Published

1 year ago

November 27, 2023

Alice Rush

We will protect what we love. And she will protect us.

– Naima Penniman, from “Concentric Memory,” A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars ed. Sharkey

I have cared about the environment for a long time. When I was a kid, my troop learned about recycling in Girl Scouts and I was motivated to start in our St. Paul home’s kitchen. When worrisome commercials filled the spots between evening sitcoms, I convinced my mom to virtually adopt a polar bear. I was a member of my school’s Earth Corp and planned an annual punk rock concert called Rock Your Mother to raise money to convince school leaders to stop using Styrofoam trays and disposable utensils in the cafeteria.

Later, I worked on an urban farm with teenagers who taught their neighbors how to start backyard composting projects, in addition to transforming vacant lots into vegetable gardens. Coming up in the Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires era, I believed that if we each tried hard to reduce our waste, reuse what could be reused, and recycle every scrap, we could prevent the ozone layer from disappearing and save endangered animals. Now I know that the challenges we face are larger than individual efforts alone can reverse, and the challenges continue to mount. In addition to thoughtful consumption, systemic change and change at the policy level are what we need to truly face the climate crisis.

Black people have been wrestling with systems for generations. And, over the last few years, issues with our “in-justice” system have been in the forefront of the public conversation as we contend with very public examples of police violence and unevenly distributed policing and state prosecution. And, too, the question of the individual vs. the system has been at the forefront of the conversation about racial justice and equality.

Concurrently, the real changes that are necessary to address the climate crisis and the unequal impact of environmental injustice need to be made on the systems level. Rather than individual piecemeal changes, systems-level action is essential for corporations, governments, and institutions.

Over the last several years, I have been editing a collection of original essays, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed ’23), about the relationship of Black folks to nature since the first days of the America project. In the zenith of this research and crafting, I have learned about the ways Black folks have persisted in relationship to nature despite systemic public policies aimed to separate us from nature like Jim Crow Laws, Redlining, Sundowner town policies, and incomplete abolition. It is not surprising that environmental injustices follow these same patterns, leaving marginalized, under-resourced communities to contend with the worst consequences of toxic waste and industrial pollution.

The history of our country is marked by legislation and policy that worked to separate people of color from nature. Despite these barriers, Black folks have been in relationship with nature since before this country was a country. These relationships have been tainted and shaped by structural racism, but the marks of Black people’s stewardship and evidence of the African diaspora can be found across the landscape.

Three years ago, I entered a new relationship with nature through a particular piece of land and its stewardship. At the height of the pandemic and in the summer of 2020, a group of friends and I were invited to consider this new relationship with 36 acres of land in central Minnesota. I am uncomfortable with the traditional concept of land ownership, especially in a state and a country covered with stolen land and broken treaties. We talk about this work of care as stewardship and at the heart of the work is sharing. The Fields at Rootsprings is a retreat and respite center in Annandale, MN and there we are centering BIPOC and LGBTQ folks for rest. People visit the land to get away from the city, to wander the paths, to plan for the future, to grieve and mourn losses, to have fun with friends or their family, and some come to heal their relationship to nature. This is my new commitment to addressing the climate crisis.

By making space, by taking space in the outdoors, and by welcoming folks to join us we are fostering all kinds of new love for the land. And, it is the love for the land and our own wellbeing that will help us model and demand the changes needed to reduce strain on the environment.

My wife, Zoe, and I split time between Rootsprings and our place in the Twin Cities. The land welcomes us back when we arrive on the land, whispering that we are safe. The land is familiar but new each time. A gaggle of chickens and guinea hens meet our car; two tabby barn cats call out to announce us (and to demand the canned food they crave) and rub against the cuffs of our jeans. I am beginning to understand that there aren’t four seasons here but more like 25, changing every two weeks. One week is the week of the dragonflies, who dart across the path to the lake, the next is the week of the milkweed bobbing in the breeze. We’ve seen the Northern Lights and meteors, watched the juvenile deer watching us. There is order and mystery to it all.

