The world's banks must start to value nature and stop paying for its destruction

Robert Watson

As a new report spells out how financial institutions contribute to biodiversity loss, the clamour is growing for a new approach

Banks lent $2.6tn linked to ecosystem and wildlife destruction in 2019 –report

A damselfly covered in oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Banks are being urged to stop financing fossil fuels and other sectors that contribute to biodiversity loss. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

The scientific community has long been unequivocal about biodiversity destruction. Last month, the UN reported that the world had failed to meet fully any of the 2020 Aichi bioiversity targets that countries agreed with fanfare in 2010, even as it found that biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying.

This week’s Bankrolling Extinction report finds that financial institutions provide the capital that is funding over-exploitation of our lands and seas, putting biodiversity in freefall. Last year, the world’s 50 biggest banks provided $2.6tn (£1.9tn) in loans and other credit to sectors with a high impact on biodiversity, such as forestry and agriculture. Bank by bank, the report authors found a cavalier ignorance of – or indifference to – the implications, with the vast majority unaware of their impact on biodiversity. In short, this report is a frightening statement of the status quo.

Fortunately, signs are emerging that some governments are – slowly – taking aim at financial backers of the destruction of the natural world. They must now push more forcefully. In the wake of Covid-19, treasury cupboards may be bare, but with new policies and limited recovery funds, they can steer trillions of dollars of private capital towards a nature-positive response to coronavirus, to spur growth, prosperity and resilience without returning to business as usual over-consumption and climate and biodiversity risk.

Voices from economics and finance are starting to add impetus and rationale for such momentum. One of the world’s foremost business groups, the World Economic Forum (WEF), has recognised the economic importance of nature. In its annual Global Risks Report, published earlier this year, WEF found that for the first time environmental risks dominated perceived business threats. Biodiversity loss was considered among the five most impactful and most likely risks in the next decade, with concerns ranging from the potential collapse of food and health systems to the disruption of entire supply chains.

And Cambridge University professor of economics Partha Dasgupta will describe in a forthcoming report how we are running down our precious natural capital because we have omitted to value nature. Dasgupta has said that the “asset management problem” resulting from this economic oversight requires us to become far more efficient about how we use our planet’s precious natural resources.

Smart financial institutions are aware that biodiversity regulation is coming. The first recommendation of the Bankrolling Extinction report is, quite rightly, for banks “to disclose and radically reduce their impact on nature and stop finance for new fossil fuels, deforestation, overfishing and ecosystem destruction”. I see three critical actions governments can take.

First, they should set an example in biodiversity-positive finance, by diverting harmful agricultural subsidies to promote a shift to less damaging activities.

Agriculture is the leading cause of biodiversity loss today. The Paulson Institute recently estimated that, at $450bn annually, the value of agricultural subsidies harmful to biodiversity exceeds the cost of paying farmers to use nature-friendly practices. In other words, diverting harmful subsidies to pay farmers to protect biodiversity can lead to a net saving.

In this case, Britain could be a leading light, if it can get right its planned overhaul of agricultural subsidies post-Brexit, replacing crop-based payments with environmental payments. Last week, the EU also recognised that we need to make farming more environmentally friendly.

Second, governments should direct their development banks to use their cash and convening power to become global role models for reporting and reducing their impacts on biodiversity.

There are 450 development finance institutions (DFIs) worldwide, which invest $2tn annually. Many have just one shareholder, their national government, and as such they can be a powerful financial lever of political goals, including to conserve and restore biodiversity. DFIs could become world leaders by showing commercial banks that the data and methods to allow them to measure and reduce their impact on biodiversity already exist. It would be wonderful if they could announce such an initiative at the first-ever global meeting of all 450 DFIs, at the Finance in Common Summit in November.

And third, financial regulators and central banks could make such biodiversity risk reporting a condition of licensing of financial institutions. The Dutch Central Bank has already taken a first step, in its recent report, Indebted to Nature. Having identified biodiversity-related risks exceeding €800bn (£725bn) at Dutch financial institutions, the bank concluded that financial institutions should spell out the risks they face from loss of biodiversity.

Once they report their impacts on biodiversity, financial institutions will have to reduce them, under pressure from stakeholders including citizens and financial regulators, and they will pass this pressure on to the companies they invest in. We saw a glimpse of this in action, when the world’s biggest asset manager, BlackRock, this month joined a shareholder revolt, demanding that the world’s biggest consumer group, Procter & Gamble, specifically measures and reports the impact the company has on forests.

At a time of regulatory change, doing the minimum is a dangerous strategy. In the case of biodiversity, the minimum bar is likely to move constantly upwards for the foreseeable future. By going beyond, investors can seize the opportunity, rather than focusing on solely avoiding risk. Funds specialising in environmental social and governance priorities highlight this opportunity. Such funds are now worth more than $1tn, and could exceed the value of conventional funds by 2025 in Europe, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis.

By paving the way for private capital in this way, governments can set new biodiversity goals for 2030 at the UN’s conference on biodiversity in Kunming next May with the confidence that they will not again be shamefully missed.

The Green Digest: Secondhand cars and climate change, Europe second-wave coronavirus and Food wastage reduction

AIR POLLUTION: The age-long practice of richer countries sending millions of used and dirtier cars into poorer countries is now being questioned. The United States and Europe have advocated for cleaner vehicles at home while they ironically export their old and dirty vehicles to poor countries. The United Nations have warned about the serious environmental and health hazard posed by this unregulated trade. According to a report by United Nations Environment Program, it was revealed that between 2015 and 2018 about 14 million cars were exported by the United States, European Union and Japan. About 70% of these cars found their way in low income countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. According to the New York Times, more than 90% of the cars driven in Kenya and Nigeria are secondhand. Sadly, most of these vehicles do not meet minimum standards of air pollution, and investigators in Netherlands have reported that most of these cars have their pollution controls removed to harvest the valuable metals they contain. The end result of this transaction is an endless loop of challenges with air pollution which eventually induces climate change.

COVID-19: After months of untold havoc brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists predict that the world is yet to experience a second wave of the virus. Reports in Germany, according to Ifo Business Climate Index reading, have brought a dismal hope to economic recovery. People fear that a second wave of attack will place new restrictions leading to economic damage. According to a survey done by Germany’s KfW development bank, more than one million jobs would be lost among small and medium enterprises due to the pandemic. Also, Germany’s central bank has warned other banks to prepare for insolvencies in the first quarter of 2021.

FOOD WASTAGE: Statistics in the food industry has set the tone for smart food companies to curb wastes and be integrated into the circular economy. According to Forbes, $1 trillion food worth is wasted annually, and the food system accounts for a quarter of all carbon emissions. A game changer in the food waste reduction is Olio, which is an app that connects people who don’t need their food (and other things) to their neighbors who need them. Olio has gained traction as a global movement with over 2 million users in 50 countries. Other companies and their innovative methods of handling food waste include: Karma which lets you eat out on a budget by rescuing unsold meals that you pay 50% less than the usual price for, and Oddbox helps you to “Rescue odd and surplus fruit and veg directly from the farm and help save the planet”

UNITED NATIONS: As the United Nations commemorates its 75th anniversary regionally, youths are encouraged to lend their voices for sustainable development action. According to a special video message from the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, “The United Nations not only stands with you; the United Nations belongs to you and is you: we the people.” While giving her address, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana emphasized the possibility of international agreements through “enhanced multilateral cooperation and development partnership.”

'Zombie batteries’ causing hundreds of waste fires, experts warn

“Zombie batteries” are causing hundreds of fires a year at waste and recycling sites, industry experts have warned. They are urging people to ensure dead batteries are not thrown away in household rubbish or recycling.

Batteries discarded with general waste are likely to be crushed or punctured during collection and processing and can ignite or explode. Photograph: Maureen McLean/REX/Shutterstock

Batteries discarded with general waste are likely to be crushed or punctured during collection and processing, according to the Environmental Services Association (Esa). Some types, particularly lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries, can ignite or explode when damaged and set fire to other materials. In some cases, this leads to incidents requiring dozens of firefighters and the evacuation of residents, potentially putting lives at risk.

