Tractors at work to prepare the land for plantation in Burkina Faso.

The project also aims to boost women’s participation in local land restoration on a bigger scale, offering them leadership roles through the village committees that plan the work of restoring land. Under the AAD programme, each site selected for restoration is encouraged to set up a village committee to manage the resources, so as to take ownership right from the beginning.

“Many women are running the local village committees which organise these activities and they are telling us they feel more empowered and respected,” offers Mr. Sacande. 

Respecting local knowledge and traditional skills is another key to success. Communities have long understood that half-moon dams are the best way of harvesting rainwater for the long dry season. The mighty Delfino is just making the job more efficient and less physically demanding.

Millions of hectares lost to the desert, forests under threat

And it is urgent that progress is made. Land loss is a driver of many other problems such as hunger, poverty, unemployment, forced migration, conflict and an increased risk of extreme weather events related to climate change. 

In Burkina Faso, for example, a third of the landscape is degraded. This means that over nine million hectares of land, once used for agriculture, is no longer viable for farming.

It is projected that degradation will continue to expand at 360 000 hectares per year. If the situation is not reversed, forests are at risk of being cleared to make way for productive agricultural land. 

Africa is currently losing four million hectares of forest every year for this reason, yet has more than 700 million hectares of degraded land viable for restoration. By bringing degraded land back to life, farmers do not have to clear additional forest land to turn into cropland for Africa’s rising population and growing food demands.

When Mr. Sacande talks about restoring land in Africa, the passion in his voice is evident. “Restoring degraded land back to productive good health is a huge opportunity for Africa. It brings big social and economic benefits to rural farming communities,” he says. “It’s a bulwark against climate change and it brings technology to enhance traditional knowledge.”

A version of this story first appeared on the FAO website.

Dumped fishing gear is killing marine life. Yet no governments seem to care

George Monbiot

One Scottish trawlerman is so incensed by the dumping of nets he’s come to me – a longstanding critic of his industry – with evidence

‘The nets these boats use are enormous: every large vessel deploys between 50 and 70 miles of them. But gillnets tend to wear out quickly.’ Photograph: Seaphotoart/Alamy

How could they be so careless? How do fishing vessels lose so many of their nets and longlines that this “ghost gear”, drifting through the oceans, now presents a mortal threat to whales, dolphins, turtles and much of the rest of the life of the sea? After all, fishing gear is expensive. It is either firmly attached to the vessel or, using modern technologies, easily located.

I’ve asked myself these questions for a while, and I think I now have an answer. It comes from an unlikely source: a trawlerman working in Scotland. I’m not a fan of trawling, but I recognise that some operations are more damaging than others. He and his colleagues now appear to be pulling in more nets than fish. On trip after trip they catch vast hauls of ghost gillnets and longlines, often wrapped around marine animals. He has sent me his photos, which are so disturbing I can scarcely bear to look: drowned seabirds, decapitated seals and fish and crustaceans of many species, which died a long, slow death. Where are these nets and lines coming from? He believes they’re being deliberately discarded.

I have checked his identity, but he wants to remain anonymous. Like other local trawlers, his boat brings its waste to land. The problem, he says, lies with large vessels, many from France and Spain, that spend four to six weeks at a time at sea. They don’t have enough storage space for the rubbish they generate: most of the hold is dedicated to frozen fish. Worn-out gillnets and longlines should be returned to port for disposal. But those he retrieves have a revealing characteristic: the expensive parts, those that can be reused – floats, weights and hooks – have been cut off. This, he believes, is a giveaway: if you find a net or line like that, it has been deliberately thrown overboard.

He and his colleagues, he says, often watch French and Spanish boats landing plenty of fish in Scottish ports when “no rubbish is taken ashore by these vessels”. He estimates that a typical crew of 20 on a month-long fishing voyage would generate roughly 20 cubic metres of waste, aside from the fishing gear. Where is it? There might be a clue in some of the other rubbish his boat trawls up: bin bags full of French and Spanish food wrappers. As for the gear, he tells me that he sees boats come into port and “miles and miles of new gillnetting is put onboard – but none is taken ashore for discard”.

The nets these boats use are enormous: every large vessel deploys between 50 and 70 miles of them. But gillnets tend to wear out quickly. The fisherman tells me, “the vessel I work on takes ashore approximately one cubic metre of discarded gillnets every four to five days on average.” That’s a lot of net.

Gillnets have been banned from many waters because of their very high rates of bycatch, and their mysterious tendency to go missing. In Scotland, they are prohibited within six miles of the coast. But these boats work farther from the shore. Beyond 12 miles, my contact says, it’s “basically bandit territory for any vessel not UK-registered, as UK law does not apply”. He alleges that, while local boats are closely regulated, there is practically no monitoring of foreign, offshore vessels.

Competition between national fishing fleets is an explosive issue, further charged by Brexit. At first I was wary of these claims, as I know how bitter the rivalry has become. But the photographic evidence speaks for itself, and his testimony is compelling. Moreover, it’s clear that there is a new mood among many of the local boats, which are now desperate to save their fisheries. Most of them are involved in the Fishing for Litter scheme, landing the discarded gear and other rubbish they catch. But this is likely to be a small fraction of the equipment being dumped. Unless active gillnetting and ghost fishing by discarded nets are stopped, my contact believes, the entire marine ecosystem is likely to collapse.

He and other fishers “have written to the authorities until we are blue in the face”, but he says he has been repeatedly stonewalled. It’s a sign of desperation that he has come to me, a longstanding critic of his industry.

When I approached the Scottish government, it told me: “We take protection of the marine environment seriously and are clear that any form of dumping and other illegal activities is completely unacceptable … We would encourage anyone with intelligence relating to suspicious activities by vessels to report this to us on our website.”

But, as the Scottish government’s own report points out, “no data or studies” have been produced showing where the discarded gear is coming from. This is despite the fact that, in the north Highlands, commercial fishing gear accounts for 90% of the ocean plastic picked up by beach cleaners, and that entanglement in static fishing equipment is a major cause of death for minke and humpback whales in Scotland. There’s a reliable principle of public administration: if a government takes a genuine interest in an issue, it commissions researchers to study it. No data tends to mean no interest.

There are similar issues all over the world. Gillnetting and the ghost fishing it causes have reduced the population of vaquita – the world’s smallest member of the whale and dolphin family, which lives in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez – to fewer than 20. Last week a young humpback whale was spotted in Antarctic waters, its dorsal fin severed, with nets cutting through the skin around its tail. As global seafood consumption has doubled in 50 years, the issue has become ever more urgent.

Yet most governments propose to do nothing except “encourage” fishers and gear manufacturers to behave responsibly, without sanctions or incentives. No vessel should be allowed to leave port unless it has enough space to store all its rubbish. Mandatory deposit return schemes would ensure that fishers returned used gear to the manufacturers at the end of its life. All nets should be traceable to the boats that use them. While some equipment is bound to be lost accidentally, it’s not hard to spot patterns of deliberate disposal.

But, like the fictional US president in the movie Don’t Look Up, the world’s governments, faced with ecological collapse, have again decided to “sit tight and assess”.

Africa’s fourth COVID wave flattens out after six-week surge

© UNICEF/ Thoko Chikondi Women queue to receive their COVID-19 vaccine in Malawi.

WHO said that this marked the shortest surge since the pandemic began on the continent, where total cases have exceeded 10.2 million.

Recorded cases of infection show that the weekly number plateaued in the seven days leading up to 9 January, from the previous week.

“Early indications suggest that Africa’s fourth wave has been steep and brief but no less destabilizing”, said WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti.

The fast-spreading #Omicron variant has become dominant in countries experiencing a surge in #COVID19 cases.

While it took around four weeks for the #Delta variant to surpass the previously dominant Beta, Omicron outpaced Delta within two weeks in worst-hit African countries. pic.twitter.com/1b9aDx8nfJ

— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) January 13, 2022

Omicron on record

In countries experiencing a surge in cases, the fast-spreading Omicron variant has become the dominant type.

While it took around four weeks for the Delta variant to surpass the previously dominant Beta, Omicron outpaced Delta within two weeks in the worst-hit African countries, according to WHO.

Southern Africa saw a huge increase in infections during the pandemic wave but recorded a 14 per cent decline in confirmed cases over the past week.

And South Africa, where Omicron was first reported, saw a nine per cent fall in weekly infections.

While East and Central Africa regions also experienced falling numbers of cases, North and West Africa are seeing a rise in infections, with North Africa reporting a 121 per cent increase over the past week, compared with the previous seven days.

“The crucial pandemic countermeasure badly needed in Africa still stands, and that is rapidly and significantly increasing COVID-19 vaccinations”, said the senior WHO official. “The next wave might not be so forgiving”.

‘Concerted push’ needed’

Through training in bioinformatics, specimen handling and other key areas, WHO is supporting countries across the continent in bolstering genomic sequencing to identify new mutations.

The Organization is also helping to procure and deliver critical laboratory equipment and supplies.

So far, 30 African countries - and at least 142 worldwide - have detected the Omicron variant while the Delta variant has been reported in 42 African nations.

In West Africa, where COVID-19 cases are on the rise, the number of Omicron sequences undertaken by countries including Cabo Verde, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, is growing.

And Omicron is currently the dominant variant in both Cabo Verde and Nigeria.

“We have the know-how and the tools and with a concerted push we can certainly tip the balance against the pandemic”, said Dr. Moeti.

Stem variants, inoculate

While the continent appears to be weathering the latest pandemic wave, only around 10 per cent of the population have been fully vaccinated.  

However, vaccine supplies to Africa have improved recently, and WHO is stepping up its support to countries to deliver doses to the wider population.

“This year should mark a turning point in Africa’s COVID-19 vaccination drive”, said Dr. Moeti.

“With vast swaths of the population still unvaccinated, our chances of limiting the emergence and impact of deadly variants are frighteningly slim”, she added.

Seeing 1,000 glorious fin whales back from near extinction is a rare glimmer of hope

Philip Hoare
OPINION

Whales still face many threats, mostly from us, so let us savour this rare congregation of them in the Antarctic Peninsula

Spouts from fin whales near the South Orkney Islands in the Southern Ocean. Photograph: Conor Ryan

Good news doesn’t get any more in-your-face than this. One thousand fin whales, one of the world’s biggest animals, were seen last week swimming in the same seas in which they were driven to near-extinction last century due to whaling. It’s like humans never happened.

