Working as partners in regenerative agriculture projects, Walmart and General Mills are working with authorities to create a more sustainable food system
Disruption of the food supply chain is perhaps the single most impactful event that can have detrimental effects globally. Also, the emissions that are produced as a result of the global food supply are just as impactful to our future and the shortage of food itself.
According to 2018 data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) meat, eggs and nuts are the primary sources of food across the states while vegetables are the third largest and fruit is at the bottom. However, from what we’ve seen over recent years, many would suggest the meat supply chain accounts for a large proportion of the industry’s emissions and is therefore unsustainable in its current mass-production form.
Now, this is not to blame the humble cow or any other animal for climate change, but more the processes in which meat is reared and distributed across the US. With certain regenerative principles in place—and the support from the public to reduce consumption—farms are known to provide higher quality goods that are nutritionally beneficial.
How does regenerative agriculture support a sustainable food system?
This is neither a slight of common habits, nor a simple task to conduct. In order to make the food system sustainable economically, consistent, and less impactful to the climate, examples of regenerative agriculture show the impacts of more mindful farming.
On the 17th October 2023, General Mills and Walmart announced a joint effort that will likely spark further consideration as the organisations advance regenerative agriculture across 600,000 acres of US soil by 2030. This project is about reducing the emissions and resource-drain from farming, improving soil health and, in turn, product quality.
The primary projects will be supported through grant funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and will reshape the process for growing crops like wheat across the Northern and Southern Great Plains.
Based on the research from the USDA, grains are the second most-consumed foods in the country after the meat, eggs, and nuts group.
These two corporations will also collaborate with Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart that offers superior quality and pricing for millions of items supplied to the US and Puerto Rico.
“Through this partnership, we will work hand-in-hand with Walmart and Sam’s Club to help regenerate the acres of land in the key regions where we source ingredients for our shared business,” says Jon Nudi, Group President, North America Retail at General Mills.
“We are excited by the opportunity to bring our products, including Pillsbury refrigerated dough and Blue Buffalo pet food and treats, to Walmart shelves more sustainably, with the help of our merchants and farmer partners.”
The three organisations believe that regenerative agriculture holds the key to emissions reduction in the supply chain and tackles many of the challenges within the modern food system. They also recognise their collective footprint and overall impact on the industry, and therefore will set the benchmark for regenerative agriculture implementation in the wider industry.
Walmart’s and General Mills’ sustainability alignment
Both organisations are impacted by the fate of the planet. As influential businesses in the food supply chain—Walmart operating across many facets of consumer goods—sustainability is now at the core of their future projects. Walmart’s net-zero emissions target is set for 2040 and will be driven by a number of investments into clean energy, providing 100% renewables to its facilities by 2035. The path to net-zero in Scope 3 requires further action to support its partners, suppliers, and customers to deliver on their own emissions targets.
When it comes to securing the food supply chain, Walmart dedicates much of its support to preserving land for regenerative projects and in investing deforestation-free product sourcing, which was recognised as one of the key downfalls of the meat supply chain—limited space resulting in deforestation.
“We’re committing to making the everyday choice the more sustainable choice for consumers,” says John Laney, Executive Vice President, Food at Walmart US.
“This collaboration is an example of how we are working across our value chain on intentional interventions to help advance regenerative agriculture and ensure surety of supply for these essential food products for the long term.”
As a key supplier of food globally, General Mills owns some of the much-loved brands and will continue to ensure that these products are delivered at lower impact to the planet. Also focusing on regenerative agriculture, energy sourcing and packaging innovation will also allow the company to drive healthier approaches in the food supply chain.
In a globally interconnected world, textiles such as leather sourced from cattle, and wool sheared from sheep, have become a serious source of deforestation, other adverse land-use impacts, biodiversity loss and climate change, while fur farms (harvesting pelts from slaughtered mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and other cage-kept wild animals) have become a major biohazard to human health — a threat underlined by the risk fur farms pose to the current and future spread of zoonotic diseases like Covid-19.
But in a not-so-distant future, fashion biomaterials made from plant leaves, fruit waste, and lab-grown microorganisms may replace animal-derived textiles — including leather, fur, wool and silk — with implementation at first on a small but quickly expanding scale, but eventually on a global scale.
In fact, that trend is well underway. In less than a decade, dozens of startups have emerged, developing a range of biomaterials that, in addition to eliminating the use of animal products, incorporate sustainable practices into their production chains.
Not all these textile companies, mostly based in Europe and the United States, have fully achieved their goals, but they continue to experiment and work toward a new fashion paradigm. Among promising discoveries: vegan bioleather made with mycelium (the vegetative, threadlike part of fungi), and bioexotic skins made from cactus and pineapple leaves, grape skins and seeds, apple juice, banana stalks and coconut water. There are also new textiles based on algae that can act as carbon sinks, and vegan silk made from orange peel.
It’s all part of a promising sustainable textile revolution that has the potential to stylishly clothe both the high- and fast-fashion customer.
Sustainable materials are pivotal if we are to transform the fashion industry from one of the most polluting industries to one that is transformative, regenerative and more humane.
Carmen Hijosa, founder, Ananas Anam
According to a 2019 report, “Fashion’s New Must-Have: Sustainable Sourcing at Scale,” researched by the McKinsey & Company consulting firm, sustainable materials only represent a small fraction of global fashion production today, but recorded a stunning “five-fold increase [in growth] over the past two years.”
Seventy-four such companies are listed in “The State of the Industry Report: Next-Gen Materials,” released last year by the Material Innovation Initiative (MII), a California-based nonprofit that promotes animal-free materials. Of that total, 42 firms were established since 2014. The number of companies is even longer, though. Firms like Post Carbon Lab (UK), Chip[s] Board (UK), and SeaWear, for example, aren’t listed.
These pathfinding multidisciplinary companies — staffed by designers, biochemists, genetic and material engineers, biologists and textile specialists — in addition to being suppliers of textiles, clothing and accessories to manufacturers, have also been partnering with major fashion brands to further develop their research and gain scale. Awards created by conglomerates such as the H&M Foundation and the Kering Group provide grants and technical support for projects in their early stages.
Sustainable fashion’s environmental implications
The evolution of sustainable biomaterials is largely a response to the need to reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry, one of the worst planetary polluters. “The fashion industry is responsible for 10 per cent of annual global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined [and responsible for] around 20 per cent of worldwide wastewater [that] comes from fabric dyeing and treatment,” according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The fashion industry is also connected to Amazon deforestation. The share of the Brazilian Amazon involved in the country’s leather production has been growing since 2000, when it was only 7 per cent. That jumped to 27 per cent in 2010 and 43 per cent in 2020.
More than 100 global brands “are working with manufacturers and tanneries that are sourced from companies with links to cattle raised on recently deforested Amazon land,” according to a study released in November by Slow Factory, an NGO. Among them are Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Prada, Nike, Zara, H&M, Louis Vuitton, Coach and Tory Burch.