Lithium-ion batteries are believed to have been responsible for at least 250 fires at recycling and waste facilities across the UK in the year to March 2020. These fires represented more than a third of all fires reported, up from a quarter the year before.

“Zombie batteries” are causing hundreds of fires a year at waste and recycling sites, industry experts have warned. They are urging people to ensure dead batteries are not thrown away in household rubbish or recycling.

Batteries discarded with general waste are likely to be crushed or punctured during collection and processing, according to the Environmental Services Association (Esa). Some types, particularly lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries, can ignite or explode when damaged and set fire to other materials. In some cases, this leads to incidents requiring dozens of firefighters and the evacuation of residents, potentially putting lives at risk.

Lithium-ion batteries are believed to have been responsible for at least 250 fires at recycling and waste facilities across the UK in the year to March 2020. These fires represented more than a third of all fires reported, up from a quarter the year before.Lithium-ion batteries are typically found in laptops, tablets, mobile phones, Bluetooth devices, shavers, electric toothbrushes, power tools and e-cigarettes. They are increasingly prevalent in devices, says Esa, meaning the problem is likely to get worse unless people change their behaviour.

People in the UK throw away 22,000 tonnes of batteries a year, according to Esa, but only 45% are recycled properly.

“Fires caused by carelessly discarded batteries endanger lives, cause millions of pounds of damage and disrupt waste services,” said Jacob Hayler, Esa’s executive director. “We urge consumers to please recycle batteries responsibly by using battery recycling points in shops and recycling centres, or a separate battery kerbside collection if available.”

Mark Andrews, who leads on waste fires for the National Fire Chiefs Council, said: “Batteries in household waste and recycling can lead to large-scale and protracted fires. These incidents are often very challenging for fire services to deal with and can cause significant disruption to communities.”

Esa’s new Take Charge campaign asks the public to “join the fight against zombie batteries” and gives information on where to recycle batteries responsibly.

Alarm as Arctic sea ice not yet freezing at latest date on record

Alarm as Arctic sea ice not yet freezing at latest date on record

Delayed freeze in Laptev Sea could have knock-on effects across polar region, scientists say

Climate change is pushing warmer Atlantic currents into the Arctic and breaking up the usual stratification between warm deep waters and the cool surface. This also makes it difficult for ice to form. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

For the first time since records began, the main nursery of Arctic sea ice in Siberia has yet to start freezing in late October.

The delayed annual freeze in the Laptev Sea has been caused by freakishly protracted warmth in northern Russia and the intrusion of Atlantic waters, say climate scientists who warn of possible knock-on effects across the polar region.

Ocean temperatures in the area recently climbed to more than 5C above average, following a record breaking heatwave and the unusually early decline of last winter’s sea ice.

The trapped heat takes a long time to dissipate into the atmosphere, even at this time of the year when the sun creeps above the horizon for little more than an hour or two each day.

Graphs of sea-ice extent in the Laptev Sea, which usually show a healthy seasonal pulse, appear to have flat-lined. As a result, there is a record amount of open sea in the Arctic.

For the first time since records began, the Laptev sea has yet to start freezing by late October

Guardian graphic. Source: Noaa

“The lack of freeze-up so far this fall is unprecedented in the Siberian Arctic region,” said Zachary Labe, a postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State University. He says this is in line with the expected impact of human-driven climate change.

“2020 is another year that is consistent with a rapidly changing Arctic. Without a systematic reduction in greenhouse gases, the likelihood of our first ‘ice-free’ summer will continue to increase by the mid-21st century,’ he wrote in an email to the Guardian.

This year’s Siberian heatwave was made at least 600 times more likely by industrial and agricultural emissions, according to an earlier study.

The warmer air temperature is not the only factor slowing the formation of ice. Climate change is also pushing more balmy Atlantic currents into the Arctic and breaking up the usual stratification between warm deep waters and the cool surface. This also makes it difficult for ice to form.

“This continues a streak of very low extents. The last 14 years, 2007 to 2020, are the lowest 14 years in the satellite record starting in 1979,” said Walt Meier, senior research scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. He said much of the old ice in the Arctic is now disappearing, leaving thinner seasonal ice. Overall the average thickness is half what it was in the 1980s.

The downward trend is likely to continue until the Arctic has its first ice-free summer, said Meier. The data and models suggest this will occur between 2030 and 2050. “It’s a matter of when, not if,” he added.

Scientists are concerned the delayed freeze could amplify feedbacks that accelerate the decline of the ice cap. It is already well known that a smaller ice sheet means less of a white area to reflect the sun’s heat back into space. But this is not the only reason the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the global average.

The Laptev Sea is known as the birthplace of ice, which forms along the coast there in early winter, then drifts westward carrying nutrients across the Arctic, before breaking up in the spring in the Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. If ice forms late in the Laptev, it will be thinner and thus more likely to melt before it reaches the Fram Strait. This could mean fewer nutrients for Arctic plankton, which will then have a reduced capacity to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

More open sea also means more turbulence in the upper layer of the Arctic ocean, which draws up more warm water from the depths.

Dr Stefan Hendricks, a sea ice physics specialist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, said the sea ice trends are grim but not surprising. “It is more frustrating than shocking. This has been forecast for a long time, but there has been little substantial response by decision-makers.”

The Green Digest: Peace, Insurgence, Pollution and Sustainability

AFRICA: Sudan consistent war crimes have led to the rallying cries of the “End the Wars” and “Peace in our Land” campaign. The united nation estimated that over 300 000 people died and about 2.6 million were displaced during the first Darfurian conflict. The 40-year long war it engaged with south Sudan led to its secession, and the call for peace has been long overdue. However, analysts say that perilous time lies ahead and all Sudanese must be patient for peace to have its way.

COVID-19: The insurgencies sponsored globally as a result of the pandemic have increasingly brought concerns to global leaders as they fear the uprising of right-wing extremism. The logic behind the agitation is that these extremists could capitalize on social movements such as #BlackLivesMatter #MeToo, #EndSars to propagate violence and crimes against humanity.

The impacts of the pandemic restrictions have placed over-reaching consequences on the access to health care facilities. These restrictions have led to increasing health complications and mental illnesses. The lockdown has indeed created challenges to pre-existing medical conditions, leading to complications.

POLLUTION: Fishermen in Trinidad and Tobago have raised alarm about a sinking ship vessel in the Caribbean. The shipping vessel known as the Nabarima is Venezuelan owned in conjunction with Italian Energy Giant, ENI. The Nabarima is recorded to have a length of 264 meters and oil capacity of 1.4 million barrels. If the oil spills it would be five times worse than the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill of Alaska in 1989.

UNITED NATIONS: With remaining a decade to go, the UN have called upon private investors to pool their resources together in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. These investors are to portray their social responsibilities by financing systemic issues facing the environment and human prosperity.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has empowered women to take a leading role in the fight against climate change. According to their predisposition, women should not be seen as mere victims of climate change but should be viewed as environmental stewards capable of effecting change in their locality. Their impact is greatly felt due to crucial roles they play in their families and communities.

British Parliament To Discuss Sanctions Against Nigeria As Over 100,000 Petitioners Sign Online Request

The British parliament is set to discuss sanctions against Nigeria as more than 100,000 petitioners have signed an online request.

The new sanctions regime allows individuals and entities that violate human rights around the world to be targeted.

If found guilty, sanctions will be imposed on members of the Nigerian government and police force involved in any human rights abuses.

There have been deeply concerning reports of a Nigerian police force unit (SARS) engaging in illegal activities and human rights abuses, and there have also been reports of police firing at protestors calling for SARS to be disbanded.

Deploying sanctions would provide accountability for and be a deterrent to anyone involved in violations of human rights.

The Parliament considers all petitions that get more than 100,000 signatures for a debate.

Polluted air killing half a million babies a year across globe

Fiona Harvey
Environment correspondent

State of Global Air report says indoor air quality causing two-thirds of the deaths and affecting health in the womb

Air pollution last year caused the premature death of nearly half a million babies in their first month of life, with most of the infants being in the developing world, data shows.

Exposure to airborne pollutants is harmful also for babies in the womb. It can cause a premature birth or low birth weight. Both of these factors are associated with higher infant mortality.

Nearly two-thirds of the 500,000 deaths of infants documented were associated with indoor air pollution, particularly arising from solid fuels such as charcoal, wood, and animal dung for cooking.

The discovery is reported in the State of Global Air 2020 report, which examined data on deaths around the world alongside a growing body of research that links air pollution with health problems.

Medical experts have warned for years of the impacts of dirty air on older people and on those with health conditions, but are only beginning to understand the deadly toll on babies in the womb.

Katherine Walker, principal scientist at the Health Effects Institute, which published the report, said: “We don’t totally understand what the mechanisms are at this stage, but there is something going on that is causing reductions in baby growth and ultimately birth weight. There is an epidemiological link, shown across multiple countries in multiple studies.”

Babies born with a low birth weight are more susceptible to childhood infections and pneumonia. The lungs of pre-term babies can also not be fully developed.

“They are born into a high pollution environment, and are more susceptible than children who went to term,” said Dan Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute in the US.

Beate Ritz, professor of epidemiology at UCLA, (University of California, Los Angeles), who was not involved with the study, said the indoor air pollution in cities across India, south-east Asia and Africa was comparable to that of Victorian London.

“This is not the air pollution we see in modern cities [in the rich world] but that which we had 150 years ago in London and other places, where there were coal fires indoors. Indoor air pollution has not been at the forefront for policymakers, but it should be,” Ritz said.

She pointed out that the harm to children went beyond the deaths; reducing air pollution would also lessen harm to survivors. “There is also damage to the brain and other organs from this pollution, so just surviving is not enough – we need to reduce air pollution because of the impact on all these organs too,” she said.

Some of these effects are likely to have existed, unnoticed, for centuries, as people have long cooked upon fires in enclosed spaces, an activity that causes particulate matter to be breathed in, particularly by women and children, who spend more time in the home.

However, the problem is now compounded by the population density of many developing cities and by outdoor air pollution from vehicles and industry. These factors mean there is now no escape from dirty air, from morning to night, for hundreds of millions of people.

The report concentrates on data from 2019, so does not include the impacts of the lockdown policies around the world in 2020. The authors said the Covid-19 pandemic would have had an impact on air quality and deaths from air pollution, but these effects were not yet clear.

Greenbaum said the likelihood of any long-term beneficial impact to health from the temporary reductions in air pollution because of lockdowns was small, but that the sudden clearing of pollution from traffic and industry had changed many people’s perception of air quality.

“People all of a sudden realised what it is like to have beautiful blue skies on a regular basis. Even if it did not last it showed what was possible,” Greenbaum said.

Some studies have suggested that people exposed to air pollution could have a higher risk of death from Covid-19, but these are early findings. Greenbaum said more work was needed to establish what difference was made by exposure to air pollution.

The scientists said there had been little sign of improvement in air pollution over the past 10 years, despite increased warnings over the risks from dirty air in the past five years.

At least 6.7 million deaths globally in 2019 were from long-term exposure to air pollution, a factor raising the risk of stroke, heart attack, diabetes, lung cancer and other chronic lung diseases. Air pollution is now the fourth highest cause of death globally, just below smoking and poor diet.

The State of Global Air Report 2020 is published by the Health Effects Institute, which is an independent nonprofit research organisation funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency and others.

The Green Digest: Nigeria Endsars Protest and other pressing issues

GREEN DAILY DIGEST AFRICA: As the #EndSARS protest continues unabated, renowned hack-tivists, Anonymous have shown their ingenuity once again by hacking into the official website of Central Bank of Nigeria and the twitter account of National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) as a form of cyber protest. Although the ethical reasons behind all these can be debated, but it seems like the protesters are gaining momentum and solidarity around the world. The wife of Lagos state governor, Nigeria, Dr. Mrs. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, speaking at this year’s International Day of Rural Women, emphasized the need for girls and rural women to be resilient against climate change. She urged stakeholders to pay more attention to the needs and challenges of this vulnerable group as they are contributors to socioeconomic development. In Zimbabwe, a farming project for rural innovation has failed due to inconsistency with local contexts. There are various rural complexities and peculiarities that must be taken into consideration before rural agricultural innovations will be successful. Therefore, for policy intervention, research and innovations to be deemed fit; the ideologies and contexts of the locale must be prioritized. COVID-19: In the United States, the daily average Coronavirus infection is equivalent to about 55, 000 new cases. However, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci says that things would have to get "really, really bad" for him to advocate for a national lockdown. CLIMATE CHANGE: The severity of climate change is unarguably one of the most debilitating of global human crises. A recent survey by Pew Research Center, a US-based non- partisan think tank reveals that in spite of the fatalities of the pandemic, a lot of people are of the opinion that the negative impacts of climate change remains a priority. According to the report, “A median of 70% across 14 countries surveyed over the summer say climate change is a major threat to their country. A similar median, 69%, say the same of the spread of infectious diseases.” CIRCULAR ECONOMY: Europe is gaining traction in their bid to implement a circular economy. Sadly, an average European has an ecological foot print of 4.7 global hectares per person, as against the global biocapacity of 1.7 global hectares per person. This would require three more earths to sustain human population if we all expended the same ecological footprints.

The Green Digest: Untold Toxicological impact of Chemicals and other global concerns

AFRICA: The perspective of Africa’s colonialism from the lens of a political administration has brought skeptical reviews from African historians. Highlighting Nigeria as an example, Colonialism has been more of commercial motives rather than nationalistic aspirations. The British rulers were more concerned about companies protecting their trading rights than establishing the communal rights of indigenes.

COVID-19: The environmental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has set in motion two choices that humanity would have to embrace for environmental wellbeing: on one hand, we could accept the Great Reset initiative and become eco-conscious in our economic reformations or on the other hand we wait for another global catastrophe to impress earth’s restraining capacity. The paradox of this global catastrophe will indeed do more harm than good to humanity as evident in this pandemic.

HEALTH: Man-made chemicals have untold consequences to human biology. These artificial chemicals have a way of disrupting biological processes such as aging, metabolism, and the immune system. According to American Chemical Society, CAS, there have been 167 million registered chemicals in 2020, and according to the Royal Society of Chemistry, less than 1% of these chemicals have been tested in the US. The result of this is untold toxicological effects on human health.

SUSTAINABILITY: Disregarding environmental mysticism and eschatology about the vengeance of the earth against negative human activities does not reduce the drastic impact of climate change. What will the world be like in a post COVID era? Expert opinions reveal that most countries, especially in Europe are bracing up to take the challenge of leading a green world post COVID-19.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA: The role of the private sector in the eradication of poverty and inequality is crucial to sustainable development. The United Nations in collaboration with the Global Compact Network of Businesses in Thailand are making sustainable innovations towards achieving a sustainable post-pandemic world. Such innovations include recycling of 500 billion plastics yearly by 2025, the use of electric motorcycle taxis, and the manufacture of biocups from palm trees rather than plastic cups from oil.

UNITED STATES: The importance of the United States upcoming election cannot be overemphasized. It will indeed be a game changer for global response against climate change. The US stands as the world second largest emitter of carbon after China, and another four years of Trump’s administration will see the race to carbon neutrality tossed aside indefinitely.

The Green Digest: World Food Day 2020 Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together

The Green Institute

World Food Day should not be erroneously construed to mean a day for excessive eating or to encourage unhealthy eating habits. It proposes a scientific and empathetic evaluation of the global food system. As the website of the World Food Day, United States appropriately phrases it, “it is a day of action against hunger”. Furthermore, the FAO of the United Nations affirmed the importance of World Food Day by saying,

“World Food Day is calling for global solidarity to help all populations, and especially the most vulnerable, to recover from the crisis, and to make food systems more resilient and robust so they can withstand increasing volatility and climate shocks, deliver affordable and sustainable healthy diets for all, and decent livelihoods for food system workers.”

This serves as a reminder that in handling global challenges such as food insecurity, multilateralism always trumps unilateral approaches. We cannot sit back and fold our arms as food insecurity rages unfettered. We must rise to the occasion amidst the COVID-19 pandemic because our collective action determines our collective future.

As the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) marks its 75th anniversary on World Food Day with the theme Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together., we should bear in mind that the fight against chronic hunger and malnutrition is unending. The current pandemic has emphasized loopholes in our food systems, reinstating the need for a global recovery response that prioritizes resilient and sustainable food production. The FAO has been unwavering and creative in its recovery response to alleviate global food crises. According to the FAO, there has been a steady increase in hunger even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In their report, almost 690 million people went hungry and according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020, the stakes of an additional 130 million people drifting into chronic hunger by the end of 2020 are high. The Great Reset Initiative propounded by the World Economic Forum (WEF) will go a long way if it includes infrastructures for sustainable food production and distribution. FAO Director-General QU Dongyu quipped: “Our ability to act, in our shared best interest and for greater collective impact, has never been more important.” We need more cooperation, not less.

The COVID-19 pandemic has indeed brought to limelight the challenges of every aspect of human living including food production, distribution and supply. The response initiative forwarded by the FAO’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme spans seven key areas including: Global Humanitarian Response Plan, Data for Decision-making, Economic Inclusion and Social Protection to reduce Poverty, Trade and Food Safety Standards, Boosting Small Holder Resilience for Recovery, Preventing the Next Zoonotic Pandemic, and Food Systems Transformation. The FAO is therefore calling for a 1.3billion dollars stimulus package during and after the pandemic to provide nutritious food to most affected and vulnerable regions.

There are various risk factors to food insecurity. Prominent among these are poverty and conflict. Poverty reduces people’s accessibility to nutritious food, and according to the United Nations 122 million out of 144 million stunted children are found in conflicted zones/countries.

According to the World Food Programme Hunger Statistics, 821 million people – one in nine – still go to bed on an empty stomach each night, and one in three suffers from some form of malnutrition. The challenges of our food systems go beyond food availability to include various forms of malnutrition which include: undernutrition (wasting, stunting, and underweight), inadequate vitamins or minerals, overweight, obesity, and resulting diet-related non-communicable diseases. Key statistics according to the World Health Organization are:

• 1.9 billion adults are overweight or obese, while 462 million are underweight.

• 47 million children under 5 years of age are wasted, 14.3 million are severely wasted and 144 million are stunted, while 38.3 million are overweight or obese.

• Around 45% of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to undernutrition. These mostly occur in low- and middle-income countries. At the same time, in these same countries, rates of childhood overweight and obesity are rising.

In closing, World Food Day should indeed serve as a wake-up call that we are far from achieving Zero Hunger as stipulated in SDG 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals. Have a participatory World Food Day.

Are climate scientists being too cautious when linking extreme weather to climate change?

University of Washington

In this year of extreme weather events -- from devastating West Coast wildfires to tropical Atlantic storms that have exhausted the alphabet -- scientists and members of the public are asking when these extreme events can be scientifically linked to climate change.

Dale Durran, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, argues that climate science need to approach this question in a way similar to how weather forecasters issue warnings for hazardous weather.

In a new paper, published in the October issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, he draws on the weather forecasting community's experience in predicting extreme weather events such as tornadoes, flash floods, high winds and winter storms. If forecasters send out a mistaken alert too often, people will start to ignore them. If they don't alert for severe events, people will get hurt. How can the atmospheric sciences community find the right balance?

Most current approaches to attributing extreme weather events to global warming, he says, such as the conditions leading to the ongoing Western wildfires, focus on the likelihood of raising a false alarm. Scientists do this by using statistics to estimate the increase in the probability of that event that is attributable to climate change. Those statistical measures are closely related to the "false alarm ratio," an important metric used to assess the quality of hazardous weather warnings.

But there is a second key metric used to assess the performance of weather forecasters, he argues: The probably that the forecast will correctly warn of events that actually occur, known as the "probability of detection." The ideal probability of detection score is 100%, while the ideal false-alarm rate would be zero.

Probability of detection has mostly been ignored when it comes to linking extreme events to climate change, he says. Yet both weather forecasting and climate change attribution face a tradeoff between the two. In both weather forecasting and climate-change attribution, calculations in the paper show that raising the thresholds to reduce false alarms produces a much greater drop in the probability of detection.

Drawing on a hypothetical example of a tornado forecaster whose false alarm ratio is zero, but is accompanied by a low probability of detection, he writes that such an "overly cautious tornado forecasting strategy might be argued by some to be smart politics in the context of attributing extreme events to global warming, but it is inconsistent with the way meteorologists warn for a wide range of hazardous weather, and arguably with the way society expects to be warned about threats to property and human life."

Why does this matter? The paper concludes by noting: "If a forecaster fails to warn for a tornado there may be serious consequences and loss of life, but missing the forecast does not make next year's tornadoes more severe. On the other hand, every failure to alert the public about those extreme events actually influenced by global warming facilitates the illusion that humankind has time to delay the actions required to address the source of that warming. Because the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is many hundreds to thousands of years the cumulative consequences of such errors can have a very long lifetime."

Why We Need Trees to End to Poverty - Landmark Report

Alison Kentish

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a projected rise in extreme poverty, a team of scientists says the world can no longer afford to overlook the role of forests and trees in poverty eradication. With extreme poverty (living on $1.90 a day) projected to rise for the first time in over 20 years, a new study has concluded that global poverty eradication efforts could be futile in the absence of forests and trees.

Forest cover on the east of Saint Lucia. Forests and trees play a significant role in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

Twenty-one scientists and over 40 contributing authors spent the last two years studying the role of forests and trees in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication.  The Global Forest Expert Panel issued its findings on Oct. 15, in a report titled, "Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations".

The report comes amid two global challenges that are disproportionately impacting the poor and vulnerable - the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. According to the United Nations, 71 million people are expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty in 2020, a major threat to Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere.

Lead researcher and chair of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations Professor Daniel C. Miller told IPS that while forests and trees can help the severe losses at the intersection of climate change, zoonotic disease outbreaks and poverty alleviation, they continue to be overlooked in mainstream policy discourse.

"A quarter of the world's population lives in or near a forest and trees actively contribute to human well-being, particularly the most vulnerable among us. This research hopes to bring to light the available scientific evidence on how forests have contributed to poverty alleviation and translate it in a way that is accessible to policy makers," he said.

Globally forests are a vital source of food, fuel and ecotourism services. They also help to conserve water and soil resources and boast climate change mitigating properties such as carbon sequestration, the process of absorbing and storing carbon.

The report states that the rural poor need forests for subsistence and income generation, but in one of its chief findings, reported that inequality in the distribution of forest benefits continues to hurt the vulnerable. 

"To illustrate, in large scale logging on indigenous lands or where marginalised people live, timber is the most valuable forest product, yet that value is often not accrued to the people who have to deal with the aftermath of not having forests anymore," said Miller.

The researchers are hoping that the report can help to inform policy on issues such as equitable and sustainable forest use and conservation. Along with their findings, they have prepared a policy brief for lawmakers. That document takes a multi-dimensional look at poverty, assessing both the monetary value of forests and tree resources and their impact on human well-being, health and safety.

For two small islands in the Eastern Caribbean, the report's findings complement ongoing sustainable forestry for poverty alleviation programs. In 106, Saint Lucia, which boasts 25,000 acres of forest or 38 percent of its land area, launched a 10-year forest protection plan. The country's most senior forester Alwin Dornelly told IPS that this document was ahead of its time, as Saint Lucia's is well in keeping with some of the report's major recommendations.

"We simply cannot do without our forests. 85 percent of our country's water sources are in the forests. Our fresh water supply depends on the trees. The plan underscores forest protection for lives and livelihoods; from charcoal for fire and timber for furniture to agricultural produce for household use and for sale by residents of rural communities. Sustainability use of forest resources is a hallmark of this plan," he said.