This vast assembly was spread over a five-mile-wide area between the South Orkney islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. A single whale is stupendous; imagine 1,000 of them, their misty forest of spouts, as tall as pine trees, the plosive sound of their blows, their hot breath condensing in the icy air. Their sharp dorsal fins and steel-grey bodies slide through the waves like a whale ballet, choreographed at the extreme south of our planet.

The sight has left whale scientists slack-jawed and frankly green-eyed in envy of Conor Ryan, who observed it from the polar cruiser, National Geographic Endurance. Messaging from the ship on a tricky connection, Ryan, an experienced zoologist and photographer, says this may be “one of the largest aggregations of fin whales ever documented”. His estimate of 1,000 animals is a conservative one, he says.

We found about 1000 fin whales over a 5x5 mile area off South Orkney. Blue and humpback also mixed in. Mind completely blown 🐳 @LindbladExp #NationalGeographicEndurance pic.twitter.com/xtdvexXwI5

— Conor Ryan (@whale_nerd) January 14, 2022

“We were about 15 miles north of Coronation Island,” Ryan reports, with “four large krill fishing vessels working the same area”. The vessels’ presence makes clear the reason for this party. The whales were feeding on a grand scale, sucking up tonnes of tiny shrimps.

Fin whales are surprisingly slender, serpentine creatures when you see them underwater, and so long that they seem to take for ever to swim past. Like blue, humpback and minke whales, they’re baleen whales, distinguished by food-filtering keratinous plates in lieu of teeth. Unlike toothed whales, such as sperm whales and killer whales, they are not usually seen as social animals. In Moby-Dick Herman Melville classifies the fin whale as “not gregarious … very shy; always going solitary … the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race”.

Factor in their tremendous size – at up to 27m long, only just short of the blue whale’s 33m – and you come close to appreciating the astonishing intensity of this eruption of marine life.

So, is it really good news? In this same ocean, at least two million whales were slaughtered in the past century. Given that we now know fin whales can live for up to 140 years, the effects of that cull are still being felt in their culture. It may be that our assumption that fin whales aren’t “social” animals actually stems from the fact that they amended their behaviour to evade the whalers, as sperm whales did in the 19th century. Scientists suspect that baleen whales also learned not to gather in large groups to stay one step ahead of the hunters. Only now, perhaps, are they returning to old foraging grounds.

Ryan delights in calling himself a “whale nerd”; he and his best friend, Peter Wilson, were just 14 years old when they published their first peer-reviewed scientific paper on killer whales in 2001. When he gets home from this trip, he’ll be writing another paper. Despite his 20 years’ experience at sea, Ryan has never seen anything like this. “Words fail me,” he says. “I have seen maybe 100 fins here before in previous years. Thousands of chinstrap penguins, petrels, and albatrosses, too … It was unusually calm weather,” he adds, “and unusually good visibility.”

If Ryan considers himself blessed, then so should we. Whales still face many threats, mostly from us. And we would do well to remember that the protests that saved the whales in the 1970s and 80s will be outlawed if the new police and crime bill passes into law. In a world constrained by woe and threats to democracy (it’s a good job whales don’t have to apply for the right to assemble), 1,000 fin whales can’t help but lift our hearts. They might even convince us that, as another species of (supposedly) sentient mammal, we still stand a chance of getting through “all of this”. So long as we stick together and send up a few protest spouts of our own.

• Philip Hoare is the author of several books, including Leviathan, The Sea Inside and Albert and the Whale

Six Questions to Help You Understand the 6th Warmest Year on Record

Roberto Molar Candanosa,
NASA's Earth Science News Team

This data visualization shows global surface temperature anomalies for 2021. Higher than normal temperatures, shown in red, can be seen in regions such as the Arctic. Lower than normal temperatures are shown in blue. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Lori Perkins

The year 2021 was tied for the sixth warmest year on NASA’s record, stretching more than a century. Because the record is global, not every place on Earth experienced the sixth warmest year on record. Some places had record-high temperatures, and we saw record droughts, floods and fires around the globe. Credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Katie Jepson, Kathryn Mersmann, Kathleen Gaeta

The year 2021 tied with 2018 as the sixth warmest year on a record that extends back to 1880, according to NASA’s annual analysis of global average temperatures. The year contributed to an unprecedented, but well-understood trend in which the last eight years have been the warmest ever recorded.

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City produce this record using data from instruments all over the world, which is validated by satellite data. Scientists update the record every year, maintaining one of the world’s most important datasets to study the extent, pace and causes of warming on our home planet.

Here, we answer six questions to help you understand the GISS global surface temperature analysis, what it shows about 2021 and how NASA makes sense of the data.

GISTEMP, NASA’s global temperature analysis, uses data from tens of thousands of weather stations and Antarctic research stations, together with measurements by instruments on ships and ocean buoys to estimate global temperatures. Shown here as green dots are the locations of more than 20,000 stations currently used in the analysis.

1. What is the GISS Global Surface Temperature Analysis?

Also known as GISTEMP, this product is one of several independent datasets by major scientific organizations that track Earth’s temperatures. Its publicly available raw data come from tens of thousands of instruments on weather stations, ships and ocean buoys, and Antarctic research stations.

The NASA analysis takes into account the seasonal cycle and average climate in each of these locations to determine how much warmer or cooler it is on average. Temperatures at different locations on Earth can vary by as much as 100 degrees Fahrenheit (55 degrees Celsius), but the average global temperature over the course of the year changes much more subtly. In other words, when scientists pull all that data together to estimate global average temperatures, the analysis serves as a massive, planetary thermometer.

2. If the record shows unprecedented warming, why isn’t every year the warmest year ever?

Earth’s temperature varies every year because of the many interactions among the land, air and ocean. These complex connections influence weather and temperatures regionally and globally.

One of these interactions is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural phenomenon in which heat transfers for several months between the Pacific and the atmosphere lead to temperature and rainfall fluctuations all over the world. La Niña, the cooler phase of this phenomenon, generally leads to weather patterns that lower Earth’s average temperature with a slight lag of several months. That’s how a La Niña event in early 2021 led to a cooler year than it would have been otherwise, in particular cooler than 2020 or 2016 — the warmest years on record.

Scientists are predicting that because La Niña reappeared in late 2021, its cooling influence will likely affect temperatures in 2022. Still, even with these phenomena, 2021 contributes to, and is consistent with, the observed long-term warming trend. Global temperatures are rising at a pace that the planet has not experienced in millennia, according to NASA. That is, even though short-term weather cycles can affect any single year, the warming trends are still very clear and growing.

3. How does NASA crunch the numbers to analyze global temperatures?

NASA’s analysis averages temperature estimates made over many decades. That produces a trend, or pattern, of how fast Earth’s surface temperatures have changed in recent times. The analysis uses a fixed period of 1951 to 1980 that serves as a baseline to compare how global temperatures today are deviating from what was normal then.

The baseline period included the best available data when scientists designed the basic methods for NASA’s analysis in the 1980s. These data also included comprehensive global coverage, since datasets from pre-1950 generally excluded input from the Southern Hemisphere.

The steps to calculate temperature anomalies today remain fundamentally the same as they did in the 1980s. A key exception is that refined algorithms now minimize errors resulting from data in urban areas, which tend to warm more than rural areas. The amount and quality of data available also has increased substantially over time, improving how much of Earth’s surface the dataset covers.

4. How reliable is NASA’s temperature analysis?

This plot shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2019, as analyzed by NASA and other scientific institutions. Though there are minor variations from year to year, all five temperature records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other.

This plot shows yearly temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2019, as analyzed by NASA and other scientific institutions. Though there are minor variations from year to year, all five temperature records show peaks and valleys in sync with each other.

Scientists always try to confirm the accuracy of the record with independent studies and, in recent decades, satellites. Recent assessments revealed the agency's estimates of the annual average are accurate to within a tenth of a degree Fahrenheit.

The record uses raw data stretching back to 1880, when methods to measure temperature were less developed. But these historic data still provide a very useful window into the past. The recent assessments show that even when factoring in greater uncertainties in data from before 1950, they still provide the basis for a good estimate of past global annual temperatures. In other words, the pre-1950 data are like a blurry photo compared to the sharpness of today's datasets: Scientists are a little more uncertain about some of its details but can still be certain about the overall picture the data show.

NASA also checks for irregularities in the quality and distribution of data, as faulty instruments, human errors in recording and processing data and other non-climatic factors can yield unrealistic readings. When raw data from individual stations seems inaccurate, scientists double-check them manually by comparing these data against neighboring areas with similar climatic conditions. These adjustments can influence records at individual stations and small regions, but they barely change global averages.

Other organizations also process the same data with slightly different methods. Their records all show trends remarkably similar to NASA’s analysis.

5. What are some indicators and consequences of warming?

Satellite data confirm how warming on the land, air and ocean is affecting different parts of the planet. The rising temperatures are causing ice sheets and glaciers worldwide to melt, heatwaves to be longer and more intense, and plants and animal habitats to shift as they respond to warming.

As NASA’s temperature analysis shows the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, satellites show a decline in the region’s sea ice extent of about 13% per decade. Satellites also show the ocean is warming at an unprecedented rate, with 2021 marking the hottest ocean temperatures and the highest global sea levels ever recorded.

In 2021, Earth saw several extreme examples of how excess heat in the ocean and atmosphere can influence often devastating, sometimes unexpected, disasters in different parts of the world. Australia, Europeand Asia experienced historic floods driven by record-breaking levels of intense rainfall. In the United States, the record-setting Dixie Fireburned in California, massive heat-waves were seen in the Pacific Northwest and Hurricane Ida caused damages from Louisiana to New York.

6. Why does NASA estimate global surface temperature change?

In the early 1970s, research into Venus’ atmosphere provided a stark example of how extremely high amounts of greenhouse gasses, which trap heat in the atmosphere, turned Earth’s so-called twin into an uninhabitable world with blistering surface temperatures that would melt lead.