In fact, it was a visit to a leather tannery in the Philippines — his first ever in 15 years as a designer and consultant on luxury leather products — that convinced Carmen Hijosa to never work with animal skins again.
As part of their industrial process, tanneries need to prevent newly made leather from decomposing by altering its protein structure using a potent chemical cocktail containing potential human carcinogens, including formaldehyde and azo colourants.
Hijosa’s 1993 visit to the Philippine tannery spurred her research into leather alternatives. While still in the Philippines, the Spanish designer learned of an old local fashion tradition: the use of pineapple-leaf fibres to make handwoven textiles.
So Hijosa focused her research on pineapple’s potential and went back to school to study textiles. In 2013, she founded a London startup, Ananas Anam. The next year, at age 62, she gained her PhD. The result of her journey is Piñatex, a trademarked fabric made from waste pineapple leaves and already sold in 80 countries.
“Sustainable materials are pivotal if we are to transform the fashion industry from one of the most polluting industries to one that is transformative, regenerative and more humane, caring both for the environment and the people it touches in its complex supply chain,” said Hijosa. “It is our responsibility as material designers and manufacturers to develop living systems that make this change possible.”
Piñatex still has a challenge to overcome: While its finishing coating is 50 per cent bio-based, the other 50 per cent is made up of a petroleum-based resin applied to strengthen the material. Ananas Anam is currently working with a chemical company to make a fully bio-based coating.
Plant substitutes for leather and fabrics
After working with organic cotton, hemp and bamboo fibres, the Swiss fashion company QWSTIONlearned about abacá, a plant in the banana family also native to the Philippines, with strong fibres. Used by locals to make textiles since before Europeans arrived in the 1500s, “the fibre had good potential to become a material for outdoor clothing and accessories,” Hannes Schönegger, QWSTION’s CEO and co-founder told Mongabay.
According to Schönegger, abacá is produced using permaculture, so is grown surrounded by other plant species rather than existing as a monoculture. “Very often it is cultivated with cocoa trees and bigger plants that give shade. [Only] the side stems from the banana plant are chopped off to extract the raw material, so it keeps on growing for 30-40 years.”
It took three years of research in partnership with a yarn specialist and a weaving manufacturer, both based in Taiwan, to create Bananatex, launched in 2018. In addition to accessories already made with the biodegradable fabric and sold in QWSTION’s flagship stores, other brands and retail partners are creating prototypes using the abacá-derived textile, with some products likely available to consumers soon, said Schönegger.
The company is also currently testing bacteria dyeing as an alternative to digital print, a method used in making handbags. “We try to use the least harmful dyes that are available in industrial quantities. However, dyeing is an area that definitely needs improvement, added Schönegger. Synthetic chemical textile dyes have a notorious history as pollutants.
Another major issue confronting Bananatex and other companies is the environmental impacts of the global fashion supply chain. In the case of Bananatex, its product is sourced in the Philippines, moves to Taiwan for processing, then to China for manufacture, and finally arrives in Europe to be sold in stores and also over the Internet. That globe-trotting itinerary generates a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.
“In an international economy — and the textile industry is one of the most globalized areas — it is best to produce close to where materials grow and distribute the [finished] products afterwards. Because of that, Bananatex was born from the idea of creating a supply chain with short distances in Asia,” said Schönegger. “Things have to be transported at some point. And a closer look often reveals unexpected facts: Transporting a backpack from Hong Kong to Hamburg by ship creates less CO2 than from Portugal to Hamburg by truck.”
Fur from a petri dish
Mink farms, long a target of animal rights activists, generally try to keep a very low profile. But that has become increasingly difficult since the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic. The SARS-CoV-2 virus infected US and EU fur-producing mink farms in 2020, underlining the potential of those facilities for transmitting zoonotic diseases, and leading to calls by epidemiologists and public health experts for them to be shut down.
“Any time we can avoid housing animals in high-density settings, we diminish the risk of [animal-to-human, and human-to-wildlife] spillover events for potential pathogens. Raising animals for fur can certainly represent a high-density scenario. So if [alternatives to the] fur industry are successful, they could reduce fur farming and thus emerging infection disease risk,” Michael Oglesbee, director of the Infectious Diseases Institute in Columbus, Ohio, told Mongabay.
Current alternatives to animal fur are made mostly from recycled polyester, an entirely petroleum-based fibre that contributes to climate change. A potentially more environmentally friendly option is Koba, a brand owned by the Chinese company Ecopel, whose faux fur uses a synthetic fibre manufactured by chemical giant DuPont, but which is made from corn byproducts resulting from biofuel production and petroleum-derived terephthalic acid. Ecopel claims a 63 per cent greenhouse gas emission reduction for its faux fur. Contacted by Mongabay, Ecopel did not respond for comment.
Some startups are paving the way for faux fur production through biotechnology, a field that modifies living organisms to develop a variety of products. One such firm is the Dutch company GENEUSBIOTECH, founded in 2017 by Henri Kunz, a serial biotechnology entrepreneur, and Maria Zakurnaeva, who worked in the fashion industry.
When Kunz and scientist Sundar Pattabiraman produced human hair follicles in vitro, Zakurnaeva had a revelation: “Why not take advantage of this technology to produce fur, and thus avoid the death of animals?” The research team expanded its work and is now even developing wool grown without sheep. Its biomaterial fur and wool products are being made under the FUROID brand.
“We are at a stage where we have produced small organoids, a three-dimensional mass of tissue, by growing induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs),” Pattabiraman, FUROID’s chief scientific officer, told Mongabay. “These cells have been proliferated to make hair-like protrusions coming out of them. But more extensive research needs to be performed to further this project in terms of reproducibility and to [achieve] a larger scale.”
The process uses stem cells, from which all other body cells with specialised functions are generated, which are obtained by biopsy from living mink and Merino sheep. In a next step, those cells are cultured and reprogrammed into iPSCs to make fur hair follicles.
“We use a maximum of five punch biopsies per animal, after approval from an ethics committee and under supervision of a veterinary doctor, who performs the anaesthesia. All animals are kept as pets and monitored by experienced staff. We own five sheep at a university farm in New Zealand and five minks. They are sufficient to produce an endless supply of cell lines,” said Kunz. “The life expectancy of our donor animals is high, especially sheep, and we spare no effort and costs to give them the best life they deserve.”
GENEUSBIOTECH reports that its FUROID project has received a Horizon Europe grant from the EU in excess of 4 million euros ($4.4 million), and is also being supported financially by an angel donor, family and friends. The company is in talks with industry stakeholders as possible investors. The firm intends to eventually use more species as donor animals to create its biomaterials, including sable, fox and even crocodile.
Fashion bounty from the sea
Ocean species are also becoming a source of sustainable fabrics, says Mike Allen, an associate professor in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Exeter, UK
“Marine microbes … evolved in the oceans over a billion years before [they did] in the terrestrial environment. Because of that, the oceans are teeming with metabolic diversity, which can offer solutions to many of our current and future problems. You name a problem, there is a microbe out there that can help overcome it,” Allen told Mongabay.
