Imidacloprid – a type of neonicotinoid – changes the way that worker bees interact with the colony’s larvae: they become less social, stop nursing larvae, experience altered social and spatial dynamics within nests, and cease hive insulation construction.

A research team led by James Crall of Harvard University investigated the effects of imidacloprid using a robotic platform for continuous, multicolony monitoring of uniquely identified workers. Their research showed that the behaviours induced by imidacloprid lead to colony collapse.

The team concluded: “Our results show that neonicotinoids induce widespread disruption of worker behavior within the nest that may contribute to impaired growth, highlighting the potential of automated techniques for characterizing the multifaceted, dynamic impacts of stressors on behavior in bee colonies.”

Neurological and social

Many media reports characterised the bees in the study as “antisocial and lazy,” but it is crucial that we understand the larger paradigm afoot here.

While there are many studies which speak to the links between neonics and colony collapse, there are many others that decry this science as a “myth.”  There will be yet another onslaught of those who say that that correlation is not causation, in response to the proposition that neonics – or imidacloprid at the very least – have a direct effect upon social behaviours that result in the loss of larvae. 

This is logically true, but there is enough science on the links between colony collapse and neonics that it is time to stop reacting in bad faith to the science.  Many researchers in Europe are interested to learn more about this link between bees and neonics, following  a near-total ban on neonics in the EU last year. 

Dr Richard Gill, a researcher from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, and his team have explored the relationship between bumble bees and neonicotinoid-treated food. Their study shows that while at first the bumble bee bees avoided this food, they eventually come to develop a preference for neonicotinoid-treated foods.  

Gill, who has worked in this field for some time, has demonstrated how neonics bind to synapses in the brains of bees, which in turn causes these bees to have seizures which he likens to an epileptic seizure. The neonics target the nicotinic acetylcholinesterase receptors in the brain. Hence, there is both a neurological reaction from the neonics as well as a social reaction in relation to them which impacts the propagation of the species. 

Citizen science

The end result is the decline of bee populations but also – since bombus play key roles in the food chain acting as pollinators in temperate ecosystems – many other species have declined across Europe and North America.

The lack of quantitative data has further prevented the collation of data to make more robust conclusions about the contributing factors of colony collapse and the declining bee population.

That is until November of last year when researchers and more than fifty citizen scientists conducted surveys to determine the status of bumble bees throughout Vermont, in the northeastern United States.

From 2012 through 2014 these scientists identified and digitized bumble bee specimens from thirteen public and private collections. Having examined more than 100 years of bumble bee records, these scientists found that almost half of Vermont’s bumble bee species have either completely vanished or are in serious decline.

“Our dataset contained 12,319 records, which we separated into historic (1915–1999; n = 1669) and modern (2000–2014; n = 10,650) periods, with our survey contributing 94 percent of modern data. Of 17 species, four were not detected and four showed significant declines.”  

Collaborative engineering 

These findings are tragic for the ecology and the economy alike, as these bees are the primary pollinators on Vermont’s farms.  

While the researchers could not state with certainty the cause for this decline, recent studies have reinforced the conclusion that it is a combination of habitat loss, disease, mite infections, parasites, pesticides, urbanisation, and climate change. 

The dystopian results of recent studies do not give hope for turning around the damage done to bees, but some scientific projects are afoot which seek to understand — if not remedy — the disaster thus far.  

In line with some of last fall’s scientific revelations, citizen scientists are coming to the rescue, developing apps to record bumble bee sightings and upload pertinent information such as  habitat type, location of sighting, and  weather. This information will then be shared with researchers who can analyze the submissions and chart out migration patterns.  

Designed by Dinah Shi, John Salaveria and Luisa San Martin, in collaboration with environmental non-profit Friends of the Earth Canada, these software engineering students developed this bumble bee tracking app to enlist Canadians to contribute to helping the bee populations as citizen scientists. The mobile app also teaches users how to get involved in creating a sustainable environment for bees. 

Nanotechnology 

More and more research projects focussing on bee populations are enlisting the help of citizen scientists from across the United States.

One project in Idaho houses the volunteer efforts of anyone with a camera and a computer to record the various species throughout the region. In Washington, researchers are turning bees into cyborg drones, attaching chips onto their bodies tracking their movements in order to gain more insight into their decline.

