Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
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Snapshot
At the UN general assembly in New York, climate change was one of the main agenda items, with the secretary general convening the first-ever “climate ambition” summit.
As part of a new week-long series, Carbon Brief examined the ins and outs of carbon-offsetting.
A landmark Brazil supreme court ruling on land rights was widely hailed as a “great victory for Indigenous peoples”.
Key developments
UN’s first-ever ‘climate ambition’ summit
‘DANGEROUS AND UNSTABLE’: As part of the UN general assembly in New York, secretary-general António Guterres convened the first-ever “climate ambition” summit, inviting 34 leaders to speak “in recognition of their strong action on climate change”, notably omitting the US, UK, China, India and COP28 hosts the United Arab Emirates, Reuters reported. At the summit, Guterres warned that society was moving “towards a dangerous and unstable world”, citing “distraught farmers watching crops carried away by floods” as one of the “horrendous effects” of unabated fossil-fuel use, according to Politico. Dennis Francis, a diplomat from Trinidad and Tobago, warned the summit of “potential catastrophe” due to sea level rise, adding that “fertile river deltas like the Mississippi, Mekong and Nile – the world’s breadbaskets – are sinking”, a UN News story said.
AMBITION AND ASSISTANCE: Brazil “brought the biggest news to the table” at the summit, Climate Home News wrote, announcing its plan to “undo former president Jair Bolsonaro’s cuts to its climate ambition and strengthen its targets further”. The country now plans to cut emissions by 48% by 2025 and 53% by 2030. Meanwhile, leaders from several island nations castigated rich countries at the general assembly, with Marshall Islands president David Kabua calling for “the establishment of an international financing facility to assist small island and low-lying atoll nations facing natural disasters”, according to a separate Reuters piece. Another event at the general assembly was the first-ever meeting of the Commonwealth environment and climate ministers. At the meeting, the ministers “noted the role of ecosystem-based approaches, ocean action, land restoration and food-systems transformations in climate resilience and sustainable development”, said a press release from the Commonwealth.
HIGH-SEAS SIGNATORIES: Also at the general assembly, 76 nations and the EU signed the high-seas treaty, “signalling interest in ratifying the agreement designed to protect marine biodiversity in international waters”, Mongabay said. The signing marks a “significant step” towards conserving the high seas, which make up around two-thirds of the world’s oceans, the outlet added. Each country must now ratify the treaty according to its own procedures; once 60 nations have done so, the treaty can finally come into force. The Pacific Islands News Association quoted Pacific Ocean commissioner Dr Filimon Manoni, who said that “to be truly paradigm-shifting, we must aim towards universal participation” in the treaty.
Carbon offsets series
NEW SERIES: Carbon Brief examined the topic of carbon-offsetting in a new week-long series of articles delving into the impact, history and controversies of offsets. As part of the series, Aruna Chandrasekhar wrote an in-depth Q&A on ‘biodiversity offsets’, which have been promoted as one of the key ways to support nature conservation and its goals. Biodiversity-offsetting “sits at the heart” of tensions between biodiversity-rich developing countries demanding more public finance and “debt forgiveness” to help them meet biodiversity targets and rich countries rolling out new “nature markets”. The piece discussed the history, concerns and use of these offsets.
ALL THINGS OFFSETS: In the main article of the series, Carbon Brief examined all aspects of carbon-offsetting. The outlet’s international team of journalists explained what offsets are, how they are used by businesses and nations and why they can be a problematic climate solution. It also explored whether the carbon-offsetting system, which one expert described as “deeply broken”, could ever be effectively reformed. This infographic further explained how offsets work by following the journey of a fictional carbon offset purchased on the voluntary market. Elsewhere, a recent report found that rainforest conservation offset projects are not suitable and a different approach should be used to safeguard critical ecosystems, according to the Guardian.
CLOSER LOOK: In a separate Carbon Brief piece, Daisy Dunne and Yanine Quiroz trawled through news stories and investigations into individual carbon-offset projects to create a detailed map showing the global scale of these initiatives. They found that 70% of the articles examined showed evidence of the projects causing harm to Indigenous peoples and local communities. Almost half of the reports found evidence of offset projects overstating their ability to reduce emissions. To round out the week of reporting, Carbon Brief is hosting a free webinar at 3pm UK time tomorrow, Thursday 28 September, where a group of expert panellists will discuss how carbon-offsetting could be reformed. Click here to register.
Brazil Indigenous victory
LAND RIGHTS: Brazil’s supreme court ruled against a “highly controversial time-frame proposal” that would have “stripped Indigenous rights” to land, according to Mongabay. Indigenous chief Arakuã Pataxó told the outlet: “Without a doubt this is a great victory for Indigenous peoples.” The “time-frame thesis”, if approved, would have prevented Indigenous claims to traditional lands that they had not physically occupied before 5 October 1988, when Brazil’s constitution was enacted. Brazil Reports said this would have “overlooked that during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-85), many Indigenous peoples were persecuted and forced from their lands”, alongside the “obvious challenges” in obtaining proof of land occupation.
TENSIONS RUN ON: The ruling will “reshape the way the state approaches Indigenous land rights in Brazil”, according to the Guardian, setting a precedent that will have “widespread implications for all land-boundary disputes in Brazil”. However, the newspaper said that the ruling will not fully solve long-standing tensions around land conflicts. Indigenous leaders told the newspaper that they remain “anxious about attacks by non-Indigenous tenants”. Farmers said they are also worried about potential conflicts as “frictions emerge when Indigenous ranchers and farmers live in the same region”, the piece noted.
NEW DEAL: Elsewhere, the Cameroon government reached an agreement with the Indigenous Baka people to provide them with “more access to natural resources in the country’s protected forest areas”, Radio France Internationale reported. This expanded on a 2019 deal that gave Baka communities “unfettered access” to two national parks in the south-east of the country, the radio network said. The “original forest dwellers” will now have access to another national park and a wildlife reserve. The country’s minister of forestry and wildlife, Jules Doret Ndongo, said this is “another milestone moment in our efforts to promote the rights of Indigenous people and local communities in the preservation of biodiversity”.
News and views
AG EMERGENCY: Uruguay has extended its agricultural state of emergency until at least the end of the year. The declaration encompasses “livestock, dairy, horticulture, fruit, agriculture, beekeeping, poultry and forestry”, according to the South American news agency MercoPress. The initial declaration was signed on 25 October 2022 due to ongoing drought in much of the country. Uruguayan livestock minister Fernando Mattos said that the country is “on the way to normal rainfall, [but] there is still a long way to go to recover and reach the ideal point”. MercoPress added that the onset of El Niño “is likely to bring above-average rainfall”.
BURNED OUT: Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season – with more than 200 fires still burning across the country – have turned its “vast forests from carbon sink into super-emitter”, the Guardian wrote. The blazes have emitted around 2bn tonnes of CO2, or “triple the country’s annual carbon footprint”, the newspaper said. It added: “Decades of large wildfire and the mass die-off of trees from insects transformed the boreal from carbon sink to source.” Carbon Brief recently attended a US National Academies workshop on measuring greenhouse gas emissions from wildland fires, where experts noted that such emissions are “considered natural and, therefore, are not included in national greenhouse gas inventories”.
FRAUGHT FARM BILL: With the possibility of a US government shutdown looming, “it will be difficult or even impossible for Congress to enact a new farm bill”, Ag Insider wrote. The current bill expires on 30 September – the same day that the government is slated to shut down, although funding for many programmes follows a separate schedule. “There is little peril until dairy subsidies terminate on 31 December,” according to a separate Ag Insider article, which noted that December “is the new target” for the bill’s passage. The farm bill is projected to contain more than $1.5tn of spending, including on nutrition programmes, international aid, conservation work and crop subsidies.
SOMETHING IN THE WATER: The biggest freshwater lake in Ireland and Britain has hit a “crisis point” due to toxic blue-green algae, the Irish Times reported. This cyanobacteria – a type of bacteria that can photosynthesise – has made Lough Neagh “dangerous to anyone or anything that enters the water”, the newspaper added. The “underpinning drivers” of the issue, according to the Northern Ireland department of environment, include “excess nutrients from agricultural and wastewater systems” along with “climate change and the associated weather patterns, with the very warm June, followed by the wet July and August”. The Social Democratic and Labour party launched a motion to recall the devolved government in Northern Ireland, which has been at a standstill since last year, to discuss the “ecological crisis” on Lough Neagh, BBC News said.
COP28 GREENWASHING: DeSmog released a guide to the “greenwashing” terms that “the world’s largest food and farming companies will be using to sway debates” at COP28 in Dubai. Making the list are “regenerative agriculture”, which the outlet wrote “has ‘limited potential’ to mitigate climate change”; “sustainable intensification”, which is “the idea that industrial farming can continue to grow…but can do so while causing less damage”; and “nature-based solutions”, which DeSmog wrote is likely to be invoked during negotiations around the global carbon-credit market. In a separate piece, DeSmog examined the “Pathways to Dairy Net-Zero” group, a collaboration between the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and several other “international groups connected to the dairy industry” that focuses on climate change “solutions that can serve the industry”. DeSmog argued that its focus on improving “efficiency”, rather than reducing pollution, “has only enabled it to produce more milk – and with it, more emissions”.
KIWI FARMERS: “Rural voter anger” towards policies to tackle climate change and reduce emissions may bolster a “return of right-wing parties to power” during an upcoming general election in New Zealand, according to Reuters. Rural voters, who had a “flirtation” with the country’s Labour party in 2020, are looking to conservative candidates on 14 October to “unwind or delay” policies such as “planting pine forests on grazing land and taxing livestock methane burps”. Farmers have staged several protests in the past two years against these regulations, Reuters noted. Similar protests in the Netherlands saw a farmers’ party winning “sufficient support to shake up the country’s senate”, the newswire said, acquiring 16 of the 75 senate seats.
Watch, read, listen
SPROUTING: For Hawai’i Magazine, Kevin Allen wrote about the 150-year-old Lahaina Banyan Tree, which is acting as a “ray of hope” for locals devastated by last month’s Maui wildfires.
INCLUSIVE AG: In the Kathmandu Post, two researchers discussed the “multifaceted challenges” facing the agriculture sector in the mid-hills of Nepal, and how they can be addressed through gender-inclusive policies.
BIODIVERSITY CHATS: BBC Sounds podcast, the Life Scientific, spoke to Alexandre Antonelli, the director of science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, about his “life spent in the wild”.
CHARRED: A piece by Max Graham in Grist looked at whether the production of biochar – described as a “focal point” in efforts to turn agriculture into a climate solution – can be scaled up.
New science
Earthworms contribute significantly to global food production
Nature Communications
New research found that earthworms contribute to around 6.5% of the world’s grain production. Researchers looked at maps of earthworm abundance, soil properties and crop yields alongside earthworm-yield responses to estimate the impact these invertebrates have on the global production of key crops. They found that impacts were “especially notable” in the global south – for example, earthworms contributed to 10% of overall grain production in sub-Saharan Africa. The scientists concluded that while the earthworm impact is important, they “suspect that other soil biota may be equally as important and that further study is needed”.
Intentional creation of carbon-rich dark earth soils in the Amazon
Science Advances
Ancient peoples in the Amazon used soil management practices to improve soil fertility and crop productivity, according to a new study. Researchers compared modern fertile soil called “dark earth” to that of ancient times, then used studies of present-day Indigenous practices to propose a model of how dark earth may have formed previously. They found that the “ancient and modern dark earth deposits have similar compositions and spatial distributions”, indicating that the former may have also been intentionally cultivated by Indigenous peoples of the time. The researchers wrote that the study “highlight[s] the value of Indigenous knowledge for sustainable rainforest management”.
Likely impacts of the 2022 heatwave on India’s wheat production
Environmental Research Letters
The spring 2022 heatwave in India reduced wheat production in some regions by up to 15% compared to a normal year, a new study found. The researchers built a statistical model using weather and wheat-production data from 1967-2018 across five Indian states that together produce around 90% of the country’s wheat. The results showed that the heatwave reduced wheat yields by 4.5% on a national scale. The likelihood and intensity of heatwaves are due to continue as a result of climate change, the researchers wrote, so “timely forecasts of their impacts on agriculture are critical”.
In the diary
- 29 September: UN International day of awareness on food loss and waste reduction
- 2-6 October: FAO 30th session of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission | Sydney
- 3-6 October: EUROPARC conference 2023 | Leeuwarden, Netherlands
- 3-6 October: UNEP Fifth forum of ministers and environment authorities of Asia Pacific | Colombo, Sri Lanka
- 4-5 October: FAO Rome water dialogues | Rome
- 9-13 October: UNEP Final intergovernmental consultations on nature-based solutions | Nairobi
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 27 September 2023: UN’s ‘climate ambition’ summit; Carbon offsets series; Brazil Indigenous victory appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Özgür Özel is the leader of Turkey’s main opposition “New Party” and a member of parliament from Manisa.
The world is running out of time to deliver on the Paris Agreement. The UN Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report concludes that the chance of keeping warming below 1.5C without overshooting it is gone. Even if every country delivers its current national pledges, the planet is heading for about 2.6C of warming this century.
This is the backdrop as governments and their leaders gather in Antalya for COP31, ten years after the Paris Agreement took effect. Turkey lies in the Mediterranean, one of the regions most exposed to climate change, and hosting the summit is a real opportunity.
It is also a responsibility, and that responsibility begins at home. The world does not lack targets. What it has lacked – almost everywhere – is delivery. If Antalya is remembered for anything, it should be for shifting the focus from what countries promise to what they actually do.