The marine biotechnologist explained the advantages of biological modes of production over more traditional ones: “Physical [production] processes generally demand a lot of energy (heat and pressure), while chemical ones are reliant on bulk commodity synthetics [which may be toxic] … As a result, fashion textiles are restricted in their nature.
“Biological solutions to materials, on the other hand, are usually smarter,” Allen continued. “They exploit living organisms to do the hard work with a lower energetic input of manufacturing, and have properties that you can control and engineer for your particular application. Strength, grip, biodegradability, water resistance, antimicrobial, color, luminescence, fluorescence, self-cleaning, self-repairing, self-lighting: You are limited only by your [own] imagination.”
Consumers driving sustainable fashion movement
As with any business, it is consumer demand and profits that are driving the conversion from wild and domestic animal-sourced fashion materials, to plant and other biologically based materials.
This seismic shift in consumer desires has become clear in recent news: For example, in 2021, after more than 25 years of partnership, the Miss New Hampshire state beauty competition in the US ended its relationship with the New Hampshire Trappers Association, a promoter of wildlife trapping that long donated a fur coat to the winner.
“Former contestants spoke publicly against the obligation to accept a fur coat as part of the prize. That antiquated tradition helped perpetuate the use of body-gripping traps, which are still allowed in the state,” Kristina Snyder, an animal rights activist and co-creator of the New Hampshire Citizens Against Recreational Trapping (NHCART) website, told Mongabay.
At the international level, trendsetting Elle magazine announced in 2021 that it is banning fur from all its 45 global editions, printed and online. According to Elle senior vice president and international director Valeria Bessolo Llopiz, “[A] fur-free future is a great opportunity to increase awareness for animal welfare, bolster the demand for sustainable and innovative alternatives and foster a more humane fashion industry.”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
Countries have gathered to negotiate the final details of a global bid to keep planetary warming under 1.5-2C.Olivia Wannan reports from Glasgow.
ANALYSIS: The world has agreed to ramp up climate action even further this decade, spend more on adaptation, and even for the first time, agree that (some) fossil fuels must go.
The two-week UN climate summit in Glasgow has ended in a joint compromise from nearly 200 countries, including on a number of outstanding sticky issues in the Paris Agreement “rulebook”. Developed countries have also acknowledged they have a legal and moral obligation to help vulnerable countries with the permanent loss and damage they are already suffering – though punted a solution to future meetings.
And a last-minute capitulation to phase down rather than phase out coal power cast a shadow over the Glasgow pact. In the end, the measure of success will depend on where history sets its benchmark.
If we use the lowest bar for success – whether there is more global climate action today than there was two weeks ago – then the 26th Conference of the Parties (or COP26) has achieved that.
The announcement that India had set a net-zero target was a pleasing development, even if the target date is 2070 and its short-term pledges remained unambitious. Indonesia’s and South Korea’s pledges to phase out coal-power was also good news. Canada and the US made large commitments to reduce fossil methane leaks (and, interestingly, agricultural emissions) and got nearly 100 other countries to sign up.
And while China declined to join the methane pledge, it did sign a deal with the US late in the second week, which included commitments to regulate methane leaks and limit deforestation.
Were governments ambitious enough?
If the point of success is 1.5 degrees Celsius, then the conference will not earn that accolade. Climate modellers have been tracking the plethora of commitments and coalitions launched during the meeting. Even on the basis that every single one will be met (a prospect many doubt), that path would hold warming to 1.8C. Scientists warn that the effects of climate change get vastly worse with even a fraction of a degree, so there is a lot of human suffering between 1.5C and 1.8C.
In addition, experts have also exposed the large gap between countries’ long-term goals and the short-term action they’re prepared to take.
Short-term goals are outlined in each country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (or NDC). These look out to 2030 – a point when carbon dioxide emissions would need to nearly halve, according to the world’s climate scientists, to keep 1.5C within reach. The path set by these and other pledges out to 2030 put the world on a path to 2.4C.
The host country, the UK, selected Alok Sharma to act as the president of the 26th Conference of the Parties (or COP26). JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES
With this in mind, countries that have not yet updated their NDC have been officially urged to submit tougher targets before COP27, to be held in Egypt. In fact, all countries are being requested to revisit their targets by the end of next year to ensure they align with 1.5C to 2C of warming (though this is caveated to take into account national circumstances).
It’s hoped big emitters such as China, Russia and Australia might then come to next year’s meeting with NDCs that could shift the global temperature dial even further still. Climate Change Minister James Shaw has already poured cold water on the idea of the New Zealand Government following this recommendation.
The onslaught of coalitions and alliances – on everything from methane and fossil fuel extraction to deforestation – announced during COP26 will supplement countries’ NDCs. There was plenty of criticism that these were voluntary, with no compliance. For example, if New Zealand fails to produce its intended methane savings of 10 per cent by 2030, the Global Methane Pledge won’t come after us in any way, beyond a public shaming.
But that’s a pattern set by the Paris Agreement itself. There are some seemingly mandatory features for the 197 countries signed up – such as reporting and deadlines for new targets. But even those aren’t well enforced: New Zealand missed the deadline to strengthen its NDC. We just scraped in before the start of COP26.
During a short speech on the final day, Shaw reflected on the shortcomings of the proposed agreement: “Is it enough to hold warming to 1.5C? I honestly can’t say that I think that it does. But we must never, ever give up,” he said.
“The text represents the least-worst outcome. The worst outcome would be to not agree [on] it, and keep talking through next year and deter action for yet another year.”
Countries in the naughty corner
Large greenhouse emitters China and Russia were called out for not showing up, literally and figuratively. Chinese president Xi Jinping and Russia president Vladimir Putin did not attend the leaders’ summit at the beginning of the talks, though negotiating teams for each country did attend to get the Paris Agreement “rulebook” and other outstanding matters settled.
Chinese president Xi Jinping did not attend COP26. He has not left China since the beginning of the pandemic (File photo) ANDY WONG/AP
By COP26, all 197 countries in the Paris Agreement were supposed to “ratchet” up their ambition. Russia updated its pledge last year, though it was deemed little better than its old one.
In 2020, Xinping announced a new pledge: that his country’s emissions would peak before 2030 and that China would reach net zero by 2060. This year, he formalised those commitments and promised to stop financing coal-fired power plants in other countries.
The Chinese leader is known to save his major climate announcements for UN general assembly events, rather than play to the COP timetable.
But similar criticism could be aimed at New Zealand, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern not attending the talks and – more importantly – taking few concrete steps during the two weeks.
The Government did increase its NDC, before the summit began. Ardern promised to save 149 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the next decade.
Billed as a halving of emissions, Climate Action Tracker said – minus the creative maths – this was closer to a 22 per cent cut (a target now rated as “almost sufficient” though not our fair share).
And even that won’t require the country to take additional action domestically. (Thus, New Zealand retained Climate Action Tracker’s “Highly Insufficient” rating).
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did not attend the Glasgow climate summit, citing her duties as the APEC host. (File photo) HAGEN HOPKINS/GETTY IMAGES
New Zealand is still planning to emit roughly the same amount of net emissions between now and 2030 as in the budgets proposed by the Climate Change Commission earlier this year. So now, the Government will just buy a few more carbon credits from other countries.
During the summit, New Zealand also signed up to a number of pledges without taking any major new steps. No new policies will be required for the Government to meet the Global Methane Pledge – because it’s a collective goal to reduce methane by 30 per cent, New Zealand can simply make the cut of 10 per cent it’s already obliged to under the Zero Carbon Act.
Similarly, our new membership in the pledge to end deforestation or in the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance required little extra.
In sum, the Government has done little but spent more money: committing to a larger carbon credit bill, and also increasing foreign aid towards mitigation and adaptation for developing nations – which it bumped up to $325 million each year.
Still, New Zealand behaved better than our trans-Tasman neighbour. Australia refused to boost its NDC, stayed far away from alliances cutting methane and coal, and initially attempted to block declarations on phasing out fossil fuels.
An emotional Mary Robinson, Chair of @TheElders and former President of Ireland slams leaders for not being in crisis mode and blames Saudi Arabia for blocking @skynews#COP26 Today will be very important. pic.twitter.com/BxEcXzGptg
Climate finance was a critical item on this year’s agenda. In return for a commitment to begin cutting emissions, developed countries promised – by 2020 – to deliver $100 billion to developing countries each year.
That deadline was missed, but the COP26 organisers hoped to pull a few additional commitments out of large economies. Early in the talks, the goal appeared to be within reach after the Japanese prime minister agreed to bump his country’s share up by $10b.
Yet with the US arguing their hands were tied by a requirement to get permission from Congress, there were few other large economies to come to the table. As the summit closed, this goal remained unmet.
Australia was a relative Scrooge: prime minister Scott Morrison doubled his contribution – to AU$2b (NZ$2.08b) – whereas New Zealand quadrupled its cash to NZ$1.3b.
As well as meeting the old goal, the talks turned to the next climate finance target.
There wasn’t much progress on setting a new goal for mitigation finance, apart from a call for discussions to begin. Finance in the form of loans – a bugbear of developing countries – wasn’t ruled out. On a brighter note, rich countries are urged to “at least” double the cash put towards adaptation.
Another request of developed countries was for the finance they were owed, under the legal precedent of loss and damage, for the permanent effects that climate change was already having on their lives. In the Pacific, this includes the loss of land to sea level rise and salinisation, plus the loss of GDP from extreme weather events that had become a permanent part of storm season.
Three philanthropies offer £3m to help set up a Glasgow Loss and Damage Finance Facility, nudging developed countries resisting calls to create one https://t.co/5gwTXfsLAG
Developed countries had contributed the lion’s share of the rise in greenhouse gas, and therefore – the argument goes – should have to stump up that share of the costs.
And while developing countries welcomed the help from a proposed network that would offer them technical assistance in dealing with these permanent issues, they also wanted cash for reparations. This was a point of principle for many. In the end, the countries decided that this scheme “will be provided with funds”, though specific numbers will need to be discussed.
Cyclones are coming with increased frequency to Fiji. So too are calls for rich, developed countries to provide reparations. NASA VIA AP
The biggest sticking points
The summit’s to-do list also included the finalisation of the Paris Agreement “rulebook”, which would specify how the landmark 2015 accord would actually work in practice.
A number of sticky issues – including how countries might create and trade carbon credits between one another and what information would be required to be submitted on a regular basis – had failed to be resolved at previous meetings.
One of the most contentious debates revolved around who could claim credit for carbon-cutting projects paid for by others. Many countries – including New Zealand – maintained that the global carbon maths must be balanced: if carbon credits were sold, then the purchasing country (or company) would adjust its emissions tally down and the host country must adjust its tally upwards.
But Brazil in particular argued that the host should, essentially, be able to have its climate cake and eat it.
To settle this issue, a proposal to create two types of carbon credits was put on the table. There would be higher-quality credits to be sold to other countries and airlines in an international pact. In addition, there would be a lesser type of credit, offered to private companies.
The host country of carbon cutting projects now holds the power to authorise higher-quality credits. When that happens, the balanced carbon maths (that New Zealand and others want) would be required.
It can also authorise lesser credits. While these would be paid for by someone else, the host country could claim the environmental benefits when it reported its progress towards its NDC.
Experts, including Environmental Defense Fund’s Kelley Kizzier, said this system appeared robust – though it may need keeping an eye on.
It’s debatable how many companies would want these lesser credits, since they may not be able to use carbon-neutral claims, for example.
However, activists were worried that giving host countries authorisation powers might allow them to flout safeguards, such as protections for human rights.
Another area of contention was on old carbon credits, dating back to the predecessor of the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol. Many Kyoto carbon-cutting projects had issued credits that remained available for sale.
Since president Jair Bolsonaro took office, Brazil began to fight for controversial climate provisions in the Paris rulebook. ERALDO PERES/AP
Climate activists hate this idea, criticising these old units as “zombie credits”.
But the host countries of some of these projects – notably Brazil – did not want to lose the value of the units. They argued that the schemes, which were reducing emissions, could collapse without funding.
In the talks, some countries signalled they’d be open to allowing these projects to transition into the new system, but wanted to restrict the number of “carryover credits” issued before 2020, when the Paris Agreement took effect.
A consensus was struck, allowing some old credits to enter the new system. There were a few limitations: the project had to have started after 2013, with the credits issued before 2021, and these could only be used towards a country’s first NDC. This is one compromise likely to receive heavy criticism from climate activists in the coming days.
The purchase of these old credits will weaken, or completely undermine, the NDC of any country that uses them.
Speaking earlier in the week, WWF carbon market expert Brad Schallert said it is risky to allow these credits, even if there’s no appetite for them. They “blow a hole” in the Paris Agreement, he added.
“If no one buys them, then we’d be okay,” he added. “But we have to assume the worst.”
A proposal to limit the number of carbon credits a country can use to achieve its NDC made it into the rulebook. New Zealand negotiators opposed this provision strongly – if set high enough, this could seriously mess with the Government’s plans to outsource up to 68 per cent of its carbon-cutting pledge.
But the work to set this limit won’t start until 2028, meaning it’s more likely to be an issue for the next NDC period, beyond 2030.
What climate activists fought for
Considering the failure of “Global North” countries to produce the $100b on time, one hot-button issue during the summit was a suggestion that every carbon trade should provide a 2 or 5 per cent cut of the proceeds to an adaptation fund, to help vulnerable communities.
It wasn’t just the percentage that negotiators were haggling over, but the types of trade involved. The Paris Agreement specifically links this idea to the international carbon market, so some negotiating teams (including New Zealand’s) thought this shouldn’t apply when countries trade directly with each other. But developing countries argued this would simply be a loophole, and wondered why anyone would design a carbon trading system with one type of credit undermining another.
This debate was also linked to a proposal to gift an “angel’s share” of all credits purchased to the Earth. If rich countries outsource their carbon goals to others, then this would give an additional boost, argued vulnerable countries (which are the keenest to see ambitious climate action). Shares of up to 30 per cent were suggested.
Under one COP26 proposal, a percentage of all carbon credits would be cancelled – and “gifted” to the good of the planet. NASA
In the end, countries settled on 5 per cent for adaptation, and 2 per cent for the planet, for any carbon credits sold on the international market.
But when countries trade credits directly between one another, they are only “strongly encouraged” to provide a share of the proceeds for adaptation and donate another cut to the Earth. This would mean a country such as New Zealand would be named and shamed for not doing this, but wouldn’t be breaking the Paris rules.
One of the passion projects of many New Zealand activists and attendees was to get protections for human rights and the rights of Indigenous people into the Paris rulebook. This would ensure that any projects using foreign funds to reduce carbon emissions would not come at the expense of vulnerable communities.
This was identified as a problem under the pre-2020 Kyoto credit system. The New Zealand negotiating team said it lobbied strongly for these rights to be included and the proposed rules to be as tough as could be.
This was successful: projects will need to demonstrate how they will protect these rights, both in the initial design of the scheme and in regular reports. The push to get an independent body to assess grievances was also successful.
How much should developed nations pay for damages due to climate change? It’s a major #COP26 flashpoint, and these @nyt charts dive into 170 years of CO2 emissions that show a huge rich/poor divide that’s not going away after Glasgow. https://t.co/TBH8xchx2R
A fight to get 197 countries to agree to some joint commitment calling time on fossil fuels was a major bone of contention at the 11th hour. To avoid annoying countries that export a lot of fossil fuels, the Paris Agreement doesn’t mention them at all.
As Saturday began, the proposed joint summary from all countries called for accelerated efforts to “phase out” both unabated coal power and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. The US pushed to keep in the qualifiers “unabated” and “inefficient”, which weaken the proposal. It would, for example, allow coal power stations with carbon capture. The efficiency of subsidies is also a subjective assessment.
On the final day, China, India, Iran, Nigeria, South Africa and Venezuela voiced their opposition to this call.
India even argued that developing countries are “entitled” to use fossil fuels. The country’s negotiators proposed the watered-down “phase down” replace “phase out” related specifically to coal power.
This didn’t go down well: the Swiss negotiator pointed out the amendment would make it harder to reach 1.5C, and received a long round of applause. COP26 president Alok Sharma, who set out to “consign coal to history”, became visible upset when discussing the concession.
In the end, the wording was reluctantly passed – so the package of wider measures could be as well.
While hardly progressive, fossil fuels still took a small hit, and the call could pave the way for stronger language at future COPs.
Let's remember that despite this watered-down language, this is the first COP decision to mention coal (even "phase down"), and fossil fuel subsidies. #COP26
All in all, the sheer volume of competing interests means COP26 was unlikely to be capable of producing an agreement that any single person would prefer.
There will be a lot of interpretation of what it got wrong. But getting nearly 200 countries to collectively move, even on this existential issue, is a mammoth undertaking. For just a day or two, that needs to be celebrated.
The judgement of the world, particularly the young, was on negotiators’ minds. On Friday (Saturday NZ time), European Union climate chief Frans Timmermans held up a photo of his grandchild, and shared his concern about the young child’s future.
A day later, Tuvalu Climate Minister Seve Paeniu shared a photo of his three grandchildren. “Glasgow has made a promise to secure their future – that will be the best Christmas gift that I will present to them.”
World leaders have agreed a deal that aims to halt and reverse global deforestation over the next decade as part of a multibillion-dollar package to tackle human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Xi Jinping, Jair Bolsonaro and Joe Biden are among the leaders who will commit to the declaration at Cop26 in Glasgow on Tuesday to protect vast areas, ranging from the eastern Siberian taiga to the Congo basin, home to the world’s second largest rainforest.
Land-clearing by humans accounts for almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, largely deriving from the destruction of the world’s forests for agricultural products such as palm oil, soy and beef.
By signing the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forest and Land Use, presidents and prime ministers from major producers and consumers of deforestation-linked products will commit to protect forest ecosystems.
Boris Johnson will unveil the agreement at an event attended by the US president, Joe Biden, the Prince of Wales and the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo. He is expected to say: “These great teeming ecosystems – these cathedrals of nature – are the lungs of our planet. Forests support communities, livelihoods and food supply, and absorb the carbon we pump into the atmosphere. They are essential to our very survival.”
The commitment on nature and forests comes as more than 120 world leaders came together in Glasgow to thrash out fresh commitments on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns that key countries have failed to step up.
On a day devoted to speeches by presidents and prime ministers that underlined the scale of the challenges ahead, Johnson said future generations “will judge us with bitterness” if the conference fails. Other key moments included:
India pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2070. Although it is the first time the world’s third biggest polluter has set this target, and experts said it was a realistic commitment, it is 20 years behind the 2050 date set agreed by other developed countries.
President Biden warned that greater urgency was needed at the talks: “Right now, we are falling short. There’s no time to hang back, sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves.”
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said the world was being driven to the brink by an addiction to fossil fuels. “We are fast approaching tipping points that will trigger escalating feedback loops of global heating,” he warned.
In a recorded message, the Queen called on leaders to “rise above the politics of the moment, and achieve true statesmanship”. She added: “Of course, the benefits of such actions will not be there to enjoy for all of us here today: we none of us will live forever. But we are doing this not for ourselves but for our children and our children’s children, and those who will follow in their footsteps.”
Following his own speech, Johnson provoked some ridicule by admitting he would fly home rather than take the train.
Shortly before, he had told a roundtable of leaders of developing nations: “When it comes to tackling climate change, words without action, without deeds are absolutely pointless.”
The commitments on deforestation are an early win for the UK, which as host nation bears responsibility for forging a consensus among the nearly 200 countries present, amid concerns that an overall commitment on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by the 45% scientists say is needed this decade will fall short.
The political declaration, which is voluntary and not part of the Paris process, is one of a range of side deals that the UK presidency is pushing for at the climate summit in Glasgow alongside others on methane, cars and coal.
The package includes £5.3bn of new private finance and £8.75bn of public funding for restoring degraded land, supporting indigenous communities, protecting forests and mitigating wildfire damage.
A pledge from CEOs to eliminate activities linked to deforestation, and £1.5bn funding from the UK government for forests, are also part of the deal. £350m of that will go to Indonesia and £200m to the Congo basin, with a new £1.1bn fund for the west African rainforest.
While the forestry agreement has been cautiously welcomed by ecologists and forest governance experts, they point to previous deals to save forests that have so far failed to stop their destruction, including in 2014. But this time, the EU, China and the US alongside major forested countries like Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Papua New Guinea will all sign the commitment.
Many details need to be clarified, particularly how the money is spent, according to Carlos Rittl, who works on Brazil for the Rainforest Foundation Norway. “Big cheques won’t save the forests if the money doesn’t go into the right hands,” he said, emphasising that it should go to indigenous groups and other who are committed to protecting the forest.