Scientists then became increasingly concerned about the influence of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses on Earth. In 1981, NASA scientists were the first to estimate global temperature averages using the techniques that eventually evolved into the current analysis. The idea was to provide context for predictions of future climate change.

Today, the analysis has helped explain how carbon dioxide emissions, deforestation and other human activities are driving global warming — and why volcanic eruptions, fluctuations in the Sun’s energy output and other natural factors are not the primary drivers of the observed warming trend.

Hottest ocean temperatures in history recorded last year

Oliver Milman

Ocean heating driven by human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, in sixth consecutive year record has been broken

The world’s oceans have been set to simmer, and the heat is being cranked up. Last year saw the hottest ocean temperatures in recorded history, the sixth consecutive year that this record has been broken, according to new research.

The heating up of our oceans is being primarily driven by the human-caused climate crisis, scientists say, and represents a starkly simple indicator of global heating. While the atmosphere’s temperature is also trending sharply upwards, individual years are less likely to be record-breakers compared with the warming of the oceans.

Last year saw a heat record for the top 2,000 meters of all oceans around the world, despite an ongoing La Niña event, a periodic climatic feature that cools waters in the Pacific. The 2021 record tops a stretch of modern record-keeping that goes back to 1955. The second hottest year for oceans was 2020, while the third hottest was 2019.

“The ocean heat content is relentlessly increasing, globally, and this is a primary indicator of human-induced climate change,” said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and co-author of the research, published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

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Warmer ocean waters are helping supercharge storms, hurricanes and extreme rainfall, the paper states, which is escalating the risks of severe flooding. Heated ocean water expands and eats away at the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which are collectively shedding around 1tn tons of ice a year, with both of these processes fueling sea level rise.

Oceans take up about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity, causing them to acidify. This degrades coral reefs, home to a quarter of the world’s marine life and the provider of food for more than 500m people, and can prove harmful to individual species of fish.

As the world warms from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other activities, the oceans have taken the brunt of the extra heat. More than 90% of the heat generated over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans, temporarily helping spare humanity, and other land-based species, from temperatures that would already be catastrophic.

The amount of heat soaked up by the oceans is enormous. Last year, the upper 2,000 meters of the ocean, where most of the warming occurs, absorbed 14 more zettajoules (a unit of electrical energy equal to one sextillion joules) than it did in 2020. This amount of extra energy is 145 times greater than the world’s entire electricity generation which, by comparison, is about half of a zettajoule.

Long-term ocean warming is strongest in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, the new research states, although the north Pacific has had a “dramatic” increase in heat since 1990 and the Mediterranean Sea posted a clear high temperature record last year.

The heating trend is so pronounced it’s clear to ascertain the fingerprint of human influence in just four years of records, according to John Abraham, another of the study’s co-authors. “Ocean heat content is one of the best indicators of climate change,” added Abraham, an expert in thermal sciences at University of St Thomas.

“Until we reach net zero emissions, that heating will continue, and we’ll continue to break ocean heat content records, as we did this year,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and another of the 23 researchers who worked on the paper. “Better awareness and understanding of the oceans are a basis for the actions to combat climate change.”

How the speed of climate change is unbalancing the insect world

Oliver Milman

The pace of global heating is forcing insect populations to move and adapt – and some aggressive species are thriving

The climate crisis is set to profoundly alter the world around us. Humans will not be the only species to suffer from the calamity. Huge waves of die-offs will be triggered across the animal kingdom as coral reefs turn ghostly white and tropical rainforests collapse. For a period, some researchers suspected that insects may be less affected, or at least more adaptable, than mammals, birds and other groups of creatures. With their large, elastic populations and their defiance of previous mass extinction events, surely insects will do better than most in the teeth of the climate emergency?

Sadly not. At 3.2C of warming, which many scientists still fear the world will get close to by the end of this century (although a flurry of promises at Cop26 have brought the expected temperature increase down to 2.4C), half of all insect species will lose more than half of their current habitable range. This is about double the proportion of vertebrates and higher even than for plants, which lack wings or legs to quickly relocate themselves. This huge contraction in livable space is being heaped on to the existing woes faced by insects from habitat loss and pesticide use. “The insects that are still hanging in there are going to get hit by climate change as well,” says Rachel Warren, a biologist at the University of East Anglia, who in 2018 published research into what combinations of temperature, rainfall and other climatic conditions each species can tolerate.

Some insects, such as dragonflies, are nimble enough to cope with the creeping change. Unfortunately, most are not. Butterflies and moths are also often quite mobile, but in different stages of their life cycle they rely on certain terrestrial conditions and particular plant foods, and so many are still vulnerable. Pollinators such as bees and flies can generally move only short distances, exacerbating an emerging food security crisis where farmers will struggle to grow certain foods not just due to a lack of pollination but because, beyond an increase of 3C or so, vast swaths of land simply becomes unsuitable for many crops. The area available to grow abundant coffee and chocolate, for example, is expected to shrivel as tropical regions surge to temperatures unseen in human history.

The climate crisis interlocks with so many other maladies – poverty, racism, social unrest, inequality, the crushing of wildlife – that it can be easy to overlook how it has viciously ensnared insects. The problem also feels more intractable. “Climate change is tricky because it’s hard to combat,” says Matt Forister, a professor of biology at the University of Nevada. “Pesticides are relatively straightforward by comparison but climate change can alter the water table, affect the predators, affect the plants. It’s multifaceted.”

Insects are under fire from the poles to the tropics. The Arctic bumblebee, Bombus polaris, is found in the northern extremities of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. It is able to survive near-freezing temperatures due to dense hair that traps heat and its ability to use conical flowers, like the Arctic poppy, to magnify the sun’s rays to warm itself up. Rocketing temperatures in the Arctic, however, mean the bee is likely to become extinct by 2050. Species of alpine butterflies, dependent on just one or two high-altitude plants, are also facing severe declines as their environment transforms around them.

Further south, in the UK, glowworm numbers have collapsed by three-quarters since 2001, research has found, with the climate crisis considered the primary culprit. The larvae of the insects feed on snails that thrive in damp conditions, but a string of hot and dry summers has left the glowworms critically short of prey.

A fire in the Amazon rainforest in Para state, Brazil, August 2020. Drought and wildfires are causing a population collapse in the forest’s dung beetles. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images

These sort of losses in Europe have challenged previous assumptions that insects in temperate climates would be able to cope with a few degrees of extra heat, unlike the mass of species crowded at the world’s tropics that are already at the upper limits of their temperature tolerance. A team of researchers from Sweden and Spain have pointed out that the vast majority of insects in temperate zones are inactive during cold periods. When just the warmer, active, months of insects’ lives were considered by the scientists, they found that species in temperate areas are also starting to bump into the ceiling of livable temperature. As Frank Johansson, an academic at Sweden’s Uppsala University, glumly puts it: “Insects in temperate zones might be as threatened by climate change as those in the tropics.”

Bumblebees, those large, furry insects permanently sewn into their winter coats, are at the pointy end of this rising heat. A study by the University of Ottawa in 2020 found that bumblebee populations in North America have nearly halved, with those across Europe declining by 17%.

Some scientists have warned that the correlation shown in this research has yet to prove causation, but there is a broad acceptance that changes in temperature and rainfall could overwhelm insects already facing a barrage of threats. In 2019, for example, scientists revealed the happy news that nine new bee species had been discovered in the south Pacific island of Fiji, only to then immediately note that many of them face climate-related extinction due to their warming mountaintop habitats. “In the future, climate change is going to be the nail in the coffin for quite a lot of creatures which are already in much reduced numbers,” says Dave Goulson, a University of Sussex ecologist. “They’ll simply be unable to cope with a 2C rise in temperature and all the extreme weather events that are likely to go with that.”

Even the Amazon rainforest, that humming trove of insect life, is seeing complex relationships torn asunder. The increasing incidence of the El Niño phenomenon, coupled with human interventions such as deforestation, are spurring more intense drought and wildfires. Researchers were shocked to find this changing regime causing a population collapse among the humble dung beetles, which are key distributors of nutrients and seeds and important indicator species of the health of an ecosystem. Counts of beetles before and after an El Niño event in 2016 found that insect numbers had been cut by more than half within the studied forests. The climate crisis is making the Amazon drier, more brittle and more prone to fires, while also stripping away the unheralded dung beetles that help regenerate burned forests. “I thought the beetles would be more resilient to drought than they were,” says Filipe França, the Brazilian scientist who led the research. “If climate change continues we’ll not only see less biodiverse forests but also make them less able to recover after further disturbances.”

Insects are so interlaced with the environment that they acutely feel any jolt to the regular rhythms of life. Spring is being pushed earlier and earlier in the year, unsettling the established life cycle of insects. In the UK, moths and butterflies are emerging from their cocoons up to six days earlier a decade on average, while in parts of the US, springtime conditions that trigger insect activity occur as much as 20 days earlier than they did 70 years ago. Most plant and animal species rely on the buildup of heat in spring to set in motion flowering, breeding and hatching of insect eggs. The reshuffling of the season’s start risks throwing delicately poised interactions off-kilter, such as birds setting off on migration early only to find a food source isn’t quite ready for them yet.

British scientists who looked at half a century of UK data found that aphids are now emerging a month earlier than they once did, due to rising temperatures, while birds are laying eggs a week earlier. The aphids aren’t necessarily growing in number, despite their elongated season, but their earlier appearances means they are targeting plants that are younger and more vulnerable.

“There’s good evidence here in the UK that under climate change things are warming up early, so we’ve got all these bees coming out early but not the flowers, because obviously the day length isn’t changing,” says Simon Potts, a bee expert at the University of Reading. “We’re getting this decoupling between pollinators and the plants and that’s starting to mess up all these very delicate, very sophisticated food webs.”

The violet carpenter bee has extended its range to the warming UK. Photograph: Ruth Swan/Alamy

For some insects, a warmer Britain is a welcome development. In recent years, insects such as the violet carpenter bee and the camel cricket have crossed the Channel and established themselves, while some native butterflies, such as the marbled white, are hauling themselves out of population declines with a climate-assisted march northward to cooler climes. Flowers such as wild orchids are heading north, too.