The forestry department monitors the country' eco-trails, popular with nature tourists who take part in camping, hiking and bird watching, activities that create employment for nearby residents and based on the sustainable forest livelihoods component of the 10-year plan. According to the global report ecotourism activities are among the practices that may lead to greater equity in forest benefits.

The report is also a morale booster for forestry officials on the island of Dominica, who are celebrating reforestation gains. Known for its lush, green vegetation, forests carpet 60 percent of the island and its Morne Trois Piton National Park is a U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site. It has taken just over three years, but the country has recovered the almost one-third of forest coverage destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

"Dominicans have the right to reap the benefits of sustainable forest resources. We suffered 90 percent defoliage after the 2017 hurricane and 33 percent forest destruction. We are thankful for both natural regeneration and our national tree planting initiative. We have eight community plant nurseries and propagation centres for sustained reforestation – nurseries we hope turn handover for community ownership. We understand that forest loss is livelihood loss, especially for those in rural areas," the country's forestry chief Michinton Burton told IPS.

The English-speaking Caribbean is not wildly cited in the study, something Miller says falls under its ‘limitations' segment, adding that more research is needed on smaller islands. The forest experts who spoke to IPS, however, say the report's warnings, calls to action and findings are instructive for policy makers globally.

The researchers have made it clear that forests and trees are not a cure-all for poverty but are essential to the overall solution. With health experts predicting future pandemics due to ecological degradation and climate scientists warning that the Caribbean will experience more intense hurricanes like Maria, the report states that these challenging times call for a rethink of current poverty eradication measures. It adds that the ability of forests and trees to positively impact lives, health and livelihoods must be a central part of discussions to lift people out of poverty, particularly in rural settings.

The report was launched ahead of this year's observance of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, World Food Day and the International Day of Rural Women - three important days on the U.N. calendar that promote sustainable livelihoods, food security and poverty eradication.

Jeffrey Sachs: White House's new COVID-19 Strategy is madness

As if Donald Trump's irresponsibility was not already a national tragedy, the White House seems now to favor a controversial approach to Covid-19 that threatens to bring nothing less than mass suffering.

More than 216,000 Americans have already died. Yet on Tuesday, senior Trump administration officials said that they were receptive to pursuing "herd immunity," an approach touted by a group of scientists who have put out what they call the "Great Barrington Declaration." The idea is that the federal government should let the pandemic run its course until most of the population is infected and has ostensibly developed antibodies to ward off future infections. Typical estimates hold that 70% or more of the population would thereby become infected.

According to this idea, vulnerable groups would be targeted for "focused protection," for example, introducing extra precautions such as frequent Covid-19 testing to avoid infections of the elderly living in nursing homes. The rest of the population "should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal," according to the declaration.

This approach runs strongly against the overwhelming consensus of public health specialists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The new Covid-19 approach would undoubtedly add massively to the suffering in the US in a very short period of time.

The idea that we should not try to control infections other than of vulnerable groups is based on a complete misunderstanding of the real choices facing the US -- or facing any country for that matter. The core mistake is the belief that the only alternative to an economic shutdown is to let the virus spread widely in the population. Instead, a set of basic public health measures is enough, as many other countries have shown, to control the spread of the virus. The proper measures include widespread testing, contact tracing, isolating of infected individuals, wearing face masks, physical distancing, and barring super-spreader events (like Trump rallies). South Korea has exemplified this policy approach, as have many of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region.

Sadly, this very basic information seems not to have reached the White House or been understood by it, even though experts already knew in April that the Asia-Pacific region was suppressing the pandemic through these public health measures, and without the need for comprehensive lockdowns (or with only brief lockdowns to give time to scale up the public health measures). By suppressing the virus, these countries have limited the economic fallout.

Indeed, according to the IMF's new report, China, which has suppressed the pandemic by means of public health control, will achieve positive growth of GDP 1.9% this year, compared with America's expected GDP decline of 4.3%. The Trump team is so obsessed with their anti-China propaganda that they utterly refused to learn from China's success in cutting transmission of the virus enabling an economic rebound. Trump and his team have also refused to learn from similar successes in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, all of which have very low transmission of the virus.

The herd immunity approach is a nightmare for four reasons:

First, according to a study published in The Lancet in late September, fewer than 10% of Americans have so far been infected with the novel coronavirus. Another 60% or so of Americans would likely become infected in a herd immunity strategy. That amounts to around 200 million additional cases of Covid-19 in the United States and countless deaths. This would obviously be wanton madness, since the pandemic can be controlled by low-cost and proven public health means.

Second, there would absolutely be no reliable way to protect vulnerable populations through "focused protection." Many older people do not live in nursing or retirement homes where protective measure can systematically be implemented. And as the CDC has alerted, there are vast numbers of vulnerable Americans who are not among the elderly, but who suffer from medical conditions as widespread as obesity, cancer, kidney disease, high blood pressure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and others. And in addition to people with prior health conditions, the CDC also points to other groups that need extra precautions: pregnant and breastfeeding women, people with disabilities, people with developmental and behavioral disorders, and others.

For a White House team that can't even properly protect its guests at a White House event, the notion that it could suddenly oversee the implementation of "focused protection" to vulnerable people spread throughout the country in the midst of an uncontrolled pandemic is a fantasy.

Third, the proponents of herd immunity seem to discount the fact that in addition to the acute and short term effects of Covid-19, there are also long-term disease consequences for many, ranging from the Covid-19 "brain fog" to long-lasting damage to many organ systems. The evidence continues to mount that Covid-19 is a frighteningly dangerous disease for many people who survive the infection and in ways that scientists are still coming to understand.

Fourth, it's especially ill-timed to let the pandemic run wild when the White House is touting a vaccine as being just around the corner. If a reliable and safe vaccine will soon be available to protect citizens, surely there is overwhelming reason not to become infected now, but rather to stay safe until the vaccine arrives.

Trump's utter ignorance has already resulted in unprecedented suffering, and the latest bad idea would gravely multiply the damage. If implemented, a herd immunity strategy might just be the most reckless action by the White House yet.

For the sake of democracy, Nigeria’s #EndSars campaign against police brutality must prevail

Karen Attiah

People in the world’s largest Black nation have taken to the streets to demand one thing of their police: Stop killing us.

Demonstrators took to the streets of Lagos, Nigeria, Tuesday to protest against police brutality. (Sunday Alamba/AP)

Over the last 10 days, Nigerians have been protesting against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a unit of the Nigerian federal police force, after a video emerged of officers allegedly killing a man. Soon the hashtag #EndSars, as the unit is known, began trending internationally. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military dictator, announced that SARS will be disbanded, but that promise has not been enough to quell the anger. Nigerians continue to protest.

Nigeria’s movement comes as protests demanding the protection of Black lives continue in the United States. At their core, the protests carry the same message: A country that allows state security agents to kill and abuse people with impunity is not a mature democracy. And, as in the United States, this is not the first time Nigerians have risen up against police brutality.

Amnesty International documented at least 82 cases of torture, extrajudicial killings, extortion and rape by SARS between January 2017 and May 2020. According to their report, victims held in SARS custody have been subjected to “mock execution, beating, punching and kicking, burning with cigarettes, waterboarding, near-asphyxiation with plastic bags, forcing detainees to assume stressful bodily positions and sexual violence.” Arrests and cases are rarely investigated. Despite the fact that Nigeria criminalized torture in 2017, no SARS officer has been convicted.

In December 2017, after a video circulated of SARS officers fleeing the scene after killing a man, Nigerians took to social media to share their stories of abusive encounters with the police. Back then the federal government promised all manner of reforms and investigations. But protest organizers were clear about what they wanted: SARS needed to be abolished.

In 2016, the World Internal Security and Police Index rated Nigeria’s police forces as the worst in the world. According to recent polls, Nigerians place the majority of the blame on police and government for high rates of human rights violations. For the last 25 years, the government’s response to calls for reform has been a running joke on the continent. Instead of providing better training and disciplining units guilty of abuses, successive Nigerian governments have instead responded with useless committees and panels. In 2006, President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the Danmadami police reform committee. Then, in 2008, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s Presidential Committee on the Reform of the Nigerian Police was set up to investigate the implementation of previous recommendations. In 2012, after reports that the terrorist group Boko Haram had infiltrated the police force, President Goodluck Jonathan fired the inspector general of police. He then proceeded to, you guessed it, set up a yet another committee to reorganize the police force.