In a separate announcement, at least £1.25bn of funding will be given directly to indigenous peoples and local communities by governments and philanthropists for their role in protecting forests.
But the promised funds still fall far short of what some believe is needed. “We are undervalued and our rights are still not respected,” said Mina Setra, an indigenous rights activist from Borneo. “A statement is not enough. We need evidence, not only words.”
The climate emergency is the biggest threat to civilisation we have ever faced. But there is good news: we already have every tool we need to beat it. The challenge is not identifying the solutions, but rolling them out with great speed.
Some key sectors are already racing ahead, such as electric cars. They are already cheaper to own and run in many places – and when the purchase prices equal those of fossil-fueled vehicles in the next few years, a runaway tipping point will be reached.
Electricity from renewables is now the cheapest form of power in most places, sometimes even cheaper than continuing to run existing coal plants. There’s a long way to go to meet the world’s huge energy demand, but the plummeting costs of batteries and other storage technologies bodes well.
And many big companies are realising that a failure to invest will be far more expensive as the impacts of global heating destroy economies. Even some of the biggest polluters, such as cement and steel, have seen the green writing on the wall.
Buildings are big emitters but the solution – improved energy efficiency – is simple to achieve and saves the occupants money, particularly with the cost of installing technology such as heat pumps expected to fall.
Stopping the razing of forests requires no technology at all, but it does require government action. While progress is poor – and Bolsonaro’s Brazil is going backwards – countries such as Indonesia have shown regulatory action can be effective. Protecting and restoring forests, particularly by empowering indigenous people, is a potent tool.
Recognition of the role food and farming play in driving global heating is high, and the solutions, from alternatives to meat to regenerative farming, are starting to grow. As with fossil fuels, ending vast and harmful subsidies is key, and there are glimmers of hope here, too.
In the climate crisis, every fraction of a degree matters and so every action reduces people’s suffering. Every action makes the world a cleaner and better place to live – by, for example, cutting the air pollution that ends millions of lives a year.
The real fuel for the green transition is a combination of those most valuable and intangible of commodities: political will and skill. The supply is being increased by demands for action from youth strikers to chief executives, and must be used to face down powerful vested interests, such as the fossil fuel, aviation and cattle industries. The race for a sustainable, low-carbon future is on, and the upcoming Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow will show how much faster we need to go.
Transport
Responsible for 14-28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, transport has been slow to decarbonise, and faces particular challenges in areas such as long-haul flight.
But technical solutions are available, if the will, public policy and spending are there, too. Electric cars are the most obvious: petrol and diesel vehicles will barely be produced in Europe within the decade. EV sales are accelerating everywhere, with the likes of Norway well past the tipping point, and cheaper electric vehicles coming from China have cut the fumes from buses. Meanwhile, combustion engines are ever more efficient and less polluting.
Employees on the assembly line for electric buses in Xi an, Shaanxi province, China. Photograph: Visual China Group/Getty Images
Bike and scooter schemes are growing rapidly as cities around the world embrace electric micromobility. Far cleaner ships for global freight are coming. The potential of hydrogen is growing, for cleaner trains where electrification is impractical, to be followed by ships and even, one day, planes. Manufacturers expect short-haul electric aircraft much sooner. Most of all, the pandemic has shown that a world without hypermobility is possible – and that many people will accept, or even embrace, a life where they commute and travel less. Gwyn Topham
Deforestation
Deforestation and land use change are the second-largest source of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The destruction of the world’s forests has continued at a relentless pace during the pandemic, with millions of hectares lost, driven by land-clearing in the Brazilian Amazon.
Volunteers plant mangrove tree seedlings in a conservation area on Dupa beach, Indonesia. Photograph: Basri Marzuki/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
But there are reasons for hope. The UK has put nature at the heart of its Cop26 presidency and behind the scenes, the government is pushing hard for finance and new commitments from forested nations to protect the world’s remaining carbon banks. Indonesia and Malaysia, once global hotspots of deforestation, have experienced significant falls in recent years, the result of increased restrictions on palm oil plantations. However, the 2000s soy moratorium in Brazil shows these trends are reversible. Finally, there is a growing recognition of the importance of indigenous communities to protecting the world’s forests and biodiversity. In the face of racism and targeted violence, a growing number of studies and reports show they are the best guardians of the forest. Empowering those communities will be vital to ending deforestation. Patrick Greenfield
Technology
Emissions from technology companies, including direct emissions, emissions from electricity use and other operations such as manufacturing, account for 0.3% of global carbon emissions, while emissions from cryptocurrencies is a huge emerging issue.
Mining – the process in which a bitcoin is awarded to a computer that solves a complex series of algorithms – is a deeply energy-intensive process and only gets more energy-intensive as the algorithms grow more complex. But new mining methods are lighter, environmentally. A system called “proof of stake” has a 99% lower carbon footprint.
Researchers pose for a group photo at the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Beijing, China. The centre was inaugurated to support the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
Scrutiny of the whole sector is increasing, spearheaded by tech workers who walked out in their hundreds to join climate change marches in 2019. The companies have pledged to do better: Amazon aims to be net zero carbon by 2040 and powered with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Facebook has a target of net zero emissions for its entire supply chain by 2030 and Microsoft has pledged to become carbon negative by 2030. Apple has committed to become carbon-neutral across its whole supply chain by 2030.
They’re still falling short when it comes to delivering, but employee groups continue to push. Kari Paul
Business
For decades Exxon Mobil has arguably been corporate America’s biggest climate change denier. But this year, the activist investor Engine No 1 won three seats on the company’s board with an agenda to force the company to finally acknowledge and confront the climate crisis.
Across corporate America and all around the world there are signs of change. The Federal Reserve, the world’s most powerful central bank, is beefing up its climate team. BlackRock, the world’s biggest investor, has made environmental sustainability a core goal for the company.
This isn’t about ideology: it’s about “common sense.” According to BlackRock, failure to tackle climate change is simply bad for business. The investor calculates that 58% of the US will suffer economic decline by 2060-2080 if nothing is done.
Much more needs to be done, and some question whether corporate America can really solve this crisis without government action. But the days of denial are over – what matters now is action. Dom Rushe
Electricity
The rocketing global market price for gas has ripped through world economies, forcing factories to close, triggering blackouts in China, and threatening to cool the global economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But it has also spelled out a clear economic case for governments to redouble their efforts in developing homegrown, low-carbon electricity systems.
The good news is that renewable energy is ready to step up and play a greater role in electricity systems across the globe.
A woman completes paperwork by the light of solar-powered lamps in a village shop for solar products. Photograph: Kunal Gupta/Climate Visuals Countdown
The precipitous fall in the price of wind and solar energy has helped to incentivise fresh investments in electricity vehicles and energy storage technologies, such as batteries, where costs are plummeting too. Soon, wind and solar power will help to produce green hydrogen, which can be stored over long periods of time to generate electricity during days that are a little less bright or breezy.
All of these advances are made possible by cheap renewables, and will help countries to use more renewable energy too. There has never been a better time to step back from gas and go green. Jillian Ambrose
Buildings
The built environment is one of our biggest polluters, responsible for about 40% of global carbon emissions.
Over the past two decades, the carbon footprint of buildings “in use” has been greatly reduced by energy-saving technologies – better insulation, triple-glazing, and on-site renewables such as solar panels and ground-source heat pumps. Onheat pumps, the UK lags far behind: Norway, through a mixture of grants and high electricity prices, has installed more than 600 heat pumps for every 1,000 households.
As national energy grids are decarbonising, the focus is shifting to reducing the “embodied energy” of materials – which can account for up to three-quarters of a building’s emissions over its lifespan – for example by reducing the amount of concrete and steel in favour of timber.
The Vertical Forest in the Porta Nuova district in Milan. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty
There is also a growing movement to prioritise refurbishment and reuse over demolition, driven by the realisation that the most sustainable buildings are the ones that already exist. Oliver Wainwright
Food and farming
The hoofprint of the global livestock industry is a significant one, accounting for about 14% of total annual greenhouse gas emissions. But it is increasingly recognised and accepted by national governments.
New Zealand now has a legal commitment to reduce methane emissions from agriculture by 10% by 2030, while Denmark has passed a legally binding target to reduce climate emissions from the agricultural sector by 55% by 2030.
While global meat production is increasing, there is a growing shift towards fish and poultry, which have a comparatively lower emissions footprint than red meats. The food industry is also developing a range of lower-carbon products using plant-based proteins such as soy and pea, and insect and lab-grown meat alternatives. Tom Levitt
Manufacturing
Decarbonising the manufacturing of every product needed by a modern economy is a vast and varied task. Some sectors are well on their way. For instance, Apple, the world’s third-largest maker of mobile phones by volume, has pledged to produce net zero carbon throughout its supply chain by 2030.
For many others, advances in efficiency of factories and their products will be accelerated by machine learning and other artificial intelligence technologies that are still in their infancy. There are even hopeful signs in some of the hardest sectors to decarbonise, such as plans by Volvo to replace coal with hydrogen in the steel it uses in cars.
One of the greatest reasons for optimism is manufacturers’ increasing awareness of circular design principles. Making products easier to recycle from the start will help to cut emissions from fresh resource extraction– although a bigger question remains as to whether rich societies can reduce consumption, the most obvious way to cut emissions. Jasper Jolly
On Friday, embattled social media giant Facebook announced it would crack down on the illegal sales of protected Amazon rainforest land via its platform, according to a blog post by the company.
The move comes after a BBC investigation found that the company’s Marketplace product was being used to broker sales of protected lands, including Indigenous territories and national forest reserves. The revelations provoked an inquiry by Brazil’s Supreme Court, but Facebook said at the time that it wouldn’t take independent action on its own over the issue.
Facebook didn’t state what prompted its change of heart, but the blog post stated the company is committed to sustainability.
“We’re committed to sustainability and to protecting land in ecological conservation areas,” said the post. “We are updating our commerce policies to explicitly prohibit the buying or selling of land of any type in ecological conservation areas on our commerce products across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.”
Facebook said it “will now review listings on Facebook Marketplace against an international organisation’s authoritative database of protected areas to identify listings that may violate this new policy.” According to a report from BBC News, that database is the one run by the UN Environment Programme’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), which catalogues protected areas.
But experts immediately raised doubts about the effectiveness of Facebook’s approach since the social media company doesn’t require users to specify the coordinates of the land they are selling.
“If they don’t make it mandatory for sellers to provide the location of the area on sale, any attempt at blocking them will be flawed,” Brenda Brito, a Brazilian lawyer and scientist told BBC News. “They may have the best database in the world, but if they don’t have some geo-location reference, it won’t work.”
Facebook is reeling this week after revelations by whistleblower France Haugen, a former product manager on the civic integrity team at Facebook, that the company aided and abetted the spread of misinformation across its platforms to increase “engagement”, knowingly facilitated illegal activities, and put profit over the well-being of its users.
China will plant 36,000 sq km of new forest a year – more than the total area of Belgium – from this year to 2025 as it bids to combat climate change and better protect natural habitats, a senior forestry official said on Friday (Aug 20).
Tree planting has been at the heart of China’s environmental efforts for decades and is a major part of plans to bring carbon emissions down to net zero by 2060.
Li Chunliang, vice-chairman of the State Forestry and Grasslands Commission, told a press briefing large-scale “land greening” programmes would complete 36,000 sq km of afforestation every year through 2025.
“By 2035, the quality and stability of national forest, grassland, wetland and desert ecosystems will have been comprehensively upgraded,” Li added.
China aims to raise its overall forest coverage rate to 24.1 per cent by the end of 2025 from 23.04 per cent at the end of last year, according to its forest and grassland five-year plan published this week.
The plan warned that China’s forest and grass resources were inadequate, especially in drought-prone regions in the north and west. Li did not say what type of trees would be planted but the document said the strategy would rely in part on “natural reforestation”, implying different types of tree would be planted according to the local environment.
Following the destruction of major ecosystems by decades of breakneck economic growth, China has promised to create “ecological security barriers” and protect as much as a quarter of its total territory from human encroachment.
Over the next five years, China will also expand its national park system, create corridors to alleviate habitat fragmentation, and crack down further on illegal wildlife trade, said Chen Jiawen, an official in charge of drafting the new plan.
Separately, market research group comparethemarket.com said on Friday that the city of Beijing alone would need to plant more than 15 million trees a year in order to offset annual emissions.
Singapore and Hong Kong would each have to plant more than 9 million trees a year, while London would need to plant just over 4 million, it said.
Green Alliance says 16,000 jobs could be created in areas facing most severe employment challenges.
Some of the areas of Britain worst hit by the jobs crisis brought on by the pandemic are also those with the highest potential for green job creation, a report says.
About 16,000 new jobs could be created in restoring nature and planting trees in areas where unemployment is set to soar when the government’s furlough schemes end, according to the report from the Green Alliance thinktank. These include urban areas where people have little access to green space, as well as coastal areas and “red wall” areas that were Labour strongholds in the north of England.
Sam Alvis, the head of green renewal at Green Alliance, said the government should invest in nature-based jobs as lockdowns are eased, using money from the £4.8bn fund earmarked for “levelling up”.
Research suggests that for every £1 invested in peatland, local areas receive about £4.60 in economic benefits, while similar investment in woodland areas and salt marshes produces returns of £2.80 and £1.30 respectively.
The future parks accelerator, a project to promote green spaces, has calculated that investing £5.5bn in greening urban areas in the UK would produce £20bn in economic benefits. However, nature restoration is almost entirely missing from the levelling-up fund.
Alvis said: “The opportunity is there for the chancellor of the exchequer to create a legacy of new, high-quality jobs across Britain. Supporting innovation in green jobs will put nature at the heart of the government’s levelling-up agenda and help local communities build back better and greener.”
The report’s authors examined the fifth of parliamentary constituencies in Britain with the most severe employment challenges. They found many in the north of England were close to peatlands that could be restored to carbon sinks, helping the UK to meet its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
The authors also mapped the potential for some widely available “nature-based solutions” to the climate crisis, including tree-planting, restoration of degraded landscapes and the restoration of marine ecosystems, across Britain. Two-thirds of the land most suitable for tree-planting was found to be in constituencies with “worse than average labour market challenges”. The government is falling behind on tree-planting targets.
Darren Moorcroft, the chief executive of the Woodland Trust charity, said: “Increasing native tree cover is a key part of the levelling-up agenda, shaping places people will want to live, visit and invest in. This will help increase employment opportunities as well as leading to happier, healthier communities.”
Many of the coastal constituencies where seagrass could be grown are areas of high job need, with a higher proportion of people on furlough and a lower-than-average increase in employment expected when the pandemic eases. Seagrass is an underwater flowering plant that can act as a carbon sink and nurtures young fish and other vital parts of the marine ecosystem, but which is under threat around the UK coast as 90% of seagrass meadows have been destroyed by overfishing and neglect.
In urban areas, thousands of jobs could be generated by investing in parks and green spaces for health and leisure. A growing body of research suggests that access to green areas has multiple benefits for people’s physical and mental health and wellbeing. Improving such areas in neighbourhoods currently without green space could create 10,800 jobs in areas with the worst post-pandemic jobs prospects, the report says.
Patrick Begg, the director of natural resources at the National Trust, said the pandemic and lockdowns had revealed the benefits of access to green space. “A greener recovery which increases access to nature is within our reach, [offering] massive social and environmental benefits as well as economic growth,” he said. “By investing in projects that make a greener recovery a priority, the government could generate green jobs for the communities that need them most.”
The potential jobs identified in the report range from entry-level roles in “shovel-ready” projects to graduate positions, for instance in research and development into nature restoration projects. Entry-level jobs can also help in the development of highly transferable skills such as machine operation, the report says.
An all-new eco smart city is now coming up in Singapore. Also known as a forest town, this new place is going to be nature’s true haven. The new city is aimed at improving the health and well-being of residents, paving the way for a better future.
The eco-city is going to be car-free, and its construction is taking place in Tengah, in the West Region. It is going to have five residential districts with 42000 homes, and help to reduce carbon emissions in the city. The forest town, as it is being often referred to used to be a military hub, with brick making factories all around. All that’s going to change when the new smart city is going to be built. In its new avatar, the forest town is going to be an example of good and clean living.
The car-free smart city is going to have safe zones for pedestrians, and also for cycling. The forest town without cars is going to be free from traffic, and as you can imagine, much of the day-time traffic stress is not going to be there. It is a sure way to develop wellness for the citizens, while keeping sustainability in mind.
Source: CNN
The five districts of Tengah are going to be Park, Garden, Forest Hill, Plantation, and Brickland. Even though the city is car-free, residents from here will be able to travel in buses in order to go into town. Tengah will also be connected with a water catchment area, and a nature reserve. Surely, it is going to be a one-of-a-kind place where you can breathe easy, and experience wellness like never before.
Of the 42,000 homes being built at Tengah, more than 70% will be made available through the HDB on long-term leases. Prices for two-bedroom apartments currently begin at just 108,000 Singapore dollars ($82,000), with the first apartments set to complete in 2023.
Source: Courtesy The Housing & Development Board
All residents will have access to an app allowing them to monitor their energy and water usage. (“You empower them to take control of where they can cut down their energy consumption,” Chong said.) Digital displays in each block will meanwhile inform occupants of their collective environmental impact, which could even encourage competition between residential blocks, according to SP Group.
Regardless of whether the use of smart technology can significantly dent greenhouse gas emissions or not, engaging residents with their own consumption could instigate behavioral change, according to Perrine Hamel, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Asian School of the Environment. This, she added, is a crucial part of Singapore’s goal of reaching peak emissions by 2030 and reducing them thereafter.
“Thinking about food consumption and thinking about the way people use air conditioning is all part of (achieving climate targets),” she said. “Changing behavior is going to be an integral part of it and, of course, urban design is the first way to affect and change behavior.”
Beyond promoting and protecting biodiversity, conserving nature on the site can lead to further behavioral change, Hamel said.
The Duke of Cambridge has urged banks to “invest in nature” to help fight global climate change.
Speaking at an IMF and World Bank meeting, Prince William said protecting nature continued to play only a small part in combating global warming.
He said investing in reforestation and sustainable agriculture were “cost effective” ways of tackling the issue.
Banks have come under increasing pressure to step up efforts to help fight climate change.
Just this week, Barclays’ London headquarters was the target of a protest staged by climate activist group Extinction Rebellion. Members held placards and broke several windows as they called on the bank to stop financing fossil fuel companies.
Addressing central bankers and finance ministers at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, the duke said the world’s natural habitats continue to decline at an “alarming rate”.
“We cannot recover sustainably from coronavirus, eradicate global poverty, achieve net-zero emissions, or adapt to climate change, without investing in nature,” he said.
The duke said investing in nature accounted for only a “fraction of the money that is spent on the fight against climate change”.
“We must invest in nature, through reforestation, sustainable agriculture and supporting healthy oceans… because doing so is one of the most cost effective and impactful ways of tackling climate change.
“It removes carbon from the atmosphere, helps build more resilient communities, tackles biodiversity loss and protects people’s livelihoods.”
The spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank are taking place virtually this week bringing together central banks, policymakers and business leaders to discuss the state of the world’s economy.
A key focus of the discussions will also centre on climate risks and building a sustainable economic recovery post Covid.
The duke said: “All of you here at the World Bank and across each of the multilateral development banks have that crucial part to play by supporting a green, inclusive and resilient recovery from the pandemic, by valuing nature and putting it at the heart of your work, and by increasing investment in a future where the natural world can thrive.”
The decisions taken at the next UN climate change summit in Glasgow later this year will be a “vital step” in putting nature centre stage, the duke added.
The duke has become a vocal campaigner on environmental issues. He launched a competition to try to inspire people to solve “some of the world’s greatest environmental challenges”.
The Earthshot Prize will recognise ideas and technologies that can safeguard the planet offering five prizes of £1m to support environmental and conservation projects.
Barclays’ London headquarters was the target of a protest staged by Extinction Rebellion this week
The duke’s comments come amid growing pressure from shareholders on banks to take a tougher stance on climate change.
HSBC announced last month it would stop financing coal projects across the EU by 2030, and all other markets by 2040, following pressure from a coalition of investment firms.
Shareholders at Barclays are set to table a resolution at the bank’s upcoming annual general meeting calling on the bank to phase out financing for coal, oil and gas companies.
Meanwhile a group of central banks are reviewing ways to use monetary policy to tackle climate change.
Options include greener asset purchases and lending schemes, according to report by the Network for Greening the Financial System.