These adaptive techniques will mean little when climate breakdown warps the properties of the plants themselves, diminishing them as a food source wherever insects can find them. Scientists have found that CO2 can reduce the nutritional value of plants, providing insects with a meal of empty calories lacking elements such as zinc and sodium. A study site in the prairies of Kansas found that grasshopper numbers there are dropping by around 2% a year, and researchers felt confident enough to rule out pesticide use or habitat loss as the likely cause. Instead, they concluded that the grasshoppers were suffering starvation via the climate emergency.

Not only is climate breakdown potentially causing insects to be malnourished; it also appears to be altering the scent of plants. Pollinators searching for food will note the colour and number of flowers as well as the plant’s scent, with bees able to recall a fragrance and associate it with certain plants and their nectar content. Scientists who measured the fragrance molecules emitted by rosemary in shrubland near Marseille, in France, discovered that a different scent was given off by plants that were stressed, which deterred domesticated bees. As the climate crisis stresses more plants by subjecting them to drought and soaring heat, insects may find them not only a bland meal but also unappealing to even approach.

This alteration in plants may be, for insects at least, the most far-reaching symptom of climate breakdown.

Not all insects are doomed in a warming world, however. As with all realignments, there are winners and losers, and our attention is more easily captured by thoughts of hordes of marauding insects unshackled by global heating than by a handful of scientists fretting about a declining desert moth. In 2020, east Africa suffered its worst plague of locusts in decades. The previous year, the Horn of Africa had been pounded by rainfall, up to 400% above average levels, aiding the reproduction of locusts. Increased heat is also thought to boost locust numbers, with both factors heavily influenced by climate breakdown. Farmers in Kenya watched on helplessly as the sky darkened with locusts that descended to decimate their corn and sorghum. Separate, massive swarms then broke out in western and central India, chewing up land at a rate not seen in a generation.

A hotter world is likely to bring an array of insect pests and pathogens to attack potatoes, soya beans, wheat, and other crops. A group of American researchers calculated that yields of the three most important grain crops – wheat, rice, and corn – lost to insects will increase by as much as 25% per degree Celsius of warming, with countries in temperate areas hit the hardest. Crop pests also tend to thrive in simplified environments that have been stripped of their predators – another legacy of monocultural farming practices.

A sorghum farmer holding a locust in Amhara region, Ethiopia, October 2020. Photograph: Tiksa Negeri/Reuters

In the American suburbs, we will see more emerald ash borers, the brilliantly green beetles native to Asia that were introduced to the US after a few of them clung to some wooden packaging that made its way to Detroit. The rapacious beetles have killed off hundreds of million of ash trees across North America and are now establishing themselves in eastern Europe. Milder winters mean the pests will be able to spread farther north, causing further devastation.

Even the domestic environment will see a new influx of unwanted insects, with populations of houseflies more than doubling by 2080, according to one estimate, due to changes in temperature, humidity and rainfall. But while houseflies can cause illness through the transfer of waste on to food, at least they aren’t major vectors of deadly conditions.

It is worrisome, therefore, that there’s an expansion under way of mosquitoes.

Freezing temperatures tend to kill mosquito eggs. This means that a heated-up planet is allowing the insects to conquer new territories, helping trigger outbreaks of dengue in France and Croatia, chikungunya in Italy and malaria in Greece in the past decade. These incursions are likely to be vanguards; the Mediterranean region is already a partly tropical region, and as heat and moisture continue to build, the central swath of Europe and even the southern regions of the UK will be within striking range of a fearsome cadre of newcomers. “If it gets warmer we could get West Nile. Malaria could come back, too,” says Simon Leather, a British entomologist. “We could see a real change in terms of human health problems.”

Mosquitoes are clearly, by the number of people killed, the most deadly animal on Earth to humans; but in our eagerness to vanquish them, we often deploy weapons with high levels of collateral damage. The chemical compound DDT was developed for widespread anti-mosquito use – before mosquitoes developed resistance and the chemical’s pernicious impact on other wildlife led to its ban. A more recent replacement, an organophosphate called naled, is now sprayed on mosquito habitat despite evidence that it is toxic to bees, fish and other creatures. But if our fears of a seething invasion of heat-loving insects were to be embodied by one animal, it would probably be the Asian giant hornet.

You might have heard it referred to as a “murder” hornet. The bulky, thumb-sized hornet has the demeanour of a cartoonish supervillain, with its tiger-striped abdomen, large burnt orange-coloured face, teardrop eyes like a demonic Spider-Man and a pair of vicious mandibles. Despite a flurry of public concern to the contrary, murder hornets do not murder people; they kill honeybees. The hornets loiter outside bee hives and gruesomely decapitate emerging worker bees, dismembering the unfortunate victims and feeding the body parts to their larvae.

This carnage can go on until a hive is completely annihilated, the crime scene marked by thousands of scattered corpses. In some places, bees do fight back. Bees in the hornets’ native range have evolved a defensive tactic whereby a mob of bees will hurl themselves at a hornet that enters the hive, covering the invader in a ball-like mass and then vibrating their flight muscles to generate so much heat, up to 47C, that the hornet is roasted alive. Honeybees in Europe and North America, however, are unused to the hornet and are essentially helpless in face of the slaughter.

As its name suggests, the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia) is native to the forests and mountain foothills of east and south-east Asia. It is commonly mixed up with its cousin, the Asian hornet (Vespa velutina), which has found its way to Europe and dismembered so many honeybees in the UK and France that bee-keepers have fretted over the viability of colonies already under stress from varroa mites and pesticides. Vespa mandarinia, meanwhile, has launched an assault on the western coast of North America, most likely hitching a ride over on cargo shipping.

Agriculture department workers clear Asian giant hornets in Washington state, US, October 2020. Photograph: Elaine Thompson/AFP/Getty Images

Three confirmed specimens were discovered by surprised Canadian authorities on Vancouver Island in August 2019, then another hornet was found further south, close to the US border. By December, the species was spotted again, this time in the US, about 12 miles further south in the state of Washington. One beekeeper, stung a few times by irate hornets, set the entire colony on fire to destroy it. Another fresh hornet queen, found 15 miles south-west of the next nearest find, suggested either a repeated influx from overseas or a vigorous dispersal by the hornets.

By May 2020, with the hornet appearing to have gained a decent foothold on the west coast, the situation had attracted the attention of the New York Times, which ran a story headlined “‘Murder Hornets’ in the US: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet.” Climate change could help turbocharge the pace of the hornet’s advance, similar to the astonishing travels of the Asian hornet in France, where it has moved at nearly 50 miles a year since arriving in the early 00s and is now found in the Alps.

It’s natural to get squeamish over the idea of a squadron of murderous hornets or the idea that those ever-durable cockroaches will march on despite the surging heat. The genuinely scary part of all this, though, is climate breakdown itself, an existential threat we have brought upon ourselves and all other living creatures that we still, despite decades of increasingly frantic warnings, move too sluggishly to avert.

But as we’ve reacted so grudgingly and ponderously to the menace of flooding, storms and droughts that can spark civil unrest and even wars, what hope is there that the plight of insects will spur us on? A more realistic goal is a concerted effort to restore complex, connected insect-friendly habitat and ensure that it remains largely toxin free, in the hope that this will at least parcel out a little time and space from the onslaught of the climate crisis. Although climate breakdown can often feel like a drawn-out, almost imperceptible rearrangement that far-off generations will have to deal with, it is also punctuated with lacerating reminders that it’s already well under way.

This is an edited extract from The Insect Crisis: the fall of the tiny empires that run the world, published on 20 January by Atlantic

5 things you should know about the greenhouse gases warming the planet

UN NEWS

News stories about the climate crisis often contain mentions of greenhouse gases, and the greenhouse effect. Whilst most will find the analogy easy to understand, what exactly are these gases, and why are they contributing to the warming of the Earth?

© Apratim Pal I On bone-dry land, severely affected by drought, two women search for their daily water supply.

1. What is the greenhouse effect?

In a greenhouse, sunlight enters, and heat is retained. The greenhouse effect describes a similar phenomenon on a planetary scale but, instead of the glass of a greenhouse,  certain gases are increasingly raising global temperatures.

The surface of the Earth absorbs just under half of the sun’s energy, while the atmosphere absorbs 23 per cent, and the rest is reflected back into space. Natural processes ensure that the amount of incoming and outgoing energy is equal, keeping the planet’s temperature stable.

However, human activity is resulting in the increased emission of so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) which, unlike other atmospheric gases such as oxygen and nitrogen, becomes trapped in the atmosphere, unable to escape the planet. This energy returns to the surface, where it is reabsorbed.

Because more energy enters than exits the planet, surface temperatures increase until a new balance is achieved. 

2. Why does the warming matter?

Unsplash/Johannes Plenio I Carbon dioxide levels continue at record levels, despite the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This temperature increase has long-term, adverse effects on the climate, and affects a myriad of natural systems. Effects include increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events – including flooding, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes – that affect millions of people and cause trillions in economic losses.

“Human-caused greenhouse gas emissions endanger human and environmental health,” says Mark Radka, Chief of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Energy and Climate Branch. “And the impacts will become more widespread and severe without strong climate action.”

GHG emissions are critical to understanding and addressing the climate crisis: despite an initial dip due to COVID-19, the latest UNEP Emissions Gap Report shows a rebound, and forecasts a disastrous global temperature rise of at least 2.7 degrees this century, unless countries make much greater efforts to reduce emissions.

The report found that GHG emissions need to be halved by 2030, if we are to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

3. What are the major greenhouse gases?

Water vapour is the biggest overall contributor to the greenhouse effect. However, almost all the water vapour in the atmosphere comes from natural processes.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide are the major GHGs to worry about. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for up to 1,000 years, methane for around a decade, and nitrous oxide for approximately 120 years.

Measured over a 20-year period, methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 in causing global warming, while nitrous oxide is 280 times more potent.

4. How is human activity producing these greenhouse gases?

Coal, oil, and natural gas continue to power many parts of the world. Carbon is the main element in these fuels and, when they’re burned to generate electricity, power transportation, or provide heat, they produce CO2.

