Wine production in Europe has fallen to 50-year lows due to the impacts of extreme weather events that include hail, frost, drought and rot. No one knows this better than Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, a company that owns some of the biggest names in port including Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. 

Inviting former President Barack Obama to Porto was undoubtedly intended to make heads turn. Obama’s administration was instrumental in bringing the Paris Accord into being, but here in Porto he acknowledged that “the targets set by the Paris Accord are not enough to avoid catastrophe.”

Obama talked extensively about the linkages between extreme weather impacts and migration, and how these ultimately connect to conflict. His overall message echoed that of the Porto Protocol: the only way to solve this crisis is to work together.

Financial resources

Adrian Bridge is keen to promote the need for action and sharing of ideas that can reduce losses that are already threatening many businesses.

Making the point that we need solutions, he stated that his “company … had a vineyard completely wiped out in a single hour, after we had this hail storm at the end of May… we had 12 percent annual rainfall in one hour.

“That event cost our business about €400,000 by the time you count all the erosion, infiltration, damage to buildings and so on and so forth.”

In wine regions such as Burgundy, cannons firing silver iodide into storm clouds have been put in place to convert the crop-destroying hailstones into rain. To work, this requires an integrated response between different farmers and a commitment in terms of land and resources. 

Is it worth it? Bridge says, “Running a system of seeding clouds costs a whole lot less than [€400,000]. As a big company, we can do it. Smaller farmers alongside us who don’t have the financial resources would benefit… well great! That is great!”

Rising temperatures

Adrian Bridge is a determined character with a great deal of success in the wine trade. His attitude is geared to action and cooperation reaching beyond his own business to other industries where experience and learning can be shared.

He says, “Instead of thinking in silos of wine industry and wine solutions, hopefully, we can learn from other industries and we can be a platform that gets lots of people to join from various different industries.”

Obama echoed this sentiment of cooperation stating, “..adaptation is going to be required for winemakers, for example, to share best practices in terms of how they can sustain their industry in the face of rising temperatures.” 

Obama continued, “But I think it would also be important for the industries that are being effected to publicise the impacts that a changing climate already has. Because one of the challenges in the climate change debate has always been, that… it is not an immediate catastrophe.”

“What businesses can do is to start putting a figure in terms of the losses that are current, or, the expenses required for adaptation. Because that information already exists, it’s just no one does it.”

New measurement

“The reason that it is important to start attaching a price to losses, or expenses to adapting to a warmer climate, is because one of the main arguments against doing something about climate change is that it is going to cost too much, or it is going to have an impact on our economic competitiveness.”

“Now, if you can say, ‘ah listen, in Miami, we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny day’ and you start to see floods because the ocean is literally coming up through the ground, two feet high in residential neighbourhoods.

“If that is going to cost, eventually 20 billion or 100 billion or half a trillion dollars of property damage, then why would we not spend 50 billion dollars to start implementing more clean energy strategies?

“You then get it cost-benefit analyses to support change. That, I think, is something that is very important.”

Also speaking at Climate Change Leadership summit was top UN diplomat and Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova: “There is a new kind of index, a new measurement, which is called the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) for UNESCO World Heritage sites to be established.” 

Common memory

Bokova highlighted how the CVI would list the most vulnerable sites around the world, many include vineyards like Champagne or the Douro, but also places such as Venice, and how the preservation of these sites is a way of protecting our cultural identities and culture. 

Bokova cautioned against complacency at this point in time: “This is the scariest part of global warming, the fact that we won’t be able to undo the damage done.

“That we won’t be able to extricate Venice or New Orleans from the sea. Their disappearance will be a net loss, regardless of what mountainside civilisations will someday rise.”

“We must take very serious measures because climate is not only destroying our livelihoods, our economies, the lives of future generations. It is not only causing conflict, migration and wars. We know that populations move because of climate, destruction, desertification, loss of water resources.”

“The worst part, of course, I speak from the point of view of UNESCO and the World Heritage, is that climate will just make our common history disappear, our common memory and at the end of the day, our diverse identities.”

Do more!

This one-day event in Porto brought together world-class speakers and an audience curious to learn more about climate change. The issue still remains, how do we move from being a talk-shop to a do-shop?

In March 2019 the Porto Protocol will move into what Bridge believes is the do-phase. A two-day conference where solution providers and stakeholders from the wine industry and many others will converge into a rich exchange of ideas focussed on overcoming the future challenges of climate change.

On a hot evening at Taylor’s Port Cellars on the banks of the Douro, Adrian Bridge, says exactly what every CEO around the world should be saying: 

“The point is to do more tomorrow than you are doing today. So if you haven’t started to change your business to help mitigate climate change, it is time to start and start now! If you are already doing a lot, do more!”

This Author

Nick Breeze has been interviewing a wide range of people in both climate change and the wine industry for over a decade. He is currently part of a new initiative at wine-weather.com and writes for SecretSommelier.com and envisionation.co.uk. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

We are facing deep-rooted climate, social and environmental crises. The current dominant economic system cannot provide solutions. It is time for system change.

For Friends of the Earth International this means creating societies based on peoples’ sovereignty and environmental, social, economic and gender justice. We must question and deconstruct the capitalist logic of accumulation.

The climate catastrophe is interwoven with many social and environmental crises, including oppression, corporate power, hunger, water depletion, biodiversity loss and deforestation.

Equality and reciprocity

At its heart sits an unsustainable economic system, the sole aim of which is endless growth and profit. This system concentrates wealth, power and obscene privilege with the few.

Corporations and national elites are empowered by that very system to exploit people and their livelihoods with impunity.

We must tackle climate change and the associated social and environmental crises by taking rapid and bold action to address the common root causes; privatisation, financialisation and commodification of nature and societies, and unsustainable production and consumption systems.

The magnitude of the crises we face demands system change.

That system change will result in the creation of sustainable societies and new relations between human beings, and between human beings and nature, based on equality and reciprocity.

Expansion of capital

But we cannot create these societies and assert people’s rights without increasing people’s power. We need to reclaim politics.

This means creating genuine, radical and just democracies centred around people’s sovereignty and participation.

International law must put people above corporate profit, ensuring binding rules for business and mechanisms that guarantee access to justice for victims of transnational corporations.

System change calls for an articulation of the struggles against oppression; that is, patriarchy, racism, colonialism, and class and capitalist exploitation.

It demands commitment to the struggle against the exploitation of women’s bodies and work. We are witnessing how the expansion of capital over the territories leads to increased violence against women alongside the violation of their rights.

Economic justice

Gender justice will only be possible when we recognise women as political subjects, stop violence against women, strengthen women’s autonomy, advance the principles of feminist economy, deconstruct the sexual division of labor and reorganize care work.

A transformation of the energy system is fundamental to system change. It entails democratic answers to the fundamental questions: for whom and what is energy produced? And a total departure from fossil fuel reliance and corporate control.

This must be a just transition, founded on workers’ and community rights. It is not only about changing technologies and renewable energy, but about public and community ownership and control, therefore addressing the root problems of a system that turns energy into a commodity and denies the right to energy for all.

It requires equity and justice, especially for those already impacted by the changing climate in the global South.

Genuine system change would radically transform the food system towards food sovereignty and agroecology: valuing local knowledge, promoting social and economic justice and people’s control over their territories, guaranteeing the right to land, water and seeds, nurturing social relations founded on justice and solidarity, and recognising the fundamental role of women in food production, to provide an effective way to feed the world and a counter to destructive industrial agriculture.

Popular mobilisation

System change must address people’s individual and collective needs and promote reciprocity, redistribution and sharing.

Solutions include public services achieved through tax justice, social ownership and co-operativism, local markets and fair trade, community forest management, and valuing the wellbeing of people and the planet.

People all over the world are already living or implementing thousands of initiatives which embody justice and challenge the capitalist logic. Now we must expand them.

And that requires commensurate international and national public policies that empower people to fight for a democratic state that ensures rights and provides environmentally and socially just public services, and active popular participation; a state that guarantees peoples’ rights to water, land and the territories, food, health, education, housing and decent jobs.

We all need to support local and international resistance, engage in popular mobilisation, strive for policy change and upscale the real solutions, the solutions of the people. This is system change.

This Author

Karin Nansen is Chair of Friends of the Earth International, the world’s largest grassroots environmental federation, and a founding member of REDES / Friends of the Earth Uruguay.

Wine production in Europe has fallen to 50-year lows due to the impacts of extreme weather events that include hail, frost, drought and rot. No one knows this better than Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, a company that owns some of the biggest names in port including Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. 

Inviting former President Barack Obama to Porto was undoubtedly intended to make heads turn. Obama’s administration was instrumental in bringing the Paris Accord into being, but here in Porto he acknowledged that “the targets set by the Paris Accord are not enough to avoid catastrophe.”

Obama talked extensively about the linkages between extreme weather impacts and migration, and how these ultimately connect to conflict. His overall message echoed that of the Porto Protocol: the only way to solve this crisis is to work together.

Financial resources

Adrian Bridge is keen to promote the need for action and sharing of ideas that can reduce losses that are already threatening many businesses.

Making the point that we need solutions, he stated that his “company … had a vineyard completely wiped out in a single hour, after we had this hail storm at the end of May… we had 12 percent annual rainfall in one hour.

“That event cost our business about €400,000 by the time you count all the erosion, infiltration, damage to buildings and so on and so forth.”

In wine regions such as Burgundy, cannons firing silver iodide into storm clouds have been put in place to convert the crop-destroying hailstones into rain. To work, this requires an integrated response between different farmers and a commitment in terms of land and resources. 

Is it worth it? Bridge says, “Running a system of seeding clouds costs a whole lot less than [€400,000]. As a big company, we can do it. Smaller farmers alongside us who don’t have the financial resources would benefit… well great! That is great!”

Rising temperatures

Adrian Bridge is a determined character with a great deal of success in the wine trade. His attitude is geared to action and cooperation reaching beyond his own business to other industries where experience and learning can be shared.

He says, “Instead of thinking in silos of wine industry and wine solutions, hopefully, we can learn from other industries and we can be a platform that gets lots of people to join from various different industries.”

Obama echoed this sentiment of cooperation stating, “..adaptation is going to be required for winemakers, for example, to share best practices in terms of how they can sustain their industry in the face of rising temperatures.” 

Obama continued, “But I think it would also be important for the industries that are being effected to publicise the impacts that a changing climate already has. Because one of the challenges in the climate change debate has always been, that… it is not an immediate catastrophe.”

“What businesses can do is to start putting a figure in terms of the losses that are current, or, the expenses required for adaptation. Because that information already exists, it’s just no one does it.”

New measurement

“The reason that it is important to start attaching a price to losses, or expenses to adapting to a warmer climate, is because one of the main arguments against doing something about climate change is that it is going to cost too much, or it is going to have an impact on our economic competitiveness.”

“Now, if you can say, ‘ah listen, in Miami, we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny day’ and you start to see floods because the ocean is literally coming up through the ground, two feet high in residential neighbourhoods.

“If that is going to cost, eventually 20 billion or 100 billion or half a trillion dollars of property damage, then why would we not spend 50 billion dollars to start implementing more clean energy strategies?

“You then get it cost-benefit analyses to support change. That, I think, is something that is very important.”

Also speaking at Climate Change Leadership summit was top UN diplomat and Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova: “There is a new kind of index, a new measurement, which is called the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) for UNESCO World Heritage sites to be established.” 

Common memory

Bokova highlighted how the CVI would list the most vulnerable sites around the world, many include vineyards like Champagne or the Douro, but also places such as Venice, and how the preservation of these sites is a way of protecting our cultural identities and culture. 

Bokova cautioned against complacency at this point in time: “This is the scariest part of global warming, the fact that we won’t be able to undo the damage done.

“That we won’t be able to extricate Venice or New Orleans from the sea. Their disappearance will be a net loss, regardless of what mountainside civilisations will someday rise.”

“We must take very serious measures because climate is not only destroying our livelihoods, our economies, the lives of future generations. It is not only causing conflict, migration and wars. We know that populations move because of climate, destruction, desertification, loss of water resources.”

“The worst part, of course, I speak from the point of view of UNESCO and the World Heritage, is that climate will just make our common history disappear, our common memory and at the end of the day, our diverse identities.”

Do more!

This one-day event in Porto brought together world-class speakers and an audience curious to learn more about climate change. The issue still remains, how do we move from being a talk-shop to a do-shop?

In March 2019 the Porto Protocol will move into what Bridge believes is the do-phase. A two-day conference where solution providers and stakeholders from the wine industry and many others will converge into a rich exchange of ideas focussed on overcoming the future challenges of climate change.

On a hot evening at Taylor’s Port Cellars on the banks of the Douro, Adrian Bridge, says exactly what every CEO around the world should be saying: 

“The point is to do more tomorrow than you are doing today. So if you haven’t started to change your business to help mitigate climate change, it is time to start and start now! If you are already doing a lot, do more!”

This Author

Nick Breeze has been interviewing a wide range of people in both climate change and the wine industry for over a decade. He is currently part of a new initiative at wine-weather.com and writes for SecretSommelier.com and envisionation.co.uk. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

Wine production in Europe has fallen to 50-year lows due to the impacts of extreme weather events that include hail, frost, drought and rot. No one knows this better than Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, a company that owns some of the biggest names in port including Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. 

Inviting former President Barack Obama to Porto was undoubtedly intended to make heads turn. Obama’s administration was instrumental in bringing the Paris Accord into being, but here in Porto he acknowledged that “the targets set by the Paris Accord are not enough to avoid catastrophe.”

Obama talked extensively about the linkages between extreme weather impacts and migration, and how these ultimately connect to conflict. His overall message echoed that of the Porto Protocol: the only way to solve this crisis is to work together.

Financial resources

Adrian Bridge is keen to promote the need for action and sharing of ideas that can reduce losses that are already threatening many businesses.

Making the point that we need solutions, he stated that his “company … had a vineyard completely wiped out in a single hour, after we had this hail storm at the end of May… we had 12 percent annual rainfall in one hour.

“That event cost our business about €400,000 by the time you count all the erosion, infiltration, damage to buildings and so on and so forth.”

In wine regions such as Burgundy, cannons firing silver iodide into storm clouds have been put in place to convert the crop-destroying hailstones into rain. To work, this requires an integrated response between different farmers and a commitment in terms of land and resources. 

Is it worth it? Bridge says, “Running a system of seeding clouds costs a whole lot less than [€400,000]. As a big company, we can do it. Smaller farmers alongside us who don’t have the financial resources would benefit… well great! That is great!”

Rising temperatures

Adrian Bridge is a determined character with a great deal of success in the wine trade. His attitude is geared to action and cooperation reaching beyond his own business to other industries where experience and learning can be shared.

He says, “Instead of thinking in silos of wine industry and wine solutions, hopefully, we can learn from other industries and we can be a platform that gets lots of people to join from various different industries.”

Obama echoed this sentiment of cooperation stating, “..adaptation is going to be required for winemakers, for example, to share best practices in terms of how they can sustain their industry in the face of rising temperatures.” 

Obama continued, “But I think it would also be important for the industries that are being effected to publicise the impacts that a changing climate already has. Because one of the challenges in the climate change debate has always been, that… it is not an immediate catastrophe.”

“What businesses can do is to start putting a figure in terms of the losses that are current, or, the expenses required for adaptation. Because that information already exists, it’s just no one does it.”

New measurement

“The reason that it is important to start attaching a price to losses, or expenses to adapting to a warmer climate, is because one of the main arguments against doing something about climate change is that it is going to cost too much, or it is going to have an impact on our economic competitiveness.”

“Now, if you can say, ‘ah listen, in Miami, we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny day’ and you start to see floods because the ocean is literally coming up through the ground, two feet high in residential neighbourhoods.

“If that is going to cost, eventually 20 billion or 100 billion or half a trillion dollars of property damage, then why would we not spend 50 billion dollars to start implementing more clean energy strategies?

“You then get it cost-benefit analyses to support change. That, I think, is something that is very important.”

Also speaking at Climate Change Leadership summit was top UN diplomat and Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova: “There is a new kind of index, a new measurement, which is called the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) for UNESCO World Heritage sites to be established.” 

Common memory

Bokova highlighted how the CVI would list the most vulnerable sites around the world, many include vineyards like Champagne or the Douro, but also places such as Venice, and how the preservation of these sites is a way of protecting our cultural identities and culture. 

Bokova cautioned against complacency at this point in time: “This is the scariest part of global warming, the fact that we won’t be able to undo the damage done.

“That we won’t be able to extricate Venice or New Orleans from the sea. Their disappearance will be a net loss, regardless of what mountainside civilisations will someday rise.”

“We must take very serious measures because climate is not only destroying our livelihoods, our economies, the lives of future generations. It is not only causing conflict, migration and wars. We know that populations move because of climate, destruction, desertification, loss of water resources.”

“The worst part, of course, I speak from the point of view of UNESCO and the World Heritage, is that climate will just make our common history disappear, our common memory and at the end of the day, our diverse identities.”

Do more!

This one-day event in Porto brought together world-class speakers and an audience curious to learn more about climate change. The issue still remains, how do we move from being a talk-shop to a do-shop?

In March 2019 the Porto Protocol will move into what Bridge believes is the do-phase. A two-day conference where solution providers and stakeholders from the wine industry and many others will converge into a rich exchange of ideas focussed on overcoming the future challenges of climate change.

On a hot evening at Taylor’s Port Cellars on the banks of the Douro, Adrian Bridge, says exactly what every CEO around the world should be saying: 

“The point is to do more tomorrow than you are doing today. So if you haven’t started to change your business to help mitigate climate change, it is time to start and start now! If you are already doing a lot, do more!”

This Author

Nick Breeze has been interviewing a wide range of people in both climate change and the wine industry for over a decade. He is currently part of a new initiative at wine-weather.com and writes for SecretSommelier.com and envisionation.co.uk. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

Wine production in Europe has fallen to 50-year lows due to the impacts of extreme weather events that include hail, frost, drought and rot. No one knows this better than Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, a company that owns some of the biggest names in port including Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. 

Inviting former President Barack Obama to Porto was undoubtedly intended to make heads turn. Obama’s administration was instrumental in bringing the Paris Accord into being, but here in Porto he acknowledged that “the targets set by the Paris Accord are not enough to avoid catastrophe.”

Obama talked extensively about the linkages between extreme weather impacts and migration, and how these ultimately connect to conflict. His overall message echoed that of the Porto Protocol: the only way to solve this crisis is to work together.

Financial resources

Adrian Bridge is keen to promote the need for action and sharing of ideas that can reduce losses that are already threatening many businesses.

Making the point that we need solutions, he stated that his “company … had a vineyard completely wiped out in a single hour, after we had this hail storm at the end of May… we had 12 percent annual rainfall in one hour.

“That event cost our business about €400,000 by the time you count all the erosion, infiltration, damage to buildings and so on and so forth.”

In wine regions such as Burgundy, cannons firing silver iodide into storm clouds have been put in place to convert the crop-destroying hailstones into rain. To work, this requires an integrated response between different farmers and a commitment in terms of land and resources. 

Is it worth it? Bridge says, “Running a system of seeding clouds costs a whole lot less than [€400,000]. As a big company, we can do it. Smaller farmers alongside us who don’t have the financial resources would benefit… well great! That is great!”

Rising temperatures

Adrian Bridge is a determined character with a great deal of success in the wine trade. His attitude is geared to action and cooperation reaching beyond his own business to other industries where experience and learning can be shared.

He says, “Instead of thinking in silos of wine industry and wine solutions, hopefully, we can learn from other industries and we can be a platform that gets lots of people to join from various different industries.”

Obama echoed this sentiment of cooperation stating, “..adaptation is going to be required for winemakers, for example, to share best practices in terms of how they can sustain their industry in the face of rising temperatures.” 

Obama continued, “But I think it would also be important for the industries that are being effected to publicise the impacts that a changing climate already has. Because one of the challenges in the climate change debate has always been, that… it is not an immediate catastrophe.”

“What businesses can do is to start putting a figure in terms of the losses that are current, or, the expenses required for adaptation. Because that information already exists, it’s just no one does it.”

New measurement

“The reason that it is important to start attaching a price to losses, or expenses to adapting to a warmer climate, is because one of the main arguments against doing something about climate change is that it is going to cost too much, or it is going to have an impact on our economic competitiveness.”

“Now, if you can say, ‘ah listen, in Miami, we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny day’ and you start to see floods because the ocean is literally coming up through the ground, two feet high in residential neighbourhoods.

“If that is going to cost, eventually 20 billion or 100 billion or half a trillion dollars of property damage, then why would we not spend 50 billion dollars to start implementing more clean energy strategies?

“You then get it cost-benefit analyses to support change. That, I think, is something that is very important.”

Also speaking at Climate Change Leadership summit was top UN diplomat and Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova: “There is a new kind of index, a new measurement, which is called the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) for UNESCO World Heritage sites to be established.” 

Common memory

Bokova highlighted how the CVI would list the most vulnerable sites around the world, many include vineyards like Champagne or the Douro, but also places such as Venice, and how the preservation of these sites is a way of protecting our cultural identities and culture. 

Bokova cautioned against complacency at this point in time: “This is the scariest part of global warming, the fact that we won’t be able to undo the damage done.

“That we won’t be able to extricate Venice or New Orleans from the sea. Their disappearance will be a net loss, regardless of what mountainside civilisations will someday rise.”

“We must take very serious measures because climate is not only destroying our livelihoods, our economies, the lives of future generations. It is not only causing conflict, migration and wars. We know that populations move because of climate, destruction, desertification, loss of water resources.”

“The worst part, of course, I speak from the point of view of UNESCO and the World Heritage, is that climate will just make our common history disappear, our common memory and at the end of the day, our diverse identities.”

Do more!

This one-day event in Porto brought together world-class speakers and an audience curious to learn more about climate change. The issue still remains, how do we move from being a talk-shop to a do-shop?

In March 2019 the Porto Protocol will move into what Bridge believes is the do-phase. A two-day conference where solution providers and stakeholders from the wine industry and many others will converge into a rich exchange of ideas focussed on overcoming the future challenges of climate change.

On a hot evening at Taylor’s Port Cellars on the banks of the Douro, Adrian Bridge, says exactly what every CEO around the world should be saying: 

“The point is to do more tomorrow than you are doing today. So if you haven’t started to change your business to help mitigate climate change, it is time to start and start now! If you are already doing a lot, do more!”

This Author

Nick Breeze has been interviewing a wide range of people in both climate change and the wine industry for over a decade. He is currently part of a new initiative at wine-weather.com and writes for SecretSommelier.com and envisionation.co.uk. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

Wine production in Europe has fallen to 50-year lows due to the impacts of extreme weather events that include hail, frost, drought and rot. No one knows this better than Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, a company that owns some of the biggest names in port including Taylor, Croft and Fonseca. 

Inviting former President Barack Obama to Porto was undoubtedly intended to make heads turn. Obama’s administration was instrumental in bringing the Paris Accord into being, but here in Porto he acknowledged that “the targets set by the Paris Accord are not enough to avoid catastrophe.”

Obama talked extensively about the linkages between extreme weather impacts and migration, and how these ultimately connect to conflict. His overall message echoed that of the Porto Protocol: the only way to solve this crisis is to work together.

Financial resources

Adrian Bridge is keen to promote the need for action and sharing of ideas that can reduce losses that are already threatening many businesses.

Making the point that we need solutions, he stated that his “company … had a vineyard completely wiped out in a single hour, after we had this hail storm at the end of May… we had 12 percent annual rainfall in one hour.

“That event cost our business about €400,000 by the time you count all the erosion, infiltration, damage to buildings and so on and so forth.”

In wine regions such as Burgundy, cannons firing silver iodide into storm clouds have been put in place to convert the crop-destroying hailstones into rain. To work, this requires an integrated response between different farmers and a commitment in terms of land and resources. 

Is it worth it? Bridge says, “Running a system of seeding clouds costs a whole lot less than [€400,000]. As a big company, we can do it. Smaller farmers alongside us who don’t have the financial resources would benefit… well great! That is great!”

Rising temperatures

Adrian Bridge is a determined character with a great deal of success in the wine trade. His attitude is geared to action and cooperation reaching beyond his own business to other industries where experience and learning can be shared.

He says, “Instead of thinking in silos of wine industry and wine solutions, hopefully, we can learn from other industries and we can be a platform that gets lots of people to join from various different industries.”

Obama echoed this sentiment of cooperation stating, “..adaptation is going to be required for winemakers, for example, to share best practices in terms of how they can sustain their industry in the face of rising temperatures.” 

Obama continued, “But I think it would also be important for the industries that are being effected to publicise the impacts that a changing climate already has. Because one of the challenges in the climate change debate has always been, that… it is not an immediate catastrophe.”

“What businesses can do is to start putting a figure in terms of the losses that are current, or, the expenses required for adaptation. Because that information already exists, it’s just no one does it.”

New measurement

“The reason that it is important to start attaching a price to losses, or expenses to adapting to a warmer climate, is because one of the main arguments against doing something about climate change is that it is going to cost too much, or it is going to have an impact on our economic competitiveness.”

“Now, if you can say, ‘ah listen, in Miami, we are in the middle of a beautiful sunny day’ and you start to see floods because the ocean is literally coming up through the ground, two feet high in residential neighbourhoods.

“If that is going to cost, eventually 20 billion or 100 billion or half a trillion dollars of property damage, then why would we not spend 50 billion dollars to start implementing more clean energy strategies?

“You then get it cost-benefit analyses to support change. That, I think, is something that is very important.”

Also speaking at Climate Change Leadership summit was top UN diplomat and Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova: “There is a new kind of index, a new measurement, which is called the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI) for UNESCO World Heritage sites to be established.” 

Common memory

Bokova highlighted how the CVI would list the most vulnerable sites around the world, many include vineyards like Champagne or the Douro, but also places such as Venice, and how the preservation of these sites is a way of protecting our cultural identities and culture. 

Bokova cautioned against complacency at this point in time: “This is the scariest part of global warming, the fact that we won’t be able to undo the damage done.

“That we won’t be able to extricate Venice or New Orleans from the sea. Their disappearance will be a net loss, regardless of what mountainside civilisations will someday rise.”

“We must take very serious measures because climate is not only destroying our livelihoods, our economies, the lives of future generations. It is not only causing conflict, migration and wars. We know that populations move because of climate, destruction, desertification, loss of water resources.”

“The worst part, of course, I speak from the point of view of UNESCO and the World Heritage, is that climate will just make our common history disappear, our common memory and at the end of the day, our diverse identities.”

Do more!

This one-day event in Porto brought together world-class speakers and an audience curious to learn more about climate change. The issue still remains, how do we move from being a talk-shop to a do-shop?

In March 2019 the Porto Protocol will move into what Bridge believes is the do-phase. A two-day conference where solution providers and stakeholders from the wine industry and many others will converge into a rich exchange of ideas focussed on overcoming the future challenges of climate change.

On a hot evening at Taylor’s Port Cellars on the banks of the Douro, Adrian Bridge, says exactly what every CEO around the world should be saying: 

“The point is to do more tomorrow than you are doing today. So if you haven’t started to change your business to help mitigate climate change, it is time to start and start now! If you are already doing a lot, do more!”

This Author

Nick Breeze has been interviewing a wide range of people in both climate change and the wine industry for over a decade. He is currently part of a new initiative at wine-weather.com and writes for SecretSommelier.com and envisionation.co.uk. He can be followed on Twitter at @NickGBreeze.

Flourishing flora and fauna, the return of wild boars and beavers, and thriving nature-based economies. Or obliterated traditional scenery and communities with the hearts ripped out of them. Rewilding certainly evokes a passionate response from either side of the argument.

“Rewilding” is the idea that ecosystems can be restored by nature taking care of itself. It seeks to reinstate natural processes and missing species, allowing them to shape landscape and habitats.

Rewilding should also give communities the opportunity to create nature-based economies, such as tourism aimed at allowing people to reconnect with nature.

Harvesting subsidies

Debates around the concept have come to the fore recently as Brexit means that the UK can shape its own agricultural policy, instead of being bound by that of the EU.

Some conservationists argue that sheep farming on upland areas is largely unprofitable, so there could be an opportunity to use these areas to restore nature and create new livelihoods that are not based on farming.

According to George Monbiot, Guardian columnist and vociferous supporter of rewildling, EU farming subsidies have left the countryside empty of both wildlife and people.

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) pays people per hectare for the land they own, he points out, and since UK landholdings are relatively large, it is currently possible to make a living by “harvesting subsidies”.

Upland landowners look like they are farming sheep, but the actual industry is “collecting public money”, he said. The sheep then scour the hillsides, eating all the plants, leaving behind only course and wiry grass. “Sheep in this country have done more ecological damage than all the building that has ever happened,” he claimed.

Rewilding on the other hand, would drive nature-based tourism, creating more jobs and bringing in more income than traditional industries, allowing shops and schools to reopen. “We could have a totally different economy, as well as a totally different ecology,” he said.

Monbiot stressed that he did not advocate blanket rewilding, but would like to see at least ten per cent of Britain’s uplands restored in this way. He was backed by author Mark Cocker, who said: “England is the 28th most denatured country in the world. How long before we admit that this can’t go on?”

Lowland benefits better

On the other side of the debate was Rory Stewart, MP for Penrith in the Lake District, the English constituency with the largest percentage of uplands, and former environment minister. He argued that rewilding should take place in the lowlands, giving the example of Knepp in Sussex.

The owners of this farm decided to allow nature to take over in 2001. They report that the land has since seen the return of multiple species of bird, insect and mammal; cattle that self-medicated by eating hedgerows and a stable income for themselves, from running wildlife safaris, accommodation and selling beef from the cattle living wild on their land.

Rewilding should take place close to cities and populated areas because the value for natural capital and health would be greater, he said.

“Far more benefits will be produced for populations if we rewild the green belt. If we replanted trees all around London, the benefits would be extraordinary.

Polarised opinions

“Schoolchildren will be able to get out into that environment, and the air quality benefits that would follow would be astonishing. Doing it in the uplands achieves none of these benefits,” he said.

Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union, said that the UK was a farmed landscape, “whether we like it or not”. “You can’t just stand back and hand over to nature,” she said.

Audience votes taken before and after the debate revealed a drop in those supporting rewilding, from 61 percent to 52 percent, while those against rose from 13 percent to 39 percent.

The debate had certainly influenced some changes of heart, with the proportion of the audience who were undecided falling from 26 percent to nine percent.

Whether it should take place in the uplands, lowlands or nowhere at all, the debate about rewilding is certainly not going to go away.

This Author

Catherine Early is a freelance environmental journalist and the former deputy editor of the environmentalist. She can be found tweeting at @Cat_Early76.

China has opted-out  from the first stage of a UN programme to offset the aviation industry’s greenhouse gas emissions, in what could be a significant blow to global efforts to tackle climate change.

In 2016 delegates from 191 countries at the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) agreed a landmark deal to reduce emissions from the aviation industry.

It was reported by media at the time – and industry analysts since – that China would participate from the beginning. A cached version of the ICAO website from January this year lists China as a participant

Negotiating tactic

But now China, the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, is no longer listed among the states participating in the first voluntary phase of the deal on the ICAO’s website.

Speaking to Unearthed an ICAO spokesperson stated that: “China clarified its participation position in the ICAO Council Chamber when the CORSIA SARPs were adopted,” which took place a week ago. ICAO did not provide further comment.

Experts had long cast doubt on whether China would participate in the agreement but the move could be seen as a major set-back.

China is responsible for around 12 percent of international aviation activity and attention will now turn to whether China remains on the sidelines. Experts said the move could be a negotiating tactic.

Tim Johnson, director of the Aviation Environment Federation, told Unearthed: “It would be obviously worrying if this turns out to be a permanent decision to withdraw as China’s emissions are significant.

Carbon reduction

“But it could opt-in to the scheme at any time before it begins. Given it has had raised objections with the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) throughout the process, it seems likely that it’s seeking to keep it options open as the final negotiations take place.”

Unearthed understands that China has previously objected to the amount of influence that member states have over which environmental projects will be eligible for the credits that will be used to offset emissions. It is thought that China wants its domestic projects to be included.

It is not yet clear if China will withdraw from the later stages of the agreement or the reporting requirements that commence next year.

Aviation, like shipping, is not included in the landmark Paris Agreement, but it is responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions, but when other greenhouse gases are taken into account, it could be significantly higher. If it grows as the industry predicts it will, then aviation could consume more than a quarter of the world’s carbon budget to keep temperature rise within 1.5C by 2050.

The Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) was designed to tackle this by requiring airlines to offset their emissions by funding carbon reduction projects in other sectors. From 2020, it aims to offset global aviation emissions by 80 percent until 2035.

Permitted to withdraw

Although ICAO lauded the deal as “historic” when it was agreed in 2016, key decisions have been delayed and it has been beset by criticism from environmentalists who believe offsetting is not a long-term solution and could be used to justify airport expansion.

Some experts emphasise that emissions can be cut from the aviation industry through other means.

Brad Schallert, WWF’s deputy director of international climate cooperation told Unearthed: “Sometimes industry and government communications overemphasize that CORSIA is the flagship approach that industry will use to reduce emissions.

“It’s certainly important, but it can’t be an excuse for not making other emissions reductions, such as through innovating in technology or using more sustainable fuels.”

China is legally permitted to withdraw from the first phase which begins in 2021. Currently 72 states are now signed up for this stage, covering 76 percent of international aviation activity, down from 88 percent with China’s inclusion.

It is not clear whether China will participate in the later phases from 2024 and 2027 onwards, but as the scheme is voluntary until 2027, China could rejoin at a later date.

This Article

This article first appeared at Unearthed, from Greenpeace.

Emissions from Ireland’s rapidly expanding dairy sector have shot up in recent years, in direct conflict with government policy. But the government continues to use bunk data to assert that this is not the case.

On 26 April 2018, Minister Creed told the Dáil: “In the five-year period 2012-2016, dairy cow numbers have increased by 22 percent and corresponding milk production by 27 percent while emissions increased just 8 percent, demonstrating a level of decoupling is occurring.”

This point was amplified by one of Creed’s senior officials, Jack Nolan, at a parliamentary joint committee hearing, when he claimed: “S​ince 2015 we have increased milk output by 13.5 percent, whereas emissions have only increased by 1.6 percent. Massive efficiency gains are happening at the moment”.

‘Simply indefensible’

Junior Agriculture Minister, Andrew Doyle in December 2017 made the same point about apparent dramatic decoupling of dairy output from carbon emissions.

All these claims are refuted by data compiled by Ireland’s Environment Protection Agency (EPA). This indicates that carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from dairy rose by a massive 24 percent from 2012 to 2016,​ ​which closely tracks the 22 percent increase in national dairy cow numbers and a 27 percent milk production hike in the same period.

An Taisce, Ireland’s national trust, became aware of the statements being made within the parliament and wrote to Creed on May 4th last, pointing out the erroneous data and requesting that he formally correct the Dáil record.

In response, Creed admitted to An Taisce that his claim of ‘only’ eight percent emissions increases arising from a 27 percent increase in dairy output “is the growth in total agricultural emissions and reflects that while dairy numbers (and emissions) are increasing, other sub-sectors of agriculture are contracting”. It is, the minister added, “valid to consider the sector as a whole in presenting this data”.

However, An Taisce told DeSmog UK that the minister’s response was “simply indefensible”. ​By not correcting his statement, “it seems the minister is now willing to mislead the Dáil and the public, even when called out. This is unacceptable. We now publicly call on the minister to correct the Dáil record as a matter of urgency”.

Source: Ireland Environmental Protection Agency

Switched focus

The reason officials like Creed are prepared to go to such lengths to present a rosy picture of agricultural emissions is that rapid expansion of the national dairy herd is de facto  government policy, even though it flatly contradicts the Irish state’s EUand Paris Agreement obligations to slash carbon emissions.

Recent EPA projections showed that, instead of meeting its EU obligations to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020, Ireland would “at best” achieve a negligible one percent cut versus 2005 levels. Agricultural emissions, meanwhile, continue to spiral, hence the pressure on ministers to massage the figures to present a ‘good news story’ on dairy emissions.

More pressure was ratcheted on Irish government inaction with the publication earlier this month by Climate Action Network Europe of its ranking of EU countries in terms of their ambition and progress in tackling climate change. Ireland was ranked 2nd worst in the EU, only ahead of coal-dependent Poland in the rankings.

Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar is clearly uneasy at the growing reputational damage arising from what he admits is its status as a climate “laggard”. He told the European Parliament earlier this year that he was “not proud of Ireland’s performance” on climate, but domestically, the grip of the powerful agri-industrial lobby on government policy remains unshaken.

Having failed to manage emissions, it appears at least some in the Irish government have switched focus to concentrate on managing climate change messaging instead.

This Author

John Gibbons is a volunteer member of An Taisce’s climate change committee. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

The development of farming as a pillar of human civilization has been fascinating, to say the least. Agriculture might not seem like an obvious place for industrial technology to take hold, since family-owned farms still represent a commanding majority of the United States farming community. But even the smallest and most community-focused farms have a lot to gain from industrial farming systems.

Adapting some of the most cutting-edge technologies might seem impractical — and some of them represent stumbling blocks and learning curves of their own.

But despite the growing pains, it’s clear that some aspects of industrial farming can help reduce the daily labour and planning burdens faced by any farmer, no matter the size of their operation, and even help us improve our stewardship of the planet while we’re at it.

Mapping Technologies

Farmers are always under a lot of pressure to deliver the quantities of food we need at the right price. But generations of poor soil management and a lack of concern for biodiversity and crop rotation have highlighted the need to engage in modern agriculture with a different mindset. Farmers need to operate with the needs of the natural world in mind as well as our own.

Modern geographical and geospatial mapping technologies have tons of possible applications for the modern farmer. With the help of some location-aware computer programs, even more traditional farmers have better tools than ever when it comes to appraising soil structure and nutrient levels as well as current and future weather conditions and moisture levels.

Intelligent computer analysis of your surroundings yields “prescriptive” map data of all kinds, including appropriate amounts of seed, pesticide and fertilizer levels, ideal planting times and suggestions for land optimisation, including which patches of earth should get used and which should be held over until the next planting season.

Aerial Monitoring

The demand for free-range practices and other ethics-minded farming techniques means you might have cattle and livestock covering a larger area than before.

Aerial drones have emerged as a welcome ally for farmers, giving them an aerial overview of where their herds are located and delivering some needed peace of mind.

And drones can help out with a myriad other tasks around the farm complex, too, including monitoring the progress of parasite infestations, as needed, as well as general crop yields — all without the need to physically walk what might be, in some cases, many football fields’ worth of land.

Anaerobic Digesters

One of the most vitally important sustainability hurdles to clear in agriculture involves the dispossession of animal waste.

As research has shown, methane emissions from herds of cattle have a massively deleterious effect on the planet.

A decade ago, manure represented about 37 percent of all human output of methane and about 64 percent of all human output of ammonia (which contributes to acid rain). This trend will only worsen if it continues unchecked.

The anaerobic digester is one emergent farming technology that’s not really cutting-edge at all. It involves converting food and animal waste into electrical energy.

It might just revolutionise how farms of all sizes meet their energy needs, dispose of environmentally harmful waste and bring down the carbon footprint of the entire agriculture industry.

In addition to producing electricity from the resulting biogas, extreme promise has also been demonstrated by smaller-scale anaerobic digesters for farmers in New York state in producing a nutrient-rich “effluent” for use on farmland that does the same job as manure, except without the environmental concerns. Expect little downside as this technology comes of age and permeates the industry.

Growing Pains

It’s true that all of the technology we’re rolling into the agriculture industry comes at a cost. For the most part, the technologies we’ve just been discussing reduce the workload of the average farmer, helping them do themselves, or with limited field hands, the work that used to require scores of employees.

If there’s a word of caution here, it concerns the proprietary nature of some of these technological innovations. There’s also the matter of price.

Some modern, computer-aided farming machines will set a US farmer back hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially, even as they slash the amount of labor and planning required for a successful harvest. It’s delivering efficiency and profitability that farmers likely wouldn’t have imagined just a couple decades ago.

But the cash required isn’t the only sort of buy-in required here. You’re also buying into a technology ecosystem, same as any other industry.

The computers powering your land use optimization software and your semi-autonomous tractors are proprietary technology — and when something goes wrong, you might not be able to tinker with it the way you could tractors of yesteryear.

At the same time, even when farmers find themselves somewhat dependent on dealers and manufacturers for field service and troubleshooting, these types of relationships can sometimes reduce, rather than add to, your stress levels.

It might mean leasing or renting equipment when you need it without buying outright. It also likely means some kind of included service or maintenance package.

It’s in your next-gen tractor supplier’s best interests as well as your own to keep this equipment running at peak efficiency — and that might mean regular, routine maintenance.

Including maintenance in the cost of a lease is a practical proposal, since conducting repairs after a piece of equipment has already failed might cost you 2.5 times more than preemptive maintenance would.

Community Endeavor

There’s another possibility here — one that comes in equal parts from the potential of high-tech farming equipment and from the possible difficulty of bringing that technology into the fold.

Over the next couple of decades, it’s likely that local and regional farms will engage more frequently in resource pooling, co-investment and equipment sharing than they ever have before.

It’s about sharing the burden of buy-in, but it’s also about reducing some of the duplication of effort among separate agricultural enterprises — duplication that results in waste and unnecessary expense.

Farmers are already amazing at what they do. But it’s not just about producing as much food as possible. Agriculture jobs now demand that the work is done with an eye toward the future rather than remaining fixed on the present.

With the insights that new technologies bring us, farmers be able to feed the world more effectively and keep our planet healthy at the same time.

This Author

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