We are confronting the evidence of climate change here on the land: seeing the little lake’s shores recede and the stream that feeds it shrink over the last two summers; facing record drought alongside farmers and gardeners across the state. Record snowfall last winter taxed the land. Our bird feeders sat empty a few times for a few months last year for fear of spreading avian flu. Big storms have blown through and fell trees in the forest. Buckthorn and other invasives have spread in our wetlands.

I know this land now, enough to love it and feel responsible to it and for it.

And I know that I am just beginning to get to know it.

We need to be in relationship to care, to feel a part of efforts towards a future. It is ours to care for and we are in deep need of its caretaking as well because we are nature. Our relationship to it and to each other matters.

Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts, and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is the editor of A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (Milkweed Editions ’23). Erin is a founding coop member of the Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite space in central MN, and co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental arts collective called Free Black Dirt. She is the producer of film projects, including Sweetness of Wild, an episodic web film, and Small Business Revolution, which explored challenges and opportunities for Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities in the summer of 2021. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, the Givens Foundation, Penumbra Theatre, Coffee House Press, the Bell Museum of Natural History, Black Visions, Headwaters Foundation and the Jerome Foundation. She has an MFA in creative writing from Hamline University and teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.

Erin is a Climate Generation Window Into COP delegate for COP28. To learn more, we encourage you to meet the full delegation and subscribe to the Window Into COP digest.

The post What Relationship Requires appeared first on Climate Generation.

What Relationship Requires

Climate Change

Carbon credit auditors suspended for failures in sham rice-farming offsets

Published

6 hours ago

March 25, 2025

Alice Rush

Carbon credit registry Verra has suspended activities by four auditors related to carbon credit projects they vetted in China which claimed bogus emission reductions.

In an unprecedented move, TÜV Nord, China Classification Society Certification Company, China Quality Certification Center and CTI Certification will be prevented from auditing agriculture and forestry offsetting schemes on Verra’s registry. For German certification giant TÜV Nord, the measures will only apply to its operations in China. It is the first time Verra has taken such measures.

The auditors certified the activities of 37 programmes that aimed to slash planet-heating methane gas releases from rice fields across China, resulting in the generation of millions of carbon offsets. But Verra revoked the projects in August 2024 after a 17-month review found a string of integrity failures that the auditors had failed to identify.

Before this week’s suspension, Climate Home previously reported on ten of these projects closely linked to energy company Shell and revealed evidence raising serious doubts over whether any emission-cutting activities had been carried out on the ground at all.

Nearly 2 million worthless carbon credits produced by the projects – and partly used to offset emissions from Shell’s gas business – still need to be compensated.

Auditors fail to course-correct

As it axed the projects last year, Verra told the four auditors to produce a “strong” action plan that would prevent similar failures from happening again. But Verra said on Tuesday the responses had proved to be inadequate, prompting it to slap suspension measures on the certifiers.

How Shell greenwashed gas with sham Chinese carbon credits

The suspension will be lifted only if the auditors address the issues and meet Verra’s reinstatement requirements.

“This decision was not made lightly, but Verra’s commitment to integrity means upholding the highest standards of quality and trust, and maintaining market confidence must come first,” Justin Wheler, Verra’s chief program management officer, said in a written statement.

Blowback for other projects

Voluntary carbon market standards like Verra rely heavily on external auditors to assess projects and their compliance with the rules, while the registry only gives the final stamp of approval. But auditors are picked and paid directly by project developers, something that, experts say, raises the risk of conflicts of interest.

Verra’s suspension will have immediate repercussions for projects that had contracted the services of any of the four auditors.

Verra said that it will not accept project registrations or requests to issue credits that rely on audits done by the certifiers affected by the measure. Those that have already undergone an audit carried out by suspended auditors will have to repeat the process with a new entity. A spokesperson for Verra told Climate Home at least 57 projects will be directly affected.

Hidden cost: How keeping climate data classified hurts developing countries

“While we recognize the impact of this suspension on affected projects, ensuring rigorous and credible validations and verifications is critical,” said Verra’s Wheler.

TÜV Nord is one of the world’s largest certification companies and, according to its website, it has vetted thousands of carbon credit projects both in the voluntary market and the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism. Climate Home has approached the company for comment.

China Classification Society Certification Company, China Quality Certification Center and CTI Certification are among China’s biggest certifiers of products and services, including emission reduction programmes.