Oil and gas extraction, coal mining, and waste landfills account for 55 per cent of human-caused methane emissions. Approximately 32 per cent of human-caused methane emissions are attributable to cows, sheep and other ruminants that ferment food in their stomachs. Manure decomposition is another agricultural source of the gas, as is rice cultivation. 

Unsplash/TJK I Wind farms generate electricity and reduce reliance on coal-powered energy.

Human-caused nitrous oxide emissions largely arise from agriculture practices. Bacteria in soil and water naturally convert nitrogen into nitrous oxide, but fertilizer use and run-off add to this process by putting more nitrogen into the environment.

Fluorinated gases – such as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – are GHGs that do not occur naturally. Hydrofluorocarbons are refrigerants used as alternatives to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which, having depleted the ozone layer,were phased out thanks to the Montreal Protocol. The others have industrial and commercial uses.

While fluorinated gases are far less prevalent than other GHGs and do not deplete the ozone layer like CFCs, they are still very powerful. Over a 20-year period, the global warming potential of some fluorinated gases is up to 16,300 times greater than that of CO2.

5. What can we do to reduce GHG emissions?

Shifting to renewable energy, putting a price on carbon, and phasing out coal are all important elements in reducing GHG emissions. Ultimately, stronger emission-reduction targets are necessary for the preservation of long-term human and environmental health.

“We need to implement strong policies that back the raised ambitions,” says Mr. Radka. “We cannot continue down the same path and expect better results. Action is needed now.”

During COP26, the European Union and the United States launched the Global Methane Pledge, which will see over 100 countries aim to reduce 30 per cent of methane emissions in the fuel, agriculture and waste sectors by 2030.

Despite the challenges, there is reason to be positive. From 2010 to 2021, policies were put in place  to lower annual emissions by 11 gigatons by 2030 compared to what would have otherwise happened. Individuals can also join the UN’s #ActNow campaign for ideas to take climate-positive actions.

By making choices that have less harmful effects on the environment, everyone can be a part of the solution and influence change. Speaking up is one way to multiply impact and create change on a much bigger scale.

UNEP’s role in reducing GHGs

• UNEP has outlined its six-sector solution, which can reduce 29–32 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2030 to meet the 1.5°C warming limit. The six sectors identified are: energy; industry; agricultureand food; forests andland use; transport; and buildings and cities.

• UNEP also maintains an online “Climate Note,” a tool that visualizes the changing state of the climate with a baseline of 1990.

• Through its other multilateral environmental agreements and reports, UNEP raises awareness and advocates for effective environmental action. UNEP will continue to work closely with its 193 Member States and other stakeholders to set the environmental agenda and advocate for a drastic reduction in GHG emissions.
   

Alok Sharma: Cop26 must not become ‘bunch of meaningless promises’

Fiona Harvey

Climate summit president makes clear UK net zero agenda is responsibility of all government colleagues

Alok Sharma said the UK would be judged by the rest of the world on its delivery of climate goals. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Tackling the climate crisis must be a whole government effort or risk the Cop26 climate summit becoming “just a bunch of meaningless promises”, the cabinet minister who chaired the UN summit has said.

Alok Sharma, who acted as president for Cop26 in November, made clear that all of his colleagues must bear a joint responsibility for the UK’s net zero agenda, and that the international community viewed continued UK efforts as vital.

“Given that people do see that the UK has shown a great deal of international leadership when it comes to climate, it’s important we maintain that focus across the whole of the UK government,” he told the Guardian in an interview. “When it comes to domestic policy, it’s vital that every country – including the UK – focuses on delivery.”

Without a focus on net zero from the government, there was a danger that the progress made in Glasgow would be undermined, said Sharma.

“What people will judge us on, as they will also judge other governments on, is delivery [on climate goals],” said Sharma. “The key issue is to show that countries are delivering on [their Cop26] commitments and they are not wavering. That is what is going to give confidence to parties [to the Paris agreement], the climate vulnerable countries, to civil society, but globally as well, that we are making progress on promises – that it’s not just a bunch of meaningless promises, that there is real commitment to deliver them as well.”

The UK continues to act as president of the ongoing diplomatic effort to fulfil the 2015 Paris agreement until Egypt takes over next November. Sharma is likely to hold the role until then, though he would not be drawn on rumoured proposals for him to lead a new cross-cutting government department to oversee net zero.

Sharma’s impassioned intervention on net zero comes at a crucial time for the government’s commitment to the climate crisis. As Boris Johnson has been embroiled in scandal over Downing Street parties and sleaze allegations, rival camps have sought to distance themselves from Johnson’s green goals, in order to court the right wing of the Tory party, making the net zero effort a major flashpoint.

When Lord Frost resigned recently, he let it be known that the net zero agenda was one of his top areas of disagreement with Johnson, alongside Brexit policy. As the Guardian has previously revealed, there is a rift between the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Johnson over the climate issue, while the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, pointedly omitted even to mention November’s Cop26 – the biggest diplomatic event held on British soil – in her first foreign policy speech earlier this month.

But Sharma said the net zero strategy was key to the government’s future. “[The question] for every economy is how you do that [shift to a low-carbon footing], not just one or two sectors, but across the whole of the economy. The issue now is that we push on and deliver on that particular [net zero] strategy itself. That’s what we will be judged on.”

Sharma, who was business secretary before Johnson ordered him to take full-time control of Cop26 last year, pointedly referred to the role of business, a core Tory constituency that has been exasperated by Brexit and other policy confusion. The CBI and other leading business voices have spoken out strongly in favour of net zero, and the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is said to have undergone a “conversion” from sceptical free-marketeer to green interventionist.

“There has been a clear change in approach from the corporate sector,” said Sharma. “They have demonstrated their understanding that green growth is the future, and net zero is a big opportunity.”

While he declined to explicitly criticise reported plans to cut 20% of Foreign Office staff, he made clear his concern. “Given that we have said we do see tackling climate change and biodiversity as a top international priority for the UK, it’s important to back that up with having the right presence in our embassies and high commissions around the world,” he said.

Sharma also stressed his personal loyalty to Johnson, and his own lack of interest in any leadership contest. “I don’t think even my mother has suggested that as a credible possibility! I have always backed the prime minister.”

Johnson was fully behind the net zero effort, he added. “This is an agenda that he has followed for a long period. I worked with him at the Foreign Office where I was one of his junior ministers, and this whole issue on biodiversity, on climate, this was an agenda he focused on even at that point.”

Sharma said reactions to the outcomes of Cop26 had grown even more positive in the weeks since it closed. “The feedback from counterparts around the world is that they do think we got something historic over the line,” he said.

His next task is to ensure that the world’s biggest emitters – including big G20 economies – return to the negotiating table next year with improved and detailed plans on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The prospect of holding global temperature rises to 1.5C – which scientists warn is the limit of safety – was still uncertain. He said: “We’ve absolutely kept it alive but the pulse is still weak. That’s why this next year, and the following year, are going to be very much about pushing forward on the delivery of the commitments that have been made.”

Greta Thunberg says it’s ‘strange’ Joe Biden is considered a climate leader

Maya Yang

Environmental activist criticises US president for expanding fossil fuel infrastructure

Greta Thunberg poses for a photo with a sign reading ‘School strike for climate’ as she protests in front of the Swedish parliament in November. Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

In an interview with the Washington Post, the 18-year old Swedish environmental activist rejected the idea that the US president is a leader on climate issues.

“It’s strange that people think of Joe Biden as a leader for the climate when you see what his administration is doing,” she said. “The US is actually expanding fossil fuel infrastructure.

“Why is the US doing that? It should not fall on us activists and teenagers who just want to go to school to raise this awareness and to inform people that we are actually facing an emergency.”

Asked what she wants politicians like Biden to do, Thunberg said: “First of all, we have to understand what is the emergency.

“We are trying to find a solution to a crisis that we don’t understand … it’s all about the narrative. It’s all about, what are we actually trying to solve? Is it this emergency, or is it this emergency?”

In November, Thunberg called the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow “a failure”, arguing it “turned into a PR event” in which “leaders are not doing anything” except “actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks” in order to keep profiting from a “destructive system”.

Speaking to the Post, Thunberg said that a Cop26 final agreement “which is very much an achievement” will not amount to anything unless it increases ambitions which leaders then fulfill.

One of the positives of Cop26, she said, was that it revealed that “under current circumstances, within current systems, we won’t be able to solve the climate crisis unless there is massive pressure from the outside”.

'Cop26 is a failure': Greta Thunberg rallies climate activists in Glasgow – video

Thunberg said global summits like Cop26 presented a “big opportunity” for public mobilization to highlight the climate crisis.

In Glasgow, Biden vowed that the US would “lead by example” in the fight to avoid global heating beyond 1.5C. He made new promises to cut down on methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and to end deforestation, drawing widespread praise.

Nonetheless, when more than 40 countries announced a promise to end coal mining, the US was absent from the list.

In a recent report, the UN environment program and other researchers found that global production of oil and gas is on track to rise over the next 20 years at a rate that will result in double the fossil fuel production in 2030 consistent with a 1.5C rise.

The report found that the US projects increases in oil and gas production by 17% and 12% respectively by 2030.

The Biden administration has approved at least 3,091 new drilling permits on public lands at a rate of 223 permits a month, at a faster rate than the Trump administration.

In November, the US held the largest-ever auction of oil and gas drilling leases in Gulf of Mexico history, offering up more than 80m acres of seabed.

Thunberg told the Post: “What’s holding us back is that we lack the political will.

“Our goal is to find a solution that allows us to continue life [as it is] today,” she said. “… but the uncomfortable truth is that we have left it too late for that. Or the world leaders have left it too late for that.

“We need to fundamentally change our societies now. If we would have started 30 years ago, it would have been smoother. But now it’s a different situation.”

UNESCO marks semi-centennial anniversary of biosphere preservation

FAO/João Roberto Ripper I Farmers, who gatherer flowers in the Southern Espinhaço Mountain Range in Brazil, enhance biodiversity and preserve traditional knowledge.

“This is really a programme for the people, because people are part of nature…so they are incorporated in nature protection but also in sustainable use of natural resources”, said Miguel Clusener Godt, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) MAB Programme Secretary.

Where we stand

© UNESCO

Today 727 biosphere reserves integrate nature conservation and sustainable development in 131 countries, including 22 transboundary sites.

In Africa there are 86 sites in 31 countries; Arab States, 35 sites in 14 countries; Asia and the Pacific, 168 sites in 40 countries; Europe and North America 306 sites in 24 countries; and 132 sites in 24 Latin American and the Caribbean countries.

If bioreserves worldwide were to be put together, Mr. Godt said that they would be equivalent to about five per cent of the world’s surface, spanning  6,812,000 km² or “around the size of Australia”.  

Africa

The diverse vegetation and unique fauna in Tanzania’s Gombe Masito Ugalla Biosphere Reserve is also home to the largest chimpanzee community in the country and includes the Gombe National Park, forest land reserves and part of Lake Tanganyika.

Faunal species in the area include African elephants, ornate frogs and eight primate species.

© UNESCO I The core area of the Gombe Masito Ugalla Biosphere Reserve in Tanzania is endowed with natural, scenic, cultural and social attributes, including the largest chimpanzee community in the country.

Flora there includes a species discovered in, and named after, Gombe, while the biodiversity of Lake Tanganyika encompasses over 300 fish species, 250 bird species, and reptiles, such as the water cobra and the Tanganyika water snake. 

The core area of the Gombe Masito Ugalla Biosphere Reserve in Tanzania is endowed with natural, scenic, cultural and social attributes, including the largest chimpanzee community in the country.

Asia and the Pacific

The Maolan in China was listed as a biosphere reserve in 1996. It lies in the Qiannan Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou Province and covers an area of 20,000 hectares, with a forest coverage of 88.61 per cent.

Renowned for its “hugging trees” which cling tenaciously to the rocks of the mountain landscape, the rich biodiversity also includes pheasants, orchids and magnolias.

The local Yao, Buyi and Shui indigenous peoples value their region’s environment and cohabit harmoniously with nature. As the trees provide them with vital resources, for over 1,000 years local communities have performed ceremonial practices and rituals to care for the trees. 

Arab States

© UNESCO

Located on the western slopes of the Mount Lebanon range and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the 6,500-hectare biosphere reserve of Jabal Moussa encompasses the ‘Mount of Moses’ – an important site to Christian pilgrims – and its seven villages.

Jabal Moussa’s landscape, preserved throughout centuries, conceals the markings of a region at the meeting point of civilizations, which archaeologists are still unearthing.

Only 40 km to the north-east of Beirut, the biosphere reserve is three times as large as the city, and together with the Shouf and Jabal Rihane biosphere reserves forms an ecological corridor running along Lebanon’s mountainous backbone.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Located in south-east Uruguay, Bañados del Este harbours a remarkable complex of ecosystems, including white sand beaches, dunes and lagoons along the Atlantic coast and is home to diverse wildlife that remains almost intact both on land and at sea.

The biosphere reserve covers 12,500 km² of Uruguay’s eastern coast and is also home to the State’s highest summit, Cerro Catedral.

Hidden among the dunes, this tourist destination is among the most popular in the biosphere reserve and the perfect spot to connect with nature. Due to its remoteness, there is no connection to the local grid or landlines, but the local population is able to access mobile networks and the internet.

Europe

In Spain, transitioning to clean energy at the El Hierro Biosphere Reserve exemplifies ongoing efforts to live in harmony with nature.

The biosphere reserve covers the entire island and some of its waters, with 60 per cent of the island integrated into the core zone and buffer areas.

© UNESCO I El Hierro, a volcanic island in Spain, has an incredibly diverse landscape and a great variety of plant and animal life.

El Hierro is aiming to produce 100 per cent of its electricity from renewables.

Meanwhile, at least 2,604 species of flora and fauna have been recorded on the island, and the reserve is a safe-haven for species of friendly sea-faring mammals.

Wood burners cause nearly half of urban air pollution cancer risk – study

Damian Carrington
Environment editor

Exclusive: Wood smoke is a more important carcinogen than vehicle fumes, finds Athens analysis

Scientists warn that as well as polluting the air outside, wood burners triple the level of harmful pollution inside homes. Photograph: Parmorama/Alamy

Scientists warn that as well as polluting the air outside, wood burners triple the level of harmful pollution inside homes. Photograph: Parmorama/Alamy

Wood burning stoves in urban areas are responsible for almost half of people’s exposure to cancer-causing chemicals found in air pollution particles, new research has shown.

The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in tiny pollution particles are produced by burning fuels and have long been known to have carcinogenic effects. The new study examined the sources of the PAHs and found wood burning produced more than the diesel fuel or petrol used in vehicles.

The analysis was done in Athens, Greece, but the researchers were clear that this was not an unusual case. They said that home wood burning was a significant issue for urban air quality throughout Europe and that excessive exposure to wood smoke could cause severe health effects.

“Athens is not an exception – it’s more representative of a rule,” said Athanasios Nenes, at the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas in Patras, Greece, and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and one of the team behind the new study. “On the one hand, it’s: ‘Oh, my goodness, this is terrible.’ But on the other hand, it points to something people can actually do to reduce this risk without too much effort. You basically stop burning wood. That’s the bottom line.”

Research published in the last year has shown wood burning in homes is the single biggest source of small particle air pollution in the UK, producing three times more than road traffic, despite just 8% of the population using wood burners.

Even new wood burning stoves meeting the “ecodesign” standard still emit 750 times more tiny particle pollution than a modern HGV truck. Wood burners also triple the level of harmful pollution inside homes and should be sold with a health warning, according to scientists.

The new research, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, took background samples of the air in Athens every day for a year. These were analysed for 31 PAHs and a wide range of other chemical markers.

Specific compounds are associated with different sources of pollution and these enabled the scientists to calculate the proportion of PAHs produced by each source. They found 31% of annual PAHs came from wood burning, mostly in the winter, 33% from diesel and oil, and 29% from petrol (gasoline).

Some PAHs are more carcinogenic than others, however, and when this was taken into account, the proportion of the cancer risk to people as a result of wood burning rose to 43%, with diesel and oil at 36% and petrol at 17%.

“We know that [smoke from] wood burning is much more toxic than other types of particles,” said Nenes, and the results clearly highlight wood burning as a principal driver of long-term carcinogenic risk.

The level of PAH pollution in Athens was the same order of magnitude as found in studies of other European and North American cities, the researchers said, with much higher levels usually reported for cities in China.

The average annual concentration of the PAHs in the Athens study was below EU limits but double the World Health Organization’s reference level. Based on WHO data, the PAHs in Athens would be expected to cause 5 extra cancer cases for every 100,000 people, the researchers said.

“Given [the carcinogen exposure] and the extended usage of [wood] burning throughout Europe, eg France, Germany, Ireland and the UK, European action and policies aimed at the regulation of [wood] burning emissions are immediately required, as they can lead to considerable benefits for public health,” the scientists said.

Nenes said PAHs were not the only carcinogen in wood smoke, and it also had many other compounds that damaged health. “Wood smoke is particularly potent and causes all kinds of ailments from cancer to oxidative stress, which leads to heart attacks and strokes, obesity, premature ageing, diabetes – anything that has to do with inflammation in the body. So overall, I’m really worried about wood burning.”

Gary Fuller at Imperial College London, who was not part of the research team, said: “We tend to think that burning wood is somehow harmless, because wood is a natural product. These measurements remind us that wood burning is not pollution-free. The UK data on emissions of benzo(a)pyrene, one of the main PAHs, shows an increase of 16% since 2000 due to home wood burning.”

Prof Alison Tomlin at the University of Leeds, UK, said the move to electric cars would reduce PAH exposure from traffic. “However, unless suitable mitigation methods are developed to reduce PAH emissions from domestic wood burners and boilers, they will continue to pose a significant health risk.” she said.

The Athens study showed much of the PAH exposure occurred on winter days with low wind and rain, meaning the wood smoke did not disperse. Tomlin said implementing “no-burn days” at such times could be a useful short-term measure. “However, enforcing such a policy, or even wider restrictions on wood burning in densely populated areas, could be challenging,” she said.

Earlier in December, Utrecht council in the Netherlands announced subsidies of up to €2,000 (£1,700) to encourage people to replace their wood burning stoves and fireplaces in order to clean up the city’s air.

Earlier research by Nenes and colleagues found that wood smoke emitted at night time oxidised into more harmful compounds much faster than had been expected. This means the pollution becomes more dangerous to health while it is still concentrated near the source, rather than oxidising over a few days as it disperses.

Six dead giraffes: Kenya drought horror captured in single picture

Oliver Holmes

Aerial shot shows devastating effect of drought that has left people and animals without water

The bodies of six giraffes lie on the outskirts of Eyrib village in Sabuli wildlife conservancy. Photograph: Ed Ram/Getty Images

Six dead giraffes lie in a spiral on the dry earth, their bodies emaciated and interwoven. The aerial shot, taken by the photojournalist Ed Ram, shows the devastation of Kenya’s drought, which has left people and animals struggling for food and water.

Already weak, the animals had died after they got stuck in the mud, according to Getty Images. They were trying to reach a nearby reservoir, although it had almost dried up, the agency reported.

The carcasses were moved to the outskirts of Eyrib village in Wajir County to prevent contamination of the reservoir water.

The assistant chief of Eyrib village, Abdi Karim, looks at the bodies of the giraffes. Photograph: Ed Ram/Getty Images

It is not just animals that are at risk. An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans were facing starvation due to severe drought across half the state, the country’s drought management authority warned in September.

On Tuesday, the UN said 2.9 million people were still in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. Some areas of Kenya had recently reported their worst rainfall in decades, it said.

“Water sources for both people and livestock have dried up, forcing families to walk longer distances and causing tensions among communities, which has led to an increase in intercommunal conflict,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its assessment.

Separately, the local Star news website reported that 4,000 giraffes risked being wiped out by the drought.

Ibrahim Ali, from the Bour-Algi giraffe sanctuary, told the Star the situation had worsened due to farming along rivers, which blocked wildlife from drinking spots.