For many people in Turkey, the climate crisis is already part of daily life. In 2021, forests in Manavgat, a district of Antalya, burned for more than a week. Last year, wildfires forced more than 50,000 people from their homes around the western coast city of Izmir. This October, Istanbul had its heaviest rainfall in more than 80 years, with the floods killing at least eight people.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
Electrification, the fossil fuel transition, adaptation to rising impacts, climate science and trade are key themes as governments gather for COP31 in TürkiyeBrazil’s fossil fuel roadmap sketches out first global timetable
The COP30 presidency’s voluntary timetable asks countries to plan first, then build up clean energy – only turning to oil and gas supplies from 2031
Measurable outcomes
Two weeks of climate negotiations cannot deliver everything that is needed to resolve the crisis, but COP31 can push for a few things that can be measured. The first is a voluntary fossil-fuel transition roadmap, with national milestones for 2030 and 2035 reported in the same format every year.
The second is a stronger commitment to protecting forests, with progress tracked over time. The third is yearly reporting on progress towards the agreed $1.3 trillion a year in climate finance by 2035, backed by a financial roadmap.
On adaptation, the indicators agreed in Belém should become funded national plans. By COP32, we should be able to see how many countries have an adaptation plan and the financial commitment behind each one.
Regional resilience partnership
The summit also has an unusual shape. Turkey hosts, Australia leads the negotiations, and the Pacific island nations play a central role. Climate diplomacy now sits at the centre of energy security, trade and development, and Turkey, which bridges developed and developing economies, is well placed to help build consensus between them. The lasting value of its presidency will depend on the practical partnerships it leaves behind.
One such partnership could connect two very different regions. On a map, the Mediterranean and the Pacific seem to have little in common, but their problems look similar: eroding coastlines, salt creeping into aquifers, failing harvests, fishing towns with fewer fish.
Turkey and Australia could launch a Mediterranean–Pacific Climate Resilience Partnership, linking coastal cities, scientists, institutions including development banks and island governments. It does not need a new bureaucracy. It can start with a few projects: shared satellite data and early-warning systems, better coastal flood defences, and trials of water-saving farming in the communities most at risk. What matters is visible results on the ground, not a ceremony.
Turkey’s track record
Turkey does have progress to point to. It has committed to net zero by 2053, and its solar and wind capacity has grown fast. The sunshine, the wind and the industrial base are all there. But the long-term direction of the energy mix is still unclear.
Turkey also signed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at COP26, pledging to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. With four years left, COP31 is a chance to show how that promise will be kept.
COP30 roadmap says faster use of existing tools can halt forest loss by 2030
And while the summit celebrates zero waste, Turkey took in more than half a million tons of European plastic waste last year, much of it bound for Mersin and Adana. On November 21, the day after COP31 closes, an EU ban on plastic-waste exports to non-OECD countries takes effect. Turkey, as an OECD member, is exempt. That should worry us more than it seems to.
None of this will carry much weight unless Turkey’s own record holds up. A leadership at odds with its own environment and its own citizens will struggle to inspire global confidence in its commitment to protecting the planet.
Threat to local climate action
Cities are where adaptation happens. Water, flood protection, waste and urban planning fall largely to municipalities. That is why the imprisonment and removal of more than 50 elected opposition mayors, including the mayor of Istanbul, matter for environment and climate policy, as well as for democracy.
When local leadership is disrupted, investment plans stall and work on flood defences and water supplies loses continuity. As a result, local governments are left paralysed.
Comment: From Australia to Chile, our cities are driving a green investment boom
Inconsistent policymaking when it comes to the environment and climate deepens the problem in Turkey as it does in other countries. A few practical steps would make a real difference.
Set out a gradual, well-planned energy transition. Stop new construction in streambeds and drinking-water basins and put zoning maps online. Inspect every imported plastic shipment and cap total imports. Hold public hearings on environmental impact assessments before permits are issued, not after. And publish an independently audited climate scorecard each year covering emissions, renewables capacity, forest loss and adaptation spending.
This could set an example beyond Turkey. Many emerging economies are trying to cut emissions while protecting jobs and keeping industry competitive. Digital tools and artificial intelligence are already available to help forecast wildfire risk, reduce grid losses and track water use.
With the 1.5C limit now set to be breached, Antalya’s success will be measured by the greenhouse gases avoided, the investments delivered and the forests still standing in the years that follow. It is our responsibility to watch closely and see whether those commitments are delivered, transparently and in line with international standards.
The post Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.
Turkey must make COP31 a turning point for global climate action
As oil companies pull out of Argentina’s oil heartland in the Patagonian province of Chubut, workers and communities are struggling to secure their future, with little say in the decisions being made about it.
“The impacted are fragmented, the exploiters organised,” said José Glinski, a member of parliament from the province.
In Comodoro Rivadavia, where Argentina’s oil industry began in 1907, those words carry particular weight. For nearly 120 years, oil has shaped the city’s economy and that of Chubut province, which helped power Argentina for decades. Now the companies that built their fortunes there are shifting their investments elsewhere, threatening an economy that has depended on oil for generations.
Argentina’s national oil company, YPF, whose roots lie in Comodoro Rivadavia, is selling off its mature oilfields in the region to concentrate investment in the shale oil and gas reserves of Vaca Muerta, further north. According to Glinski, around 10,000 direct jobs have gone in Chubut, and unemployment has climbed from 2% to 10% in a single year.
“And this while all remaining companies have kept extremely high levels of profit,” he said.
COP31 Briefing: What to expect from the Antalya climate summit?
Glinski blames government policy as much as the companies. “Companies are choosing to leave and the government lets them do so, while weakening tax and environmental regulations, leaving the city without the necessary income to organise the transition.”
Nobody has yet worked out who will clean up the old fields and more than 6,000 wells, look after the workers who remain, or pay for whatever comes next.
Comodoro Rivadavia is not alone. From Mejillones and Tocopilla in Chile to La Guajira in Colombia and Appalachia in the United States, from Scotland to Mpumalanga in South Africa and East Kalimantan in Indonesia, places built around fossil fuels for generations face some version of the same problem. As investment moves elsewhere, plans to protect workers, support communities and repair damaged land often lag far behind, if they exist at all.
Building an economy beyond fossil fuels
In Comodoro, as locals call the city, the community has not been passively waiting for oil to run out.
“We have looked into multiple alternatives for the territory, including building on geothermal capacity, an agricultural programme that could reinforce food security and focus on cultures that are not too water dependent, and exploring also aquaculture built on local species,” explained Ruben Zárate, who heads Comodoro Conocimiento, a public agency created by the municipality to develop economic opportunities. “The only alternative is economic diversification.”
But having ideas is one thing. Finding the money and securing the political support to put them into practice is another. In many countries, decisions that shape a region’s economy are made in the capital or in company boardrooms, and local authorities have little say, and few resources, when a major employer pulls out.
Glinski points to deals struck at the national level that leave communities without a meaningful say in decisions affecting their future.
“Some of the barriers relate to the absence of regulation of private actors which have negotiated conditions at the national level that prevent provinces or territories from capturing benefits that could be useful to fund the transition,” he said. “Comodoro had no voice in these deals.”
One example is Argentina’s Large Investment Incentive Regime, known as RIGI, which offers substantial tax benefits and regulatory guarantees to major investors. Argentina’s Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN) has warned that this regime could also give large projects preferential access to water and energy at the expense of local communities and businesses, making it harder for regions to diversify their economies.
At root, it’s a question of power: who controls the money and the decisions, and whether the people who kept these industries running for generations have any control over what comes next.
“Comodoro, like most territories that developed around fossil fuels, is heavily dependent. Everyone knew the oil business would end, but none planned for it,” said Antonella Risso, a climate expert and community member. “Comodoro deserves a bright future. Its people have the capacity to chart a future for its next hundred years – a real Just Transition”.
What COP31 could do
Last year in Belém, governments agreed to develop a Just Transition Mechanism. At COP31 in Antalya they will negotiate how it should work, and civil society is pushing for a strong Belém-Antalya Mechanism (BAM) that can help channel resources for action on the ground.
Camila Mercure, a climate policy officer with FARN and a coordinator of CAN’s Just Transition working group, said, “For a city like Comodoro Rivadavia, the BAM could mean support to develop diversification plans, assess viable alternatives, and access public, grant-based finance to put them into practice.”
“Workers and communities must have a meaningful role in shaping these plans, building on local knowledge and priorities. The aim should be to create decent livelihoods beyond fossil fuels and avoid alternatives that reproduce the same economic dependence, inequalities and environmental harm,” she said.
Why COP31 needs to start talking about just transition finance
The BAM could also put regions in touch with each other. Officials in Patagonia, northern Chile, Mpumalanga or East Kalimantan are wrestling with many of the same questions, and sharing what has worked would spare them from starting from scratch.
Then there are the companies. Fossil fuel producers should not be able to walk away from their workers, their environmental obligations and the towns that depended on them. The BAM could help regions share experiences and develop ways to hold companies accountable, ensuring they plan ahead and pay their fair share of the transition costs.
In Comodoro Rivadavia, the transition has already begun, without the community’s consent and wi