In fact, with the uptick of nanotechnology in recent years and the increase of free website builders,  scientists today are able to construct research projects extending far beyond their grant limits, involving local and international citizenry in crucial research needed to end the demise of bumble bee populations around the world.

The Xerces Society, for instance, is actively engaged in the Bumble Bee Watch and is entirely composed of citizen scientists.

We need to consider the risks to our planet in the eventuality that bee populations continue to decline, especially those populations that are responsible for one-third of our food pollination. Why not consider contributing your time and efforts any number of bee studies that are in need of more citizen scientists to help track the declining bee populations across North America and Europe?

This Author 

Julian Vigo is an independent scholar, filmmaker and activist who specialises in anthropology, technology, and political philosophy. Her latest book is Earthquake in Haiti: The Pornography of Poverty and the Politics of Development (2015). You can follow her on Twitter at @lubelluledotcom. 

Image: Alvesgaspar, Wikimedia. 

Vegan fashion continues to soar in popularity. Aligned with Veganuary, and a popular shift in cultural values, vegan fashion reflects the new generation of conscious thinkers wanting to do more to help save animals from cruelty during the production of fashion and beauty products.

Animal-free fashion materials continue to proliferate, with vegan leather, fur, cotton and silk being mass produced and used by big brands as alternatives to animal-based materials.

Whether it’s a culture-change by the brand – like Tom Ford going vegan and tweaking his product line – or simply small brands like Bread and Reel providing animal-free and cruelty-free clothing, the popularity of vegan fashion is only growing.

Water waste

However, vegan fashion is just the first step. Veganism isn’t always as environmentally friendly as you might think, and vegan fashion isn’t the perfect solution to the crisis.

The production of vegan-based fashion materials can cause just as much harm as traditional production methods. Whilst the material has changed, the way this is developed and crafted may not.

Take PVC for example, it’s vegan, but it’s a toxic material that impacts the environment and fuels global warming: 43 percent of PVC comes from petroleum feedback.

Additionally, cotton production uses 2,700 litres of water for one shirt. To put that into perspective, that’s enough water for you to drink for two years.

The fashion industry alone causes 20 percent of the world’s water pollution. And the worst part? Organic cotton, a more sustainable and environmentally friendly solution is used by under 0.1 percent of cotton manufacturers.

Core values

It’s not all doom and gloom for vegan fashion though. Using vegan leather minimises direct killing. The same goes for other animal-based materials; silk, wool, cashmere, fur etc.

Brands are taking note, and while H&M, Primark, Converse, Topshop and more are providing vegan- based fashion alternatives, brands such as Kuma Design provide products that are solely vegan and sustainable to the environment. 

There’s a cruelty-free alternative for nearly every piece of fashion material, but if vegan fashion is only the start, what’s next?

Sustainable or ‘eco-friendly’ fashion, step forward! Eco-fashion is an anti-fast-fashion design trend that looks to create a system that drastically lowers fashion production’s impact on the environment. 

The three core values for this type of fashion align perfectly with the environmentally-conscious consumer in today’s market. These are:

1. A focus on good quality, rather than quick turnaround.
2. A clean production system that doesn’t harm or impact the environment.
3. Fair pay and conditions for employee’s, and fair prices for consumers.

Hot topic

As a result of this style trend, more than ever, consumers are interested in who made their clothes, and what their values are towards animal-cruelty and the environment. In a study by Sustainable Fashion Matterz (yes that’s how you spell it), they found that there is a 100 percent increase in searches for sustainable fashion.

That’s not all – in 2013, the Google Trend score for the search term ‘sustainable fashion’ was 13. Now in 2018, the score is 100/100. 

Eco-friendly fashion is a hot topic with an ever-increasing interest. As newly informed consumers look to buy products that actively help the environment, while staying trendy and stylish, the fashion industry will have to adapt and clean up. 

This Author

Elewisa Young is a professional fashion and beauty writer with keen interests in vegan and eco-friendly fashion. Hailing from London, England, Elewisa has been writing about fashion for nearly 10 years, and has been published in The London Economic, Fashion Gone Rogue, Thomson Local, Medium and more.

‘Need’ is a concept, and therefore can be subjected to the same dialectical investigation as any other concept. From this, we find that need can only be fully understood in relation to its opposite. The opposite of need is the state of fulfilment, and the movement from need to a state of fulfilment is the act of fulfilment.

Any one need cannot be understood or exist unless its fulfilment simultaneously exists. To appreciate need in its full manifestation one must examine both need and fulfilment. At the same time, need is the very opposite of fulfilment: need is the negation of fulfilment and fulfillment is the negation of need.

Need is best described as the negation of its negation: need is the absence of fulfilment. These findings can be derived from dialectics in general, but are also confirmed when examined through material dialectics alone. I will later in this series explain why dialectics has been adopted in this study, and more fully describe the form of dialectics that provide the findings briefly outlined here.

Universe

There is also a very real practical (a real, concrete) relation between need and fulfilment. We begin with the second law of thermodynamics that entropy (randomness, disorder) increases over time: the universe in general is expanding, cooling, and becoming less complex.

This movement from order to disorder is not even. Matter in this universe is differentiated. As a result, there are organisations or complexes of matter which are differentiated from their environment and what surrounds them.

What we find in this particular universe is that some complexes of matter have evolved to a state of existence where they are capable for varying periods of time to counter this law of thermodynamics: systems and complexes exist today that become more complex, more ordered, in direct opposition to the universal natural law of entropy.

Energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed, the first law of thermodynamics. Therefore, in order for any system to counter the movement to entropy it must somehow be able to access energy. Therefore, in almost all cases systems are able to capture energy, in our solar system this often means the capture of energy and light from the sun. 

Extant systems have over a considerable amount of time developed an extraordinary variety of patterns and processes that act in this way. This has led to an assertion that systems themselves are universal. The universe as a whole is a system, made up of parts. These parts are almost always in turn systems themselves. Where any parts are not themselves systems they form a function within a system, or have been produced (and will be destroyed) by a system.

Complex brains

The systems that surround us use energy to counter entropy. In these terms, every system has a need. Need, therefore, is a universalising concept. Need, which is real, concrete, is general to life. All systems are identical in having (or expressing) a need. This is true of all living things, which are by necessity systems. Need is the driver of evolution: the system that does not meet its need is selected negatively, they cease to exist.

To put it the other way around, all things that do not fulfil the need to counter entropy will by definition and by necessity degenerate into a state of randomness and disorder, white noise, void, nothingness. 

Need comes into being when it is simultaneously met, both conceptually and materially. Every living thing is meeting its needs, and has evolved in order to meet this primary need for energy and complexity. Those living things that cannot meet their own needs die, no longer exist, are selected out of the flow of evolution. Death itself serves a need: evolution can only take place if one generation makes space and frees resources for the next iteration.

Needs are met through objects, or through processes. Plants meet the need for energy through photosynthesis, herbivores through eating plants and carnivores, animals. It is assumed that more complex animals (and then humans, and human societies) evolved through hard necessity – to meet complex needs in challenging environments, including competition with rivals.

However, this dialectical systems examination suggests that more complex systems could only evolve in circumstances where greater needs could already be met. Humans, with complex brains requiring significantly greater levels of energy than less complex brains, will have evolved because the material and energy to sustain them was already available. The need can only appear and evolve when the conditions exist for them to be met, and not vice versa.

Human needs

The catalyst for human development was not ‘survival of the fittest’, the desertification of the savannah, but it’s opposite, a new abundance of food. Perhaps this took the form historically as the discovery by humanoids of the great rivers and coastlines (supporting the aquatic ape theory). Having chanced upon a habitat of extraordinary rich resources, humans developed the ability – and the need – for complex thought, and social relations with each other – working together.

In any case. human beings are complex, and have complex needs. Perhaps it is the quantitative difference of complexity of our needs that differentiates us from other apes, from other forms of life, rather than any one isolated characteristic or trait. Humans are different because we have greater needs, not greater abilities, compared to other forms of life. This is certainly true of the need for socialising care in early infancy.

Some of our human needs are self evident, others our friends and colleagues are perfectly capable of articulating and negotiating. Others, however, are less easily understood. Some needs are functional, some dysfunctional. Some are the result of our biological manifestation in the world, some are better understood as the needs of us as systems within systems, still others are artificial or imposed needs, such as the need for a Series 4 Apple Watch.

In this series I have described how human needs are the starting point in my theory of change, indeed in my own understanding of both epistemology (theory of knowledge) and ontology (theory of existence).

The change I advocate is towards a society that is focused on directly meeting human needs, and I argue that through practical necessity any deep social change can only take place when it is consciously and explicitly aimed at meeting immediate human needs. It seems therefore well worth taking some time for me to better understand – in the process of better explaining – what I mean my human needs.

We have arrived at this understanding of our human needs through dialectical systems analysis. I have suggested that needs can be understood dialectically as a universalising concept, and like all concepts can be best understood only in context of other concepts, beginning with its direct opposite (or negation), fulfillment. I have looked at needs from the standpoint of systems theory (or rather, looked at systems from the standpoint of needs).

In my next article I want to develop and explore the concept of a ‘system of needs’, firstly breaking down need in general into a series of categories of need (from the material, to the spiritual; the absolute to the artificial, and the radical). I then want to discuss how real, concrete systems of need in human societies are contextual and dependent on the systems (both interpersonal and material) that constitute those societies.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague.

The idea of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has a lot of support, particularly from those in the fossil fuel industry and governments seeking a quick fix for decarbonising their economies.

The Paris Agreement – the latest attempt to tackle climate change within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – relies on it heavily.

However, there are problems. CCS has proven extremely difficult to implement at any scale. More fundamentally, the promise of using a technological solution – a ‘technofix’ – to solve the environment’s problems, serves to postpone the radical societal and economic changes necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Yet like a zombie, the idea of CCS refuses to die.

CCS in the UK

Carbon Capture and Storage is the process of capturing carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels in power stations, and other industrial processes, and burying it underground to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. It is proposed as a technological solution to climate change, allowing the continued use of fossil fuels while preventing the waste emissions from warming the planet. CCS is also, less commonly, used to describe technologies which remove (or ‘scrub’) carbon dioxide directly from ambient air.

There have been several attempts to establish CCS projects in the UK. The latest involves Drax power station in Yorkshire, which currently burns coal and biomass (in the form of wood pellets), and is planning to replace coal with gas.

The previous CCS competition for a £1 billion contract was scrapped in 2015 after the Treasury pulled its pledged funding, with the then-chancellor George Osborne saying it was too costly. It was the second attempt by government to launch CCS in UK. A first competition to kick-start CCS was cancelled in 2011 when Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and National Grid, withdrew from the project at Longanet power station in Scotland, saying  one billion pounds wasn’t sufficient subsidy to make it viable. The government had already spent 68 million pounds on the scheme.

At the time it was cancelled, the second competition had two preferred bidders: the White Rose consortium in North Yorkshire, which planned to build a new coal plant with the technology (see our previous article), and Shell’s scheme in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, to fit CCS to an existing gas plant operated by SSE. Estimated costs to consumers rocketed to 8.9 billion pounds and – after one hundred million pounds of government spending – the project was deemed to no longer be cost effective.

Despite no existing demonstrations of the technology actually working at scale, the government and industry remain hopeful that a new CCS project could be viable. So the zombie lives on.

Costly trials

In October last year the government announced its approach to newly-named carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) in the Clean Growth Strategy. The name itself should set off alarm bells, another example of the continuing inability of governments to accept the fundamental contradiction between economic growth and environmental sustainability.

As part of the strategy, in May 2018 it was revealed that Drax would lead a four hundred thousand pound trial to remove CO2 from one of its four biomass burning units, in partnership with University of Leeds spin-off company C-Capture.

Ostensibly, the trial is intended to demonstrate the viability of so called BECCS technology (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage), which is supposed to act as a Negative Emission Technology (NET – a generic name for technologies designed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere).

In November 2018, the government also announced a new twenty million pounds dedicated fund to help build carbon capture equipment at industrial sites, such as chemicals plants and oil refineries, on top of an existing pot of one hundred million pounds.  

Lucrative alternative

A more sceptical, but realistic, interpretation of the Drax trial is that is allows the power station to go on burning highly unsustainable wood pellets – partially sourced from clearcut biodiverse forests in the southern US – while giving the impression that it is going ‘green’.

The original move to biomass itself was simply an attempt to stay in business, as coal power generation is set to be phased out in the UK by 2025 to meet air quality standards. Forced to accept the non-viability of coal burning, the company moved to biomass, the most lucrative alternative. Drax currently enjoys almost two million pounds a day in subsidies to burn biomass, paid for by surcharges to energy bills.

Large scale energy generation from biomass is, however, utterly unsustainable and adding CCS to it will do little to change that.

In a previous article for Corporate Watch, Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch explained why, due to a fundamental error in it’s representation of the carbon cycle, BECCS could never work, but also why such ‘sci-fi’ climate solutions are so prevalent and so dangerous.

Even if these kind of solutions have no realistic possibility of being viable, they allow politicians and businesses to give the impression that they are committed to reducing emissions and have strategies to do so. Thus, like the walking dead, new publicly-subsidised demonstration projects continue to pop up as others die off.

Vital questions

New technologies may be important parts of the process of decarbonisation – but they must complement rather than replace the fundamental changes required to our economies and societies.

The enthusiasm for CCS from the governments and institutions around the world is indicative of a much wider problem around technological narratives.

We live in a capitalist world, and technology’s role in our societies is heavily influenced by the thinking and values that come from that. Nature is viewed as something to be controlled and dominated, with technology providing the tools to do this. While capitalism continues to define the world’s economies, technofixes such as CCS will continue to be supported by those in power.

Corporate Watch’s technofix report, produced in 2008, explains the enduring appeal of technical solutions to social and politically driven ecological problems. It describes how fixating on technologies as solutions ignores the underlying causes of climate change and other ecological crises, treating each of them as separate unrelated issues. This fixation also has a tendency to concentrate power or exacerbate existing inequalities.

In order to evaluate the usefulness and appropriateness of technologies we need to ask vital questions such as: Who owns the technology? Who gains from the technology? Who loses? How sustainable is the technology? How likely is the technology to be developed, and when?

Radical transformation

If we are to avoid the worst, catastrophic, impacts of climate change and ecological collapse we need to view human societies as being part our wider natural environment, not above of separate from it. Until this existential relationship is resolved technofixes such as CCS and BECCS will only deepen the ecological hole we are digging ourselves.

Our relationship with nature may sound like an abstract philosophical issue, but it is precisely these kinds of questions that we must collectively answer.

And it’s not as if we are starting from scratch. While they are diverse and not to be idealised, many indigenous cultures have a radically different view of nature from that currently dominating western thought.

The relationship between nature and capitalism was explored further in our A-Z of green capitalism, published in 2016. It provides an introduction to the ideas surrounding green capitalism, as well as the alternatives to it, and explains why, despite its impossibility, the ‘greening’ of capitalism continues to be promoted as a solution to environmental problems.

Of course bringing about a fundamental change in our relationship with nature requires a radical transformation in how our societies are structured and in our attitudes and behaviours. But it also represents an unique opportunity to shift the direction we are moving in, to make a fairer, freer world where humans live in a more harmonious relationship with the rest of life on our planet.

Ecological crises

The depth and scale of change required is huge, but we have no other option.

When it comes to these issues, radicalism is pragmatism. Climate change is only one of a host of interlinked global ecological crises: biodiversity loss, soil degradation, deforestation, and chemical pollutants all also pose grave threats.

Relying on unproven technologies such as CCS to address only one of these problems in isolation is a dangerous distraction from the more profound changes required.

We need systemic change, not an endless horde of zombie technofixes.

This Author 

Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-operative providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism. Since 1996 our research, journalism, analysis and training have supported people affected by corporations and those taking action for radical social change.

Corporate Watch is currently working on a project on technology, if you’d like to know more or want to get involved please send them an email.

Electric car use may be growing exponentially, but they are doing little to curb rising carbon emissions and oil demand, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.

“To say that electric cars are the end of oil is definitely misleading,” economist Fatih Birol told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“This year we expect global oil demand to increase by 1.3 million barrels per day. The effect of 5 million cars is [to diminish that demand by] 50,000 barrels per day. 50,000 versus 1.3m barrels.”

Electricity

Last year, the IEA predicted that the number of electric cars globally would grow from 3 million today, to 125 million by 2030. But Birol said the number paled in comparison to the 1 billion cars powered by internal combustion engines.

Besides, he said, it was not cars that were driving oil demand – “full stop”.

“Drivers are trucks, the petrochemical industry, planes. Asia is just starting to fly,” he said, referring to the agency’s 2018 energy outlook report that also cites shipping as a major source of oil demand.

Birol also highlighted the problem of powering electric cars when two thirds of global generation comes from fossil fuels.

“Where does the electricity come from, to say that electric cars are a solution to our climate change problem? It is not,” Birol said.

Trucks, ships and planes

“Even if there were 300 million [electric cars] with the current power generation system, the impact in terms of CO2 emissions is less than 1% – nothing. If you can’t decarbonise [the power sector], C02 emissions will not be going down. It may be helpful for the local pollution, but for global emissions it is not.”

Environmentalists have repeatedly accused the Paris-based IEA of skewing its research in favour of the oil and gas industry, including by underestimating the growth of the renewables sector. Research and advocacy group Oil Change International believes that this is encouraging governments to overshoot their Paris climate pledges.

Greg Archer, UK director of Transport&Environment, a European umbrella group focusing on transport sustainability, said Birol’s comment revealed the IEA’s bias.

“It took over 20 years to sell the first million electric cars globally, and just a year to sell the second million,” Archer wrote to Climate Home News. “Now well over a million are sold every six months and the growth is continuing to accelerate. Just as the IEA continually has to upgrade its annual forecasts for solar and wind power, so it is for electric cars too.”

Arched said that electric vehicles would increasingly drive down demand for fossil fuels, while we could expect trucks, ships and planes to prioritise hydrogen, advanced biofuels and e-fuels.

“Eventually oil will remain in the ground because it is too expensive to pump it out,” he concluded.

This Article

This article first appeared at Climate Home News.

Germany faces criticism from EU partners and the US for its role in the construction of a Baltic Sea pipeline that will bring Russian gas to the EU, making landfall in Germany’s northeast.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Merkel said Germany’s gas demand would be affected by the recommendations of Germany’s coal commission, due to be finalised in the coming weeks. The commission is mandated to set a timeline to phase out the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

“It is working on the decommissioning of coal-fired power plants,” said Merkel, “but without being able to assure a baseload in our energy generation, we will not be able to survive. So we will need [coal] for a certain period of time.”

Leave coal

The coal closures follow a phase-out of nuclear power in Germany, which Merkel said would be completed by 2020.

The US, which wants to expand its own gas exports to the EU, recently warned that European companies involved in building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline could attract sanctions. Other European countries have raised concerns about making Europe’s gas supply, already 40 percent Russian imports, even more dependent on Moscow.

This week economy and energy minister Peter Altmaier told German newspaper Handlesblatt the pipeline was “far advanced, with pipes laid over kilometres in the sea” and said his country had no plans to block the Gazprom-owned project.

On Wednesday, Merkel said: “This conflict that you hear raging on our energy supply is also a bit exaggerated. We will continue to receive Russian gas and we will also receive liquefied gas from other sources. We’re building up the infrastructure for LNG in all directions. We will also get supplies from the United States eventually. But if we leave coal, if we leave nuclear, then we will need more natural gas. Energy after all needs to be affordable.”

Historical responsibility

Christoph Podewils, an energy expert at the Agora Energiewende think tank, told Climate Home News their research showed that in the event of a coal phase out “gas demand won’t change very much, given that Germany’s share of renewable energy will rise to 65 percent by 2030”.

A draft of the coal commission report, leaked to Reuters, laid out plans to compensate companies and electricity consumers affected by the early closure of plants.

When it came to the “huge challenge” of climate change, Merkel said Germany, like other nations, was committed to a low carbon economy “by the end of the century – but we are not at the end of the century”.

Valérie Masson-Delmotte, one of the co-chairs of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told CHN faster action was needed to meet the warming limits of the Paris Agreement and prevent serious disruption of the natural world and human society. Holding temperature rise to “well below 2C implies net zero CO2 emissions globally by 2070, 1.5C implies 2050 – before end of century, and beyond low carbon”.

Masson-Delmotte added that these numbers represented a global pathway and did not take into consideration Germany’s historical responsibility for changing the climate.

Merkel also referred to that in her speech: “Industrialised countries have a responsibility, not because the CO2 emissions that we [in Germany] have with our 80 million people will change the overall picture. But we as an industrialised country have already emitted CO2 to a very large extent.”

This Article

This article first appeared at Climate Home News.

“I want to introduce to all of you the new Brazil we are building,” Bolsonaro told the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this week. “We are committed to changing our history.”

In a much-anticipated address, Bolsonaro attempted to paint a positive picture of Brazil’s environmental stewardship, inviting the audience of business leaders to visit the Amazon, while also calling for them to invest in the exploitation of the country’s natural resources.

“Brazil is home to the world’s greatest biodiversity and we have abundant mineral resources,” he said. “We want to engage with partners who master technology so that this marriage translates in progress and development for all. Our actions, make no mistake whatsoever, will certainly attract you to seize great business opportunities.”

Economic development

During last year’s presidential campaign, Bolsonaro pledged to open up the Amazon to mining and agriculture and crack down on environmental NGOs. New environment minister Ricardo Salles has already started to make good on the latter by suspending all partnerships with civil society organisations for three months, in a move newspaper O Globo called a “war on NGOs”.

During the 2018 election campaign, Bolsonaro threatened to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change – a decision on which he has since backtracked, providing that the deal doesn’t impact on the country’s sovereignty over indigenous lands. A position he confirmed to executives in Davos on Tuesday, Folha de São Paolo reported.

“We are the one country that most preserves the environment,” he claimed, citing the country’s abundance of forests and calling Brazil’s stewardship was an example to the world.

In 2018, under the previous administration, deforestation reached a ten-year high. During the election period, with a Bolsonaro victory anticipated, forest loss jumped by 50 percent, year-on-year.

“It is now our mission to make progress in harmonising environmental preservation and biodiversity, with much-needed economic development,” said Bolsonaro. “One should not, of course, emphasise one more than the other.”

Indigenous people

Bolsonaro vowed to stick to a free market agenda by carrying out privatisations, “streamlin[ing] rules and mak[ing] it easy to do business”.

The president has alarmed human rights activists by speaking nostalgically of the 1964-1985 dictatorship and aiming to freeze the demarcation of indigenous lands – which have traditionally protected Brazil’s forests and Cerrado from exploitation.

José Gregorio Mirabal, general coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) urged Davos attendees “not to be distracted by president Bolsonaro’s efforts to calm investors interested in investing in Brazil”. Instead, Mirabal said, leaders ought to fight any moves that would speed up deforestation or threaten indigenous rights by warning Bolsonaro of consequences on the Brazilian market and economy.

“You cannot imagine what will happen if the government of Brazil implements its intention to roll back the rights of indigenous peoples to their forests, in favour of implementing projects for mining, transportation, communication and energy on indigenous territories.

“The outcome of implementing president Bolsonaro’s development plans will visit upon the entire Amazon a genocide and an environmental disaster on a scale that the world has not seen before.”

This Article

This article was first published at Climate Home News.

The new Magombera Nature Reserve now protects 6,425 acres (2,600 hectares) of tropical forest and grassland, managed by the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG).

Without acquiring this land and creating this reserve, this habitat was under threat from conversion to a sugar plantation.

Magombera Forest is internationally recognised for its diverse landscapes and unique wildlife. In addition to holding charismatic African megafauna such as African Elephants and Hippopotamus, it has also been identified as one of the top 20 Priority Primate Areas in Tanzania, and until now has been the only one without protected status.

Botanical diversity 

The forest is home to at least five primate species: Udzungwa Red Colobus (an endangered species which can only be found in this valley and the neighbouring Udzungwa Mountains), Angolan Black and White Colobus, Sykes’s Monkey, Greater Bushbaby and Udzungwa Galago.

Richard Cuthbert, WLT’s director of conservation, said: “We are proud to have been a part of this project, protecting a globally important forest remnant and ensuring the future of its unique wildlife. The botanical diversity of Magombera is particularly striking, with more than 500 plant species including a number of rare and endemic trees.”

Dr Marshall had predicted a decade ago that the forest understorey would be gone by 2018 if the rates of logging of young, straight trees continued without intervention. The landscape had suffered drastic deforestation since the 1950s and some 988,420 acres (400,000 hectares) of this habitat in the surrounding Kilombero Valley had been lost, and Magombera Forest was all that remained.

Dr Marshall has been closely involved in the establishment of the Udzungwa Forest Project (UFP), under UK conservation zoo Flamingo Land, TFCG, and the University of York. Marshall said: “This wonderful news has followed more than 40 years of research and consultation.

“When I first began work in the forest 15 years ago it was clearly a biologically important place, but it rang with the sound of axes and machetes.

Local support

“Over the past few years the Udzungwa Forest Project has worked with local villages to find alternative sources for wood and has even managed to reduce the frequency of wildfires in Magombera, leading to thousands of small trees now growing back into the once empty forest understorey.”

Under the UFP, local communities have shown strong support for the conservation of Magombera Forest.

Villagers will now benefit from entrance fees paid by tourists to visit the forest, in addition to the benefits such as regulating climate, preventing flooding, and maintaining soil fertility for crops.

A group of villagers also recently showed their support by travelling 40km to protest to the district government against forest encroachment by a wealthy landowner.

Besides support from the local villages, this project has come together thanks to the collaboration of numerous organisations. TFCG was able to purchase 3,030 acres (1,227 hectares) of this reserve from a sugar company thanks to the joint support of World Land Trust (WLT), Flamingo Land, Aage V. Jensen Charity Foundation, and Rainforest Trust.

The remaining 3,395 acres (1,374 hectares) already belong to the Tanzanian government and will now be protected as Magombera Nature Reserve, the highest level of protection available under the Tanzania Forest Service.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a commissioning editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the World Land Trust. 

We hear the phrase all the time — energy efficiency. It’s not just an industry buzzword anymore. But what really is energy efficiency and what can we do to make it? 

Energy efficiency, also known as efficient energy use, is defined as taking steps to reduce the amount of energy that a home, appliance or electronic device uses.

This could affect the device directly, such as with the creation of Energy Star devices in the United States, or could change the environment in which the device function — i.e., insulating a home so that the HVAC system doesn’t have to work so hard to heat or cool the building.

Utility companies

Their Energy Star Rating designates how well an appliance or device utilises the energy that it is given. The higher the letter rating, the more efficient the device is and the less power it takes to run. The Energy Star program was started in 1992 as part of the Federal Clean Air Act.

The goal of the Clean Air Act was to help consumers save money and reduce energy use, which in turn can help improve the local environment.

New energy efficient devices are more accessible to obtain than ever before, but they do still tend to be more expensive than their counterparts.

There aren’t many incentives available that make building energy efficient homes more attractive to the average consumer. What can manufacturers do to make energy efficient more appealing to everyone?

Energy efficiency isn’t just right for the environment. It’s good for every consumer that utilises the power grid. As less energy is used, the cost of power generation is reduced. This means that power customers have more money to spend, bolstering other parts of the local economy.

Entire house

This, in turn, it also has some benefits for the utility companies. As the demand on the power grid is reduced, the costs incurred by the utility companies are also reduced.

The company no longer needs to spend money to build new power lines, transformers or substations. It also becomes easier for utility companies to stay compliant with state and federal regulations, including those that affect the local environment.

Many of the benefits of energy efficiency aren’t being cataloged as benefits when they’re deciding which programs to offer to their clients. Energy efficiency should be included in incentives and policies that are available for consumers as a way to entice more clients to attempt to make their homes more energy efficient.

Even old homes can be made more energy efficient. Incentives can encourage homeowners to take steps to improve their home’s efficiency. This could be facilitated by the power company — offering home efficiency surveys that can inform homeowners where their home could use a bit of work.

Incentives can also be offered by companies that install insulation, to encourage individuals who own older homes to install insulation that can increase the overall energy efficiency of their entire house.

Offer incentives

Incentives are going to be the key to encouraging homeowners and renters to adopt more energy efficient practices.

Installing insulation, upgrading appliances and other changes that a homeowner can make cost money, and without the incentive to make those changes, people are content to stay in the dark with their high energy bills and enlarged carbon footprints.

The exact incentives will vary dramatically, depending on the specifics of the marketplace and the demographics of the area, but the fact remains – people don’t want to do something for no reward, especially when that something is going to cost them money.

Offering incentives can change the practice of becoming energy efficient from an expensive chore to something that homeowners strive for.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.