COP26 defined by ‘reinvigorated multilateralism’

UN NEWS

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), held last month in Glasgow, was defined by a “reinvigorated multilateralism”, a top UN official said on Tuesday during an online discussion on how the summit’s outcomes will impact climate action and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“The Glasgow Climate Pact to keep global warming to 1.5C and the other important commitments are a sign of progress”, UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) President Collen Kelapile told the special meeting.

Transform tragedy to opportunity

Ocean Image Bank/Brook Peterson I Coral reefs harbour the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem globally.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing our world & future generations. Joining @UNECOSOC @PEspinosaC @abdulla_shahid @andersen_inger @SelwinHart to share insights and reflections at #UNECOSOC briefing on the outcome of #COP26 for #ClimateAction and the #SDGs. pic.twitter.com/Fyl1k77TGr

— Achim Steiner (@ASteiner) December 14, 2021

As of last month, more than five million have now lost their lives during the pandemic and for the first time in over 20 years, extreme poverty increased as inequalities and gender-based violence rose, he said.

Yet, despite expressions of solidarity and commitments, vaccine equity remains elusive.

“As trillions are being spent on COVID-19 recovery, we must transform this tragedy into a historic opportunity…ensure that recovery efforts are aligned with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the goals of the Paris Agreement to ‘build forward better’”, stated Mr. Kelapile.

He urged the world to swap traditional “siloed” approaches for cross-sectoral decision-making and innovative solutions that “unlock synergies across government portfolios, sectors of the economy, and the SDGs”.

“Recovery packages and policies to address the impacts of the pandemic must also bolster climate action and promote the transformative changes we need to realize the objectives of Paris and Glasgow as well as the SDGs”, upheld the ECOSOC chief.

‘Best tool’ forward

General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid, acknowledged that COP26 outcomes fell short of what was hoped for.

“We saw this in watered down language and in climate targets that had yet to reach the ambition needed…[and] in the wide gap between promises and the policies needed to deliver upon those promises”, he explained.  

On the other hand, he continued, solace was found in the fact that steps were taken to keep 1.5C alive, and to ensure that humanity reaffirmed its trajectory.

“What we need now is to agree on the pace, and to implement the measures to accelerate and get there”, he said.  

He also affirmed that COP26 outcomes remain “our best tool going forward”.   

‘Building a bridge’

The Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Change body (UNFCCC), Patricia Espinosa, highlighted that during COP26, parties “built a bridge” between good intentions and measurable actions to lower emissions, increase resilience and provide much-needed finance.

“Now, we must build on this momentum to push actions forward in 2022”, she said.

Meanwhile, Selwin Hart, Special Adviser for Climate Action noted that from strong commitments to achieve the 1.5C goal to doubling adaptation finance, Glasgow demonstrated some “real progress”.

However, “we are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe and must go into the emergency mode to protect lives and livelihoods”, he argued, urging everyone to “get to work and make 2020s a decade to accelerate climate action”.

Bugs across globe are evolving to eat plastic, study finds

Damian Carrington Environment editor

Surprising discovery shows scale of plastic pollution and reveals enzymes that could boost recycling

Plastic washed ashore on Berawa Beach, Bali, Indonesia. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a study.

The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic.

The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.

The results “provide evidence of a measurable effect of plastic pollution on the global microbial ecology”, the scientists said.

Millions of tonnes of plastic are dumped in the environment every year, and the pollution now pervades the planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Reducing the amount of plastic used is vital, as is the proper collection and treatment of waste.

But many plastics are currently hard to degrade and recycle. Using enzymes to rapidly break down plastics into their building blocks would enable new products to be made from old ones, cutting the need for virgin plastic production. The new research provides many new enzymes to be investigated and adapted for industrial use.

“We found multiple lines of evidence supporting the fact that the global microbiome’s plastic-degrading potential correlates strongly with measurements of environmental plastic pollution – a significant demonstration of how the environment is responding to the pressures we are placing on it,” said Prof Aleksej Zelezniak, at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Jan Zrimec, also at Chalmers University, said: “We did not expect to find such a large number of enzymes across so many different microbes and environmental habitats. This is a surprising discovery that really illustrates the scale of the issue.”

The explosion of plastic production in the past 70 years, from 2m tonnes to 380m tonnes a year, had given microbes time to evolve to deal with plastic, the researchers said. The study, published in the journal Microbial Ecology, started by compiling a dataset of 95 microbial enzymes already known to degrade plastic, often found in bacteria in rubbish dumps and similar places rife with plastic.

The team then looked for similar enzymes in environmental DNA samples taken by other researchers from 236 different locations around the world. Importantly, the researchers ruled out potential false positives by comparing the enzymes initially identified with enzymes from the human gut, which is not known to have any plastic-degrading enzymes.

About 12,000 of the new enzymes were found in ocean samples, taken at 67 locations and at three different depths. The results showed consistently higher levels of degrading enzymes at deeper levels, matching the higher levels of plastic pollution known to exist at lower depths.

The soil samples were taken from 169 locations in 38 countries and 11 different habitats and contained 18,000 plastic-degrading enzymes. Soils are known to contain more plastics with phthalate additives than the oceans and the researchers found more enzymes that attack these chemicals in the land samples.

Nearly 60% of the new enzymes did not fit into any known enzyme classes, the scientists said, suggesting these molecules degrade plastics in ways that were previously unknown.

“The next step would be to test the most promising enzyme candidates in the lab to closely investigate their properties and the rate of plastic degradation they can achieve,” said Zelezniak. “From there you could engineer microbial communities with targeted degrading functions for specific polymer types.”

The first bug that eats plastic was discovered in a Japanese waste dump in 2016. Scientists then tweaked it in 2018 to try to learn more about how it evolved, but inadvertently created an enzyme that was even better at breaking down plastic bottles. Further tweaks in 2020 increased the speed of degradation sixfold.

Another mutant enzyme was created in 2020 by the company Carbios that breaks down plastic bottles for recycling in hours. German scientists have also discovered a bacterium that feeds on the toxic plastic polyurethane, which is usually dumped in landfills.

Last week, scientists revealed that the levels of microplastics known to be eaten by people via their food caused damage to human cells in the laboratory.

THE GREEN ROOM (Episode 16): Alberto Saldamando on Indigenous Activism for Better Climate and Global Environmental Justice

GREEN ROOM: LIVE WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

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Summary of the Discussion

This month’s episode focuses on Indigenous People's involvement in the achievement of a greener planet. the topic of discussion was Indigenous Activism for Better Climate and Global Environmental Justice. Our guest, Alberto Saldamando a legal activist for the Indigenous Environmental Network and an internationally acknowledged expert on human rights discusses extensively the marginalization of the indigenous community in decision making that affects their homeland. He further stated his active participation in the negotiations leading to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples.

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LISTEN TO PODCAST

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alberto Saldamando (Xicano/Zapoteca) is an internationally acknowledged expert on human rights/Indigenous rights and has represented Indigenous Peoples, organizations and communities from various countries from most regions of the world, before United Nations human rights mechanisms, as well as the International Labor Organization, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Dr. Jason J. McSparren is an educator, researcher, and administrator with a PhD. in Global Governance and Human Security from Massachusetts Boston.He is also a Pre-Doctoral Fellow (2017-18) for the West African Research Association (WARA).

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Favourite Quote

“Silence does not protect anybody from the state”

— Alberto Saldamando

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‘Disastrous’ plastic use in farming threatens food safety – UN

Damian Carrington
Environment editor

Food and Agriculture Organization says most plastics are burned, buried or lost after use

Farmers cover a field with plastic films in Yuli county, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, northern China. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

The “disastrous” way in which plastic is used in farming across the world is threatening food safety and potentially human health, according to a report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

It says soils contain more microplastic pollution than the oceans and that there is “irrefutable” evidence of the need for better management of the millions of tonnes of plastics used in the food and farming system each year.

The report recognizes the benefits of plastic in producing and protecting food, from irrigation and silage bags to fishing gear and tree guards. But the FAO said the use of plastics had become pervasive and that most were currently single-use and were buried, burned or lost after use. It also warned of a growing demand for agricultural plastics.

There is increasing concern about the microplastics formed as larger plastics are broken down, the report said. Microplastics are consumed by people and wildlife and some contain toxic additives and can also carry pathogens. Some marine animals are harmed by eating plastics but little is known about the impact on land animals or people.

“The report serves as a loud call for decisive action to curb the disastrous use of plastics across the agricultural sectors,” said Maria Helena Semedo, deputy director general at the FAO.

“Soils are one of the main receptors of agricultural plastics and are known to contain larger quantities of microplastics than oceans,” she said. “Microplastics can accumulate in food chains, threatening food security, food safety and potentially human health.”

Global soils are the source of all life on land but the FAO warned in December 2020 that their future looked “bleak” without action to halt degradation. Microplastic pollution is also a global problem, pervading the planet from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest ocean trenches.

The FAO report, which was reviewed by external experts, estimates 12.5m tonnes of plastic products were used in plant and animal production in 2019, and a further 37.3m in food packaging.

Plastic is a versatile material and cheap and easy to make into products, the report says. These include greenhouse and mulching films as well as polymer-coated fertiliser pellets, which release nutrients more slowly and efficiently.

“However, despite the many benefits, agricultural plastics also pose a serious risk of pollution and harm to human and ecosystem health when they are damaged, degraded or discarded in the environment,” the report says.

Data on plastic use is limited, it says, but Asia was estimated to be the largest user, accounting for about half of global usage. Furthermore, the global demand for major products such as greenhouse, mulching and silage films is expected to rise by 50% by 2030.

Only a small fraction of agricultural plastics are collected and recycled. The FAO said: “The urgency for coordinated and decisive action cannot be understated.”

Prof Jonathan Leake, at the University of Sheffield in the UK and a panel member of the UK Sustainable Soils Alliance, said: “Plastic pollution of agricultural soils is a pervasive, persistent problem that threatens soil health throughout much of the world.”

He said the impact of plastic was poorly understood, although adverse effects had been seen on earthworms, which played a crucial role in keeping soils and crops healthy.

“We are currently adding large amounts of these unnatural materials into agricultural soils without understanding their long-term effects,” he said. “In the UK the problems are especially serious because of our applications of large amounts of plastic-contaminated sewage sludges and composts. We need to remove the plastics [from these] before they are added to land, as it is impossible to remove them afterwards.”