Phantom credits still not compensated

Meanwhile, Verra has still been unable to obtain compensation for the 1.8 million worthless credits generated by ten rice farming projects that Shell directly supported in China. As Climate Home previously reported, the energy giant abandoned the projects soon after being informed that the sham offsets would need to be paid back.

The carbon credit registry sanctioned the project developer Hefei Luyu after the Chinese company failed to reply to Verra’s emails and compensate for the credits. But, in contrast, Verra has not taken any action against Shell – the world’s largest buyer of carbon offsets.

Shell used at least half a million credits produced by the Chinese rice farming projects to claim that shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) sold to clients were “carbon neutral”.

The post Carbon credit auditors suspended for failures in sham rice-farming offsets appeared first on Climate Home News.

Carbon credit auditors suspended for failures in sham rice-farming offsets

Climate Change

The Indigenous Climate Hub Launches New Podcast Series Amplifying Indigenous Voices on Climate Action

Published

8 hours ago

March 25, 2025

Alice Rush

The Indigenous Climate Hub is proud to launch its new podcast series—a powerful digital storytelling platform designed to elevate, empower, and honour Indigenous climate change leadership across Turtle Island. Available now on Spotify (http://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/indigenous-climate-hub), this podcast series shares stories of Indigenous Peoples leading climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts, engaging in environmental stewardship, and applying traditional and ecological knowledge to address the climate crisis in their homelands.

With new episodes continuing throughout 2025, the podcast offers a growing collection of compelling interviews and narratives, highlighting the diverse and resilient responses of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities to climate-related challenges. These stories are deeply personal and powerful — and belong to the individuals and communities who share them.

“We are excited to create a podcast where Indigenous knowledge keepers, youth, land defenders, scientists, and community members can share their experiences in their own words,” says Indigenous Climate Hub podcast co-host Dr. Shyra Barberstock. “This podcast is about amplifying the voices of Indigenous Peoples on the frontlines of climate change — and those whose leadership offers solutions rooted in generations of wisdom.”

Call for Participants

The Indigenous Climate Hub podcast team is actively seeking Indigenous interviewees who want to share their stories of:

Climate change adaptation and mitigation
Environmental and land stewardship
Traditional and ecological knowledge
Community-based solutions and innovation
Climate and land-based education

Sharing Indigenous stories through this podcast series is an opportunity to reach a national audience, inspire others, and contribute to a growing archive of Indigenous-led climate solutions. It’s also a chance to be part of a supportive network that values Indigenous voices, land-based knowledge, and leadership.

Join the Conversation

Your perspective matters whether you’re from a northern fly-in community or a southern urban centre. We want to hear from you if you’re an Indigenous person with a story to share.

To participate in the podcast or learn more, visit https://indigenousclimatehub.ca/podcast/. Follow us on Spotify to listen to new episodes and help amplify these vital stories by sharing them with your networks.

About the Indigenous Climate Hub

The Indigenous Climate Hub supports Indigenous Peoples and communities across Canada by providing tools, resources, and knowledge-sharing opportunities focused on climate change. The podcast is one of many initiatives designed to connect Indigenous voices and leadership in the face of the global climate crisis.

For media inquiries or to express interest in being featured on the podcast, please contact us using our Contact Form.

– The Indigenous Climate Hub

The post The Indigenous Climate Hub Launches New Podcast Series Amplifying Indigenous Voices on Climate Action appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.

The Indigenous Climate Hub Launches New Podcast Series Amplifying Indigenous Voices on Climate Action

Climate Change

Hidden cost: How keeping climate data classified hurts developing countries

Published

10 hours ago

March 25, 2025

Alice Rush

Rachel Santarsiero is the director of the National Security Archive’s Climate Change Transparency Project in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. intelligence apparatus has long monitored how climate change will affect U.S. national security interests in the coming decades.

Relying on a broad consensus of open-source scientific studies, modeling, and forecasts, the spy community has intermittently let the public in on its climate change agenda. In large part, however, its work on climate has been kept secret, leading to the disproportionate harm of the most vulnerable populations living in developing countries.

Last month, the Climate Change Transparency Project, an effort dedicