C NEWS
210704 TFND
An international Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) launched last month. Over the next two years, the TNFD will develop a framework for corporations and financial institutions to report on nature-related physical and transition risks that include immediate, material financial risks, as well as nature dependencies and impacts and related organisational and societal risks.
This ambitious scope of work has already been endorsed by the G7 finance ministers and, with the TNFD officially under way, nature risk will ascend quickly to claim its place alongside climate risk at the top of board agendas.
210703 Treaty to end Virgin Plastic Production
Since the 1950s about 8bn tonnes of plastic has been produced. The effects are everywhere. One of the reports authors, Nils Simon, said: “Plastics are ubiquitously found in increasing amounts worldwide, including in terrestrial environments and even inside the human body.”
Science senior editor Jesse Smith, writes: “As for much new technology, their development and proliferation occurred with little consideration for their impacts, but now it’s impossible to deny their dark side as we confront a rapidly growing plastic pollution problem.
The report calls for a new global treaty “to cover the entire lifecycle of plastics, from the extraction of the raw materials needed for its manufacture to its legacy pollution”.
The largest proportion of plastic waste comes from packaging materials (47%), while textiles are responsible for 14% and transport 6%.
Each year, 3% of worldwide plastic waste ends up in the oceans; in 2010 that amounted to about 8m tonnes of plastic.
Yet plastic production has continued to increase. In 2019, 368m tonnes of newly made, or virgin, plastics were produced. By 2050, the production of new plastic from fossil fuels could consume 10-13% of the remaining global carbon budget permissible to ensure temperatures rise to no more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels as required by the Paris climate agreement.
Simon
Amid the global plastic pollution crisis, a growing number of governments and nongovernmental actors are proposing a new global treaty. In February 2021, at the fifth meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA)—the world’s highest-level decision-making body on the environment—many governments spoke in favor of an international agreement to combat plastic pollution. In the past, the international community tended to view the plastics problem from a predominantly ocean-focused and waste-centered perspective. However, plastics are increasingly found in all environmental media, including terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere, as well as human matrices, including lungs and placenta. We therefore argue for a new international legally binding agreement that addresses the entire life cycle of plastics, from extraction of raw materials to legacy plastic pollution. Only by taking this approach can efforts match the magnitude and transboundary nature of this escalating problem and its social, environmental, and economic impacts. Targeting the full life cycle of plastics allows for a more equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of relevant actions across the global value chain.
Simon (2021) A binding global agreement to address the life cycle of plastics (paywall)
210623 Ecocide Defined
fter six months of deliberation, a team of international lawyers has unveiled a new legal definition of “ecocide” that, if adopted, would put environmental destruction on a par with war crimes – paving the way for the prosecution of world leaders and corporate chiefs for the worst attacks on nature.
The expert panel published the core text of the proposed law on Tuesday, outlining ecocide as
“unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.
Its authors want the members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to endorse it and hold big polluters to account in a bid to halt the unbridled destruction of the world’s ecosystems.
210411 Rare European vultures being poisoned by livestock drug
Diclofenac
A recently approved veterinary drug has been confirmed as the cause of death of a vulture in Spain. Conservationists say the incident could be the tip of an iceberg, and warn that the drug could wipe out many of Europe’s vultures as well as harming related species, including golden eagles.
The anti-inflammatory agent diclofenac has already been banned in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh after it was found to kill vultures that ate the carcasses of cattle treated with the drug. Tens of millions of vultures are believed to have died in this way with some species declining by a staggering 99.9% in parts of south Asia.
Nevertheless diclofenac was approved in Spain and other European nations because farmers, drug companies and regulators argued that cattle carcasses were disposed of differently in Europe than in India. This meant vultures would not be able to eat meat tainted with diclofenac.
That claim has now been shown to be wrong.
Europe has four species of vulture: bearded, cinereous, Egyptian and griffon vultures. Recent research has also found that diclofenac not only kills vultures but is fatal to eagles of the genus Aquila whose members include the golden eagle and the Spanish imperial eagle. There are only about 300 pairs of imperial Spanish eagles left.
210406 Biodegradable Plastics from Fish Waste
Previous studies have developed methods for producing plastics from fish waste, but the latest research goes further in determining how the material might be easily broken down again at the end of its useful life.
To produce the new material, the researchers used oil extracted from bits of salmon left after the flesh had been removed and processed for human consumption.
They developed a way of converting the fish oil into a polyurethane-like polymer, first by adding oxygen to the oil in a controlled way to form epoxides, molecules similar to those in epoxy resin.
Then, carbon dioxide was added to the epoxides and the resulting molecules combined with nitrogen-containing chemical compound amines to form the new material.
“When we start the process with the fish oil, there is a faint kind of fish smell, but as we go through the steps, that smell disappears.”
Experiments suggested the new material might biodegrade readily when required. In one, pieces of the plastic were soaked in water, some with lipase, an enzyme that breaks down fats in fish oil. Under a microscope, the researchers saw microbial growth on the samples, including those that had been placed just in plain water. The team said the results offered an encouraging sign that the new material might biodegrade readily.
Polyurethanes are traditionally made using crude oil and phosgene, a toxic gas, and the process generates isocyanates, which are powerful irritants to the eyes and gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts, with links to severe asthma attacks.
In addition, the final product does not readily break down in the environment and the limited biodegradation that does occur can release carcinogenic compounds.
Past research has resulted in polyurethanes made using plant-derived oils to replace petroleum, however the researchers said these were not without their downsides either as the crops, often soybeans, require land and resources.
210322 Siberian Microplastics
Microplastics have been found in snow in Siberia, one of the world’s remotest regions, in a sign of how far damaging human-made pollution has pervaded the environment. Researchers gathered snow samples from 20 different Siberian regions - from the Altai mountains near Mongolia in the east to the Arctic, and said their preliminary findings confirmed that airborne plastic fibres were turning up in snow in these wildernesses.
“It’s clear that it’s not just rivers and seas that are involved circulating microplastics around the world, but also soil, living creatures and even the atmosphere,” said Yulia Frank, scientific director at the university’s Microplastics Siberia centre.
Tomsk scientists have previously found microplastics in the digestive systems of fish caught in Siberian rivers, confirming that the Arctic Ocean is polluted with microscopic plastics.
C.1 210122 Counting Elephants from Space
Scientists have been able to identify Elephants from space for the first time - technology that could be used to empower efforts to challenge wildlife poaching. Researchers used commercial earth observation satellites Worldview 3 and 4 to capture high resolution images of African elephants moving through grasslands and forests. And combined with computer deep learning, an automated system was able to pick out animals with the same level of accuracy as a human would.
The algorithm, designed by Dr Olga Isupova of the University of Bath, could allow vast landmasses to be scanned and assessed in a matter of minutes - outpacing human observers who would typically carry out such work from low-flying planes.
Poaching as well as damage to habitats has caused the population of African elephants to nosedive in the past century, with roughly 415,000 savannah elephants believed to still be left in the wild.
C.2 210114 Biomass Energy Policy got it wrong
‘Green Energy’ demand drives unsustainable logging, taking a toll on bird species like the black grouse, woodlark and others. Woodland birds are declining.
The clearances are damaging the ability forests to store carbon, undermine climate goals.
Wood pellets are sold as a clean alternative to coal. But is the subsidised bioenergy boom accelerating the climate crisis?
There is a direct connection between the subsidised growth in the biomass industry encouraged by EU renewable energy policies and the acceleration of unsustainable Baltic tree-felling
The intensification of logging is at least partly driven by higher demand for biomass for heat and power
A switch to burning wood in the form of pellets appears to offer a simple and in theory carbon-neutral alternative to coal-fired power stations because trees take up carbon dioxide from the air as they grow. As long as the burned trees are replaced with new plantings, there is no net addition to the stock of carbon in the atmosphere.
However, that process of carbon take-up can take many decades. And in the furnace, burning wood releases more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than burning gas, oil, or even coal. By accelerating carbon dioxide emissions in the short term, burning wood for electricity could be fatal for states’ ability to meet the Paris Agreemen
A flaw in the legislation meant that woody biomass was fully categorised as renewable, even if it came not just from wood residues or waste, but from whole trees. This meant that companies could directly harvest forests for pellets – rather than making pellets from the by-products of timber cut for other uses – in the name of sustainable forest management.
As the EU moved in 2018 to double the use of renewable energy by 2030, scientists warned the European Parliament that this loophole in the sustainability criteria of the revised EU legislation would accelerate the climate crisis and devastate mature forests. But against the competing interests of the multibillion euro biomass lobby, it went unamended.