As a solution, the FAO report cites “the 6R model” – refuse, redesign, reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover. This means adopting farming practices that avoid plastic use, substituting plastic products with natural or biodegradable alternatives, promoting reusable plastic products and improving plastic waste management.

The world's newest nation is both drying up and drowning

Bentiu, South Sudan (CNN)

Many of the main roads running through Unity State are now completely submerged, yet the traffic remains. There are no cars, just people, some of whom swim, others wade, pushing their way through the heavy silt-laden water. The more fortunate glide by on canoes with their livestock and whatever possessions they could salvage from the floods.

In this traffic, between the cities of Bentiu and Ding Ding, is a group of women, pushing to dislodge their makeshift raft that has become stuck in mud, weighed down by six children. The men in the family went back north to keep their cattle safe, and the women were left to push for four days in the hope of reaching higher ground. Along the way, their food ran out, said one of the women, named Nereka. Her 5-month-old baby wails as she talks.

"Of course, I'm worried about my children," she said. "That's why we keep moving."

Ravaged by years of conflict, there has barely been enough peacetime in the world's newest nation to begin building. Only 200 kilometers of its roads are paved. Now, South Sudan is dealing with biblical floods that began as early as June and were made worse by the climate crisis, which it had little hand in creating.

Young displaced people return to a camp from Bentiu.

A hut with a straw roof pokes out from the floodwaters in the town of Ding Ding.

This deluge, which is the worst in 60 years according to the UN, has swallowed not only the very roads that people here need to escape, but also their farms, homes and markets.

For years, South Sudan has been experiencing wetter-than-normal wet seasons, while its dry seasons are becoming even drier. The rainy season has ended, yet the water that has accumulated over months has yet to recede.

South Sudan is one of many places in the world struggling with this twin problem of drought followed by extreme rainfall, which together create prime conditions for devastating floods.

More than 850,000 people have been impacted by the floods, the UN agency coordinating the relief effort there told CNN, and some 35,000 of them have been displaced.

Remote towns like Ding Ding now sit largely abandoned. The traditional straw roofs of many homes here peak above the waterline, their walls still submerged.

Some people searching for food here have resorted to eating the lilies that have started to sprout on the floodwater's surface, as an entirely new ecosystem begins to form in this radically changed landscape.

It's a grim picture for a country that is only 10 years old. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, just two and a half years later, South Sudan descended into a brutal civil war that only ended last year. Deadly, inter-communal violence continues to be common as people fight over increasingly scarce grazing land.

Competing for resources

South Sudan is no stranger to seasonal flooding, but officials in Unity State say they haven't seen anything on this scale since the early 1960s. Ninety percent of the state's land has been affected by the flooding, and the next rainy season is only five months away. Officials in Bentiu say they are worried the situation will only get worse.

"We are told the water behind me will not go now, it will not recede or dry up. It's going to take a while because it's deep water," said Minister Lam Tungwar Kueigwong, the state's minister of land, housing and public utilities.

Scientists are now able to calculate how much the climate crisis may have played a role in most extreme weather events. But in this part of the world, it is notoriously difficult to measure with certainty because it has such huge variations in its natural climate to begin with.

Making projections for drought is particularly hard here, but what scientists do know is that the more the Earth warms, the more the Horn of Africa and its surrounding countries will experience extreme rainfall, making it more susceptible to flooding. That's largely because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, which triggers more rain.

The world is already 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was before it began industrializing, and Africa overall is seeing higher rises in temperature than the global average.

To those dealing with this problem in South Sudan, the climate crisis is clearly here already and offers the rest of the world a glimpse of what complications it could bring.

"We are feeling climate change. We are feeling it," said John Payai Manyok, the country's Deputy Director for Climate Change.

"We are feeling droughts, we are feeling floods. And this is becoming a crisis. It's leading to food insecurity, it's leading to more conflict within the area because people are competing for the little resources that are available."

While droughts and floods may seem like polar opposites, they have more of a relationship than is obvious.

A woman carries her baby on her head as she wades through the floodwaters.

"After you've had a long period of drought, soil may be hardened, may be very dry, and so you're going to get more (rainwater) runoff, and that will exacerbate the risk of flooding," said Caroline Wainwright, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, who studies the East African region.

"And all this potentially aids bigger storms too, and more intense rainfall. That's something we might expect to see more of -- periods of drying and these really intense storms."

The question now is not only how to clean up the mess, but how to adapt to better withstand these extreme weather disasters.

Like many nations suffering the worst impacts of the climate crisis, South Sudan accounts for 0.004% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The US, by contrast, accounts for more than 15%. But much of the suffering here comes from a lack of tools and systems to prevent an extreme weather event turning into a humanitarian disaster.

Still, the industrialized world, which played the biggest role in the climate crisis, is still failing to deliver on a $100 billion a year it promised the developing world to help it cut emissions and adapt to the enormous changes. A UN report released in last month found that adaptation costs in the developing worlds are already five to 10 times greater than current funding. By mid-century, it is expected to reach $500 billion dollars.

While its neighboring countries move ahead building dams and more permanent dikes, South Sudan has failed to adapt and remains at the mercy of its rivers, Manyok said. Human activity is also worsening the health of rivers and their capacity to hold water in during heavy rainfall.

Manyok said the country desperately needs to adapt.

"We must introduce technologies which are water friendly and efficient, and along the Nile, we must construct dams and remove the siltation," Manyok said.

Siltation is usually caused by sediment or soil erosion, and can build up in rivers and block the natural flow of water, exacerbating flooding.

The town of Rubkona.

A UN mission repairs a damaged dike.

A school destroyed

Swaths of Rubkona, a market town next to Unity State's capital Bentiu, have been abandoned. The markets and homes here sit ghostlike, submerged under water that continues to rise at a slow, tortuous pace.

Nearby, Pakistani engineers from the UN mission are using the few heavy machines available to repair and strengthen a hastily constructed mud dike that has kept the airport and a camp of nearly 120,000 displaced people on dry ground. UN officials say a breach here would be catastrophic.

The battle is constant as each day water continues to crawl up the dike's wall. It seeps across the red clay road toward the runway and the camp's gates.

The vast majority of the IDP's arrived years ago, having fled South Sudan's brutal civil war. They are now sharing space and increasingly limited resources with the new arrivals.

A Doctors Without Borders hospital inside the camp is over capacity. Staff are treating a massive spike in the number of malnourished babies since the flooding began.

"We had 130 cases in the past month. Previously, we might have 30-40 in a month," Managing Director Kie John Kuol said.

Back in Ding Ding, the town's school, which was rebuilt in 2017 after it burned down during the civil war, is also partially submerged in the water -- progress is once again suspended. According to UNICEF, the flooding has destroyed, closed, or impeded access to more than 500 schools in South Sudan.

Kuol Gany, a school teacher, is worried he will need to leave his hometown soon.

As teacher Kuol Gany tours his classroom, the water reaches his knees. Behind him is a chalkboard scrawled with equations and English-language definitions for words.

"Relief is the assistance given to the people during disaster," one definition reads.

Gany only had a few years of teaching in this new building before the floods hit. He worries he'll have to abandon it, and even his town, for good.

"It's still increasing, the water," he said. "There are diseases and there are snakebites. And we are drinking this water too.".

James Ling, a resident of Ding Ding, said he returned briefly to see what he could salvage from his home of eight years. He waded through the water to reach his home, only to find nothing left, except for his children's drawings on the walls.

"Since the conflict erupted, we have never had a rest," he said. "We have been constantly running, displaced. Our children have had no relief from the dangers."

Pacific Ocean garbage patch is immense plastic habitat

Victoria Gill
BBC NEWS

Scientists have discovered marine animals living on plastic debris in an area of the open ocean dubbed "the Great Pacific Garbage Patch".

OCEAN VOYAGES INSTITUTE I The researchers collaborated with the Ocean Voyages Institute to collect ocean debris

Many of the creatures are coastal species, living miles from their usual habitats, on a patch halfway between the coast of California and Hawaii.

Plants and animals, including anemones, tiny marine bugs, molluscs and crabs, were found on 90% of the debris.

Scientists are concerned that plastic may help transport invasive species.

The study examined plastic items more than 5cm (2in) in diameter gathered from a gyre - an area where circulating currents cause floating debris to accumulate - in the Pacific.

Lead researcher Dr Linsey Haram, who carried out the work at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre, said: "Plastics are more permanent than many of the natural debris that you previously have seen in the open ocean. They're creating a more permanent habitat in this area."

Dr Haram worked with the Ocean Voyages Institute, a charity that collects plastic pollution on sailing expeditions, and with oceanographers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

SMITHSONIAN I More than half the items the researchers examined contained species usually found on the coast

The world has at least five plastic-infested gyres. This one is thought to hold the most floating plastic - an estimated 79,000 tonnes in a region of more than 610,000 square miles (1.6m sq km).

"All sorts of stuff ends up out there," said Dr Haram. "It's not an island of plastic, but there's definitely a large amount of plastic corralled there."

Much of that is micro-plastic - very difficult to see with the naked eye. But there are also larger items, including abandoned fishing nets, buoys and even vessels that have been floating in the gyre since the Japanese tsunami in 2011.

The researchers, who reported their findings in the journal Nature Communications, initially embarked on the investigation following that devastating tsunami.

REUTERS I The research began following the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan, which sent tonnes of debris into the Pacific Ocean

The disaster caused tonnes of debris to be ejected into the Pacific ocean, and hundreds of coastal Japanese marine species were found alive on items that landed on the shores of the North American Pacific coast and the Hawaiian Islands.

"We want to get a handle on how plastics may be a transport for invasive species to coasts," Dr Haram told BBC News.

Some of the organisms the researchers found on the plastic items they examined were open-ocean species - organisms that survive by "rafting" on floating debris. But the most eye-opening finding, Dr Haram said, was the diversity of coastal species on the plastic.

"Well over half of the items had coastal species on them," she said. "That creates a lot of questions about what it means to be a coastal species."

The scientists said the discovery highlighted another "unintended consequence" of plastic pollution - a problem only expected to grow.

One previous study estimated that a total of 25,000 million tonnes of plastic waste would be generated by 2050.