And as abuses and impunity persist, Nigeria’s democracy has been dying in the darkness of government committee panels.

The energy and spirit of the Nigerian people is on display. On the ground, it has been Nigerian women and youth who have been the driving force of the protests. Feeling the pressure, a governor this week in Rivers State unconstitutionally banned #EndSars protests, but protesters took to the streets anyway. Nigerians around the world are also rallying around the #EndSars movement. Nigerian superstars, including John Boyega, Davido, Burna Boy and Genevieve Nnaji, have been tweeting in support. Jackie Aina, a Nigerian American beauty influencer, has also been posting information and links to organizations on her social media channels. In Houston, home to one of the largest populations of Nigerians in the United States, the singer Adekunle Gold helped organize a rally to support Nigerians in their protest against police brutality.

Here in the United States, the Congressional Black Caucus has even posted messages of support and solidarity. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has reminded us that for all of our lecturing to other countries about security reform and human rights, the United States has a persistent problem of police brutality and impunity. Worse yet, we’ve exported our own policing methods to other countries. The United States has offered training to Nigerian police forces. In 2017, police officers from Prince William County in Virginia trained members of the Nigerian police in human rights. This is the same police department that recently used tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful protesters. The United States has also sold equipment and weapons to the Nigerian army and security forces.

Now Nigerians around the world are saying “enough” to police brutality, reinforcing the importance of the fight against police abuse here in the United States. And vice versa: Black Americans could stand to learn more from the years-long fight against Nigeria’s corrupt police force.

Nigeria is one of the most vibrant and dynamic countries in Africa. Sadly, it has had the misfortune of being ruled by shambolic, corrupt governments. But now the country, which has long been divided along religious and ethnic lines, has come together against police brutality, showing the power and spirit of the Nigerian people when pushed to their limits. As they say in Nigeria, “Naija no dey carry last!”

The people of the world’s largest Black nation deserve to prevail over state-sponsored oppression.

Ending world hunger by 2030 would cost $330bn, study finds

Kaamil Ahmed

Research suggests that by targeting enhanced aid money more effectively and with greater innovation, a solution is possible

Malnourished children displaced by the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are given milk at a centre in Rwanda. Photograph: Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty Images

Ending hunger by 2030 would come with a price tag of $330bn (£253bn), according to a study backed by the German government.

Research groups compiled data from 23 countries and found international donors would need to add another $14bn a year to their spending on food security and nutrition over the next 10 years; more than twice their current contribution. Low and middle-income countries would also have to give another $19bn a year, potentially through taxation.

The study, published this week, coincided with warnings that the world has an “immense mountain” to climb in order to end hunger, with 11 countries showing “alarming” levels of hunger, and “serious” levels in another 40, according to the Global Hunger Index.

“We’re trying to solve a problem here – that is, hunger being on the rise – and still almost 700 million people are going to bed hungry at night. Whatever we’re currently spending is not helping those people,” said Carin Smaller, co-director of Ceres2030, a coalition funded by the German government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Smaller said researchers used an economic model that took existing spending and looked at how it could be improved in 14 areas, ranging from social protection and income support, to investment in research and training.

“It’s not about doubling spending to do the same things,” she said.

The research, from the Centre for Development Research, Cornell University, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, found that advancements in technology needed to be matched by support for farmers, especially women, who were often not able to benefit from new techniques or crops that could make harvests more reliable.

It also suggested that work on reducing losses from harvests should be expanded beyond the existing focus on storage, to include more nutritious fruits and vegetables.

The study included the development of an AI tool that analysed half a million research articles from the past 20 years to find evidence on what works to end hunger.

“If rich countries double their aid commitments and help poor countries to prioritise, properly target and scale up cost effective interventions on agricultural R&D, technology, innovation, education, social protection and on trade facilitation, we can end hunger by 2030,” said Maximo Torero, chief economist at the FAO.

More than 7,000 extreme weather events recorded since 2000, says UN

Reuters in Geneva

Sharp rise in number of droughts, floods and wildfires has claimed 1.23 million lives and affected 4.2 billion people

Extreme weather events have increased dramatically in the past 20 years, taking a heavy human and economic toll worldwide, and are likely to wreak further havoc, the UN has said.

Heatwaves and droughts will pose the greatest threat in the next decade, as temperatures continue to rise due to heat-trapping gases, experts said.

China (577) and the US (467) recorded the highest number of disaster events from 2000 to 2019, followed by India (321), the Philippines (304) and Indonesia (278), the UN said in a report issued on Monday, the day before the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction. Eight of the top 10 countries are in Asia.

Globally, 7,348 major disaster events were recorded, claiming 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and causing $2.97tn (£2.3tn) in economic losses during the two-decade period.

Drought, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires and extreme temperature fluctuations were among the events causing major damage.

“The good news is that more lives have been saved, but the bad news is that more people are being affected by the expanding climate emergency,” said Mami Mizutori, the UN secretary general’s special representative for disaster risk reduction. She called for governments to invest in early warning systems and implement disaster risk reduction strategies.

Debarati Guha-Sapir of the centre for research on the epidemiology of disasters at the University of Louvain, Belgium, which provided data for the report, said: “If this level of growth in extreme weather events continues over the next 20 years, the future of mankind looks very bleak indeed.

“Heatwaves are going to be our biggest challenge in the next 10 years, especially in the poor countries,” she said.

Last month was the world’s hottest September on record, with unusually high temperatures recorded off Siberia, in the Middle East, and in parts of South America and Australia, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said.

Global temperatures will continue to warm over the next five years, and may even temporarily rise to more than 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels, the World Meteorological Organization said in July. Scientists have set 1.5C as the ceiling for avoiding catastrophic climate change.

'We've had so many wins': why the green movement can overcome climate crisis

Fiona Harvey

Leaded petrol, acid rain, CFCs … the last 50 years of environmental action have shown how civil society can force governments and business to change

Leaflets printed on “rather grotty” blue paper. That is how Janet Alty will always remember one of the most successful environment campaigns of modern times: the movement to ban lead in petrol.

There were the leaflets she wrote to warn parents at school gates of the dangers, leaflets to persuade voters and politicians, leaflets to drown out the industry voices saying – falsely – there was nothing to worry about.

In the late 1970s, the UK was still poisoning the air with the deadly toxin, despite clear scientific evidence that breathing in lead-tainted air from car exhausts had an effect on development and intelligence. Recently returned from several years in the US, Alty was appalled. Lead had been phased out in the US from 1975. Why was the British government still subjecting children to clear harm?

Robin Russell-Jones asked the same question. A junior doctor, he quickly grasped the nature of the lead problem, moving his family out of London. His fellow campaigner, Robert Stephens, amassed a trove of thousands of scientific papers, keeping them in his garage when his office burned down – he suspected foul play.

Their campaign took years. But in 1983, a damning verdict from the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution prompted the UK government to decree that both petrol stations and manufacturers must offer lead-free alternatives. Leaded petrol was finally removed from the last petrol pumps in the UK in 1999.

Today, it seems incredible that lead was ever used as a performance improver in car engines. Clean alternatives were available by the 1970s, but making the transition incurred short-term costs, so the motor industry, led by chemicals companies, clung on, lobbying politicians and ridiculing activists.

Faced with multiplying, and interlinked, environmental crises in the 2020s – the climate emergency, the sixth extinction stalking the natural world, the plastic scourge in our oceans, the polluted air of teeming metropolises – it is easy to feel overwhelmed. Lockdown offered a tantalising glimpse of a cleaner world, but also revealed a starker truth: that the global economy is not set up to prioritise wellbeing, climate and nature. What can we do, in the face of these devastating odds?

It is easy to forget that environmentalism is arguably the most successful citizens’ mass movement there has been. Working sometimes globally, at other times staying intensely local, activists have transformed the modern world in ways we now take for granted. The ozone hole has shrunk. Whales, if not saved, at least enjoy a moratorium on hunting. Acid rain is no longer the scourge of forests and lakes. Rivers thick with pollution in the 1960s teem with fish. Who remembers that less than 30 years ago, nuclear tests were still taking place in the Pacific? Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship was blown up by the French government in 1985, with one death and many injuries, in a long-running protest.

As well as giving heart to activists now, these victories contain important lessons. “The environmental movement has been very successful,” says Joanna Watson, who has worked at Friends of the Earth for three decades. “We’ve had so many campaigns and wins. Sometimes it’s been hard to claim success, and sometimes it takes a long time. And sometimes things that worked before won’t work now. But there’s a lot we can learn.”

Lifeless lakes and leafless trees

Acid rain, first identified in the 1850s, took decades to address. The first murmurings of concern came about after the second world war and there were concerted efforts to solve it in the 1960s. But it is the campaign that Nat Keohane, vice-president at the Environmental Defense Fund and a former lecturer at Yale, points to when he wants to invoke the success of the global environmental movement. “The reason I talk about acid rain is that it’s one of the instances where we solved the problem.”

Acid rain occurs when sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides react with moist air to form weak acids, which then fall from clouds, killing plants and aquatic life. The scars can still be seen in parts of the US and northern Europe, where acid has etched limestone building facades, and faces have dissolved from statues. But in most of the world – except China, where the problem persists – the lifeless lakes and leafless trees that acid rain created have long since revived.

“Environmental groups led a drumbeat of campaigning on acid rain throughout the 1980s,” says Keohane.

Public pressure in the worst-offending countries – chiefly the US and the UK, which were responsible for acid rain that fell largely on neighbouring countries such as Canada and Scandinavia – was key. Watson recalls one telling advertising campaign: posters printed on litmus paper that said: “When acid rain is falling, you should see red” – offering a vivid illustration of the problem.

Getting businesses onside was a different matter. In the US, that was achieved through a novel mechanism that offered financial incentives from rivals, rather than the public purse. “It was the first successful demonstration of a market-based approach,” says Keohane. US power plant operators were issued with a limited number of allowances for how much sulphur and nitrogen oxides they could emit. They could buy and sell these among themselves, meaning the dirtiest companies had to buy them from those who cleaned up fastest, while the number of allowances available was gradually reduced. This cap-and-trade system operated successfully from 1990, becoming the model for a similar approach to greenhouse gases under the 1997 Kyoto protocol – though that attempt was less successful, because the US rejected it.

“The benefits were 40 times greater than the costs,” says Keohane. “There was an 86% reduction in pollutants, from 1990 to 2015, and there were huge unappreciated benefits beyond acid rain, on cleaning up particulates [an especially harmful form of air pollution].”

What acid rain showed is that businesses can be successfully regulated, without causing economic damage, says Keohane. As with the campaign against lead, companies resisted new rules for years, but when they came, they responded swiftly, showing governments they could afford to be less timid.

‘When we need to act, we can’

There are also lessons for today’s campaigners in the close shaves. Climate change threatens to melt the ice caps, raise sea levels, destroy agriculture over swaths of the world, and is already causing humanitarian disasters. Time is short. But a lesson from 40 years ago shows the world can move quickly and decisively if it has to.

About 15-35km above the surface of the Earth, the ozone layer acts as a filter against the sun’s radiation, blocking about 97% to 99% of medium-frequency ultraviolet light. That is important, because over-exposure to ultraviolet radiation is harmful to most living things, including plants and animals, and causes skin cancers, eye problems and genetic damage in humans.

In 1974 came the first indications that all was not well in the lower stratosphere. Research by Mario Molina, who died last week, and F Sherwood Rowland, both later awarded Nobel prizes, found that chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), commonly used as propellants in aerosols, were likely to be reacting with the ozone and depleting it.

The first moves against CFCs were in the US, Canada, Sweden and a few other countries in 1978, but others hung back, as chemical companies dismissed the fears as theoretical. Then, in 1985, the British Antarctic Survey published clear evidence of damage, in the form of a patch of drastically thinned ozone across the south pole. Their measurements showed 40% less ozone than had been detected 20 years earlier. The science was indisputable.

The world moved quickly. Governments got together under the aegis of the UN and forged the Montreal Protocol in 1987, which phased out ozone-depleting chemicals globally. “The Montreal protocol is the best environment treaty the world has ever created,” says Durwood Zaelke, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “It solved the first great threat to the atmosphere, and put the ozone layer on the path to recovery by 2065. There’s very strong empirical evidence that it has done its job.”

When the Montreal protocol was signed, the world was rapidly approaching a precipice. The further the ozone depleted, the less likely it was to regenerate naturally. If the damage continued beyond a certain point, recovery and natural repair would have become virtually impossible, even if production of the harmful chemicals ceased. “It would have been beyond repair in about five or 10 years if we had not acted,” says Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute thinktank in Washington DC.The Montreal protocol shows, as the response to Covid-19 demonstrated, that the world can move quickly when governments want to.

“If a government needs to act, and Covid has shown this, my God can a government act,” says John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK. “All of a sudden, no regulation, no amount of money is a problem. When we need to act, we can.”

A key factor in the Montreal protocol and its preceding successes was making the economic case for action. When it came to ozone-depleting chemicals, the chemical companies found they could manufacture substitutes – and make more money doing so. Car companies made a similar calculation on lead in petrol, and US power plants had the incentives of cap-and-trade to halt acid rain. Today, a comparable economic shift has already happened in the field of climate action: renewable energy is cheaper in many countries than coal, gas and oil, and costs are likely to fall further.

But some companies with fossil fuels to sell will still be left stranded, and corporate vested interests have not gone away. Russell-Jones recalls that Associated Octel, the UK’s main lead producer, “went apoplectic” when he started touring radio studios in the early 1980s, sending an operative to trail him in a car, following him in to demand right of reply on the same programme he had just appeared on. These days, there is no need for such efforts as internet trolls can reach far more people.

“Fake news is everywhere,” he says. “Disinformation from rightwing thinktanks, on air pollution and climate change, is all over the internet. And the media landscape has shifted to the right.”

Transcending political divisions

One of the most striking aspects of successful environmental campaigns of the past is how they straddled the left-right political divide. Key green legislation and decisions, including the Montreal protocol and the 1992 UN framework convention on climate change, the parent treaty to the Paris agreement, were put forward and signed by leaders from across the political spectrum.

This may be partly because world leaders in the past were more willing to listen to scientists than today. “[The UK prime minister, Margaret] Thatcher got it, on the ozone layer – she was a chemist, she read all the scientific papers herself,” says Zaelke. “[Ronald] Reagan got it because he’d had skin cancer.”

But a changing political discourse in many countries, driven by a rightwing populism that has forsaken reality in favour of stoking imagined grievances, has created a harsher political environment, according to Bledsoe. “The opponents [of climate action] have learned that in a culture where people get their news from politically dominated outlets [and the internet], they can get away with lying about almost anything.” But he says there is one bright spot: “Younger people are rejecting these lies about climate change.”

In building a consensus that can transcend political divisions, Keohane believes green campaigners must focus on the outcome rather than the process and bring forward constructive ideas. “People get used to thinking about the fight, not the winning.” he says. “We have to remind ourselves that we have done it and we can do it again.”

Reaching out across divisions to foster a broad and inclusive sense of community is essential. Alty may have spent seemingly endless hours printing and handing out leaflets, but “I never felt lonely, not once,” she says, and the many positive responses from people she encountered kept her going. “It was very labour-intensive, it was like rolling a heavy boulder up a very steep hill. But there is a value in knowing you are doing a worthwhile thing.”

For Watson, the emphasis on what people have in common, despite surface divisions, is at the core of the green movement. “The thing about the environmental movement is, it crosses all barriers,” she says. “Whatever our political bent, we are all human, all people on the planet, and all interdependent. The environment is not something separate from us – we are all in the environment. It is where we live.”

Droughts are threatening global wetlands

University of Adelaide

Scientists have shown how droughts are threatening the health of wetlands globally. Scientists highlight the many physical and chemical changes occurring during droughts that lead to severe, and sometimes irreversible, drying of wetland soils.

"Wetlands around the world are incredibly important for maintaining our planet's biodiversity and they store vast amounts of carbon that can help fight climate change," says project leader Associate Professor Luke Mosley, from the University's Environment Institute and School of Biological Sciences.

"Globally, wetlands cover an area greater than 12.1 million square kilometres and deliver at least A$37.8 trillion (Int$27 trillion) in benefits per year, such as for flood mitigation, food production, water quality improvement and carbon storage."

Wetlands can suffer "water droughts" both from the effects of a drier climate, and also when excessive water is extracted or diverted that would normally flow into them.

The review paper describes how drought often leads to severe cracking and compaction, acidification, loss of organic matter, and enhanced greenhouse gas (for example methane) emissions. In some cases droughts can lead to very long-term (>10 years) and irreversible soil changes, with major impacts on water quality when soils are rewet after the drought ends.

"We have seen many examples of how drought in the Murray-Darling Basin has caused major issues including acidification of soil and water due to acid sulfate soils exposure in wetlands. This review highlights substantial gaps in our global understanding of the effects of drought on wet soils and how they will respond to increasing drought," says Associate Professor Mosley, who is also Deputy Director of the Acid Sulfate Soils Centre.

Effects can be different in different soil types and different regions of the world. The spatial distribution of drought studies shows there has been limited assessment in a large number of regions, including south and central America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania. Many of these regions are predicted to be vulnerable to drought impacts due to climate change.

Lead author Dr Erinne Stirling, from Zhejiang University (China) and the University of Adelaide, says one of the most pressing findings from this review is that there are huge swaths of the world where there is no readily available published research on drought-affected wet soils.

And secondly, she says, there is effectively no applied research into water management outcomes for wetlands and wetland soils.

"At a global level, wet soils are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and need to be protected given the very high environmental and socio-economic values they support. It is our sincere hope that the information in this review contributes to protecting these valuable ecosystems," says Dr Stirling.

Earth just had its hottest September, experts say 2020 could break all records

Luke Denne

“This isn't the "new normal," one climate scientist warned, but "a constant reminder that this is the path that we're on."

This year's September was the hottest ever according to new data, suggesting 2020 could become the warmest year since records began.

The global average for the month was 0.05°C (0.09°F) warmer than 2019 and 0.08°C (0.14°F) warmer than 2016 — the previous two warmest Septembers ever recorded — according to the latest data from the European Union's Copernicus climate monitoring service.

It's the third monthly record to be broken this year: 2020 has so far registered the hottest January and May on record, leading scientists to believe it could be the hottest year on record. Devastating wildfires in Australia and the U.S. this year have been linked to climate change.

Wildfires ravaged large areas of the U.S. west coast during September following exceptionally hot temperatures. Noah Berger / AP file

"The last five years have themselves been the five warmest on record," said Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist with Copernicus Climate Change Service.

"The world has already warmed at least one degree (1.8°F) above the pre-industrial era, and this is a trend that will continue if we don't curb greenhouse gas emissions," she added.

September also saw unusually high temperatures off the coast of northern Siberia, in the Middle East and in South America and Australia, the data showed.

Warming in Siberia is of particular concern to climate scientists as it is causing permafrost — carbon rich soil that is meant to stay frozen — to melt, in turn releasing more carbon into the atmosphere that further contributes to global warming.

Activists extinguish a fire in Suzunsky forest next to the village of Shipunovo, 170 kms south from of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk Alexander Nemenov / AFP - Getty Images file

The region experienced record-breaking heat and even wildfires in the spring with temperatures 10°C (18°F) warmer than the May average. Exceptional temperatures continued throughout the summer, Copernicus said, with the average June temperature for the whole of arctic Siberia more than 5°C (9°F) higher than the 1981-2010 average.

That warmth has also led to arctic sea ice levels being observed at their second lowest on record, contributing to global sea level rises.

Air pollution particles in young brains linked to Alzheimer's damage

Damian Carrington

Exclusive: if discovery is confirmed it will have global implications as 90% of people breathe dirty air

The research found pollution nanoparticles in the brainstems of 186 young people between the age of 11 months and 27 years. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen.

There is already good statistical evidence that higher exposure to air pollution increases rates of neurodegenerative diseases, but the significance of the new study is that it shows a possible physical mechanism by which the damage is done.

The researchers found abundant pollution nanoparticles in the brainstems of 186 young people from Mexico City who had died suddenly between the ages of 11 months and 27 years. They are likely to have reached the brain after being inhaled into the bloodstream, or via the nose or gut.

The nanoparticles were closely associated with abnormal proteins that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease. The aberrant proteins were not seen in the brains of age-matched people from less polluted areas, they said.

“It is terrifying because, even in the infants, there is neuropathology in the brain stem,” said Prof Barbara Maher, at Lancaster University, UK, and part of the research team. “We can’t prove causality so far, but how could you expect these nanoparticles containing those metal species to sit inert and harmless inside critical cells of the brain? That’s the smoking gun – it seriously looks as if those nanoparticles are firing the bullets that are causing the observed neurodegenerative damage.”

Maher said the work provides hypotheses that could now be tested. For example, brain stem damage would affect the movement control and gait of young people and this should correlate with pollution exposure if the nanoparticles are the cause.

The causes of neurodegenerative disease are complex and not fully understood. “There’s definitely going to be genetic factors and there’s highly likely to be other neurotoxicants,” said Maher. “But the thing that’s special about air pollution is how pervasively people are exposed to it. I don’t think that human systems have developed any defence mechanisms to protect themselves from nanoparticles.”

She said it was important to study children as they have not experienced other factors associated with dementia such as alcohol consumption: “So they become the canaries in the coalmine.”

The research was led by Lilian Calderón-Garcidueña at the University of Montana, US, and is published in the journal Environmental Research. It found the metal-rich nanoparticles matched the shape and chemical composition of those produced by traffic, through combustion and braking friction, and which are abundant in the air of Mexico City and many other cities.

Prof Louise Serpell, at the University of Sussex, UK, said the nanoparticles were a plausible cause of the brain damage, but that there was not enough evidence that nanoparticles could cause the neurodegenerative diseases: “There are many other likely causes for neurodegenerative diseases.” But she said: “Our environmental exposure to pollution and pathogens is probably very important in triggering disease.”

Jordi Sunyer, doctor in medicine and surgery at the University of Barcelona, said animal experiments had shown that inhaled nanoparticles could reach the brain and cause damage, but he said inflammatory chemicals triggered by air pollution in the lung could also reach the brain.

The research found the nanoparticles in the substantia nigra, a key brain area in Parkinson’s disease. David Dexter, associate director of research at Parkinson’s UK, said: “We still don’t fully understand what causes Parkinson’s, but this study builds on research that has linked poor air quality and neurodegeneration, as well as links with metal toxicity. Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world, so [the role of the environment] is a really important area within global research.”

But he said: “The pathology in this study is quite distinct and not something we have seen in our brain bank from typical Parkinson’s cases.” Maher said this might be because the levels of air pollution varies between cities.

Dr Susan Kohlhaas, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Air pollution is linked to many adverse health conditions and a growing body of evidence suggests this includes our risk of developing dementia. Proteins do build up in the brain years before we see visible dementia symptoms, but more research is needed before we can suggest air pollution drives brain changes associated with disease in children.”

Previous work by Maher and her colleagues has shown the nanoparticles in the frontal cortex of brains and in the hearts of young people, while other researchers in China have revealed them in blood.

She said it was critical that action is taken, in particular measuring the number of nanoparticles to which people are exposed. Usually only the overall weight of particles smaller than 2.5 microns is measured.

“If you measure it, and you understand where the problem is greatest, then you can start to do something,” she said. “Policymakers must take account of these findings, and actually begin to work out how we can reduce as much of this exposure to air pollution as possible.”