Scientists and campaigners say we simply don’t have time to cut down trees for energy production if we are going to meet climate goals.
The urgency has completely changed in the last 15 years. We don’t have until 2070 – emissions have to come down sooner. Biomass that increases carbon emissions in the next 10 to 30 years is not compatible with climate change policy.
C.2.0.0.0.1 210102 Rewilding Farming
In West Sussex, England, Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree have let their property become overrun and the rsults are spectacular. The 3,500 acre-Knepp Estate was once a traditional farm, but poor agricultural land and a “pretty bleak” financial future forced a change of direction from the couple. Over the last 20 years they have let their livestock roam free, and nature has flooded back in alongside the pigs and deer. Species that were never previously seen in the area, like the turtle dove and the purple emperor butterfly, have set up in Knepp and thrived. “To see the landscape of your own country, and what you’ve been missing, suddenly come to life has been this extraordinary revelation,” says Burrell.
C.3 201231 Biological Conservation
Horizon scanning is a form of foresight research. For 12 years it has been practized for identification of upcoming biological conservation issues. The 2021 scanning presents these major issues
Underestimated Effects of Deoxygenation on Coral Reef Health and Survival
Increases in Dissolved Iron Availability and Polar Coastal Productivity
Substantial Increase in Decommissioning of Offshore Energy Platforms
Use of Seabirds to Locate Fishing Vessels Remotely
Proliferation of False Information Reported by Global Navigation Satellite and Automatic Identification Systems
Multigenerational Effects of Low Levels of Exposure to Endocrine Disruptors
Changes in Coastal Low Clouds
Challenges to Tree Plantations as a Simple Carbon Sequestration Solution
Increased Logging in Response to Fire Risk
Complete Coverage of Indian States with Sustainable Farming
Low Earth Orbit Satellites May Mislead Animals Responding to Celestial Cues
Emergence of a Global Market for Stranded Energy
Open-Source Investigation of Environmental Threats
Self-Healing Building Materials
2000-km E40 Waterway Linking the Baltic and Black Seas
Biological Conservation Issues (The Guardian)
Emerging Global Biological Conservation Issues (article) (pdf)
C.4 201231 Architecture of Degrowth
ENOUGH Oslo Architecture Trienale >For the last two centuries, the engine of architectural production and the basis of societies around the world has been the pursuit of economic growth. The desire for infinite growth has forced aside common and ecological goals measuring acts of culture and community as mere bumps in GDP. Yet the limits to this paradigm have become abundantly clear. As equity, wellbeing and non-monetary measures of prosperity falter, rising sea temperatures, extreme weather and other indicators of climate breakdown converge on the conclusion that the days of growth’s predominance are running out.
Architecture is no exception. The promise of a meaningful life’s work harnessing the transformative power of design to mix beauty and social justice is deeply felt. Yet for many, our daily practice looks very different to the work we aspired to. The majority of urban practitioners are not the agents of social change they might have been, but cogs in a vast value-producing machine whose hunger for expansion is never abated. Homes have become vehicles of capital speculation, galleries have become billboards for attracting investment, streets have become the infrastructure of consumption, universities export enlightenment for profit.
In our bones we know that infinite economic growth is impossible. We know that money cannot buy happiness. We know that change is coming. Yet our professions continue to toil at the coalface of economic expansion cultivating consumption in pursuit of a prize that is never enough.
ENOUGH responds to an era of climate emergency and social inequality by proposing alternatives to the unsustainable and unfair paradigm of growth. The festival explores the architecture of Degrowth, an economy of shared plenty in which human and ecological flourishing matter most. It is time to call time on too much for the few and too little for the many. Join us as we propose a vision of Enough for all.
C.5 201230 Royal Insanity
The Independent The Prince of Wales has described humanity’s exploitation of nature as “insanity”. Speaking to novelist Margaret Atwood on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Prince Charles explained how humans have become increasingly detached from the natural world in recent years. “We are a microcosm of the macrocosm, but we’ve forgotten that, or somehow been brainwashed into thinking that we have nothing to do with nature, nature can just be exploited,” he said. “And if we go on exploiting where we are, whatever we do to nature, however much pollution, we do to ourselves - it is insanity.” Charles also urged people to listen to the “wisdom of indigenous communities” in order to better understand how to combat the climate crisis.
May be time to get back to Enlightened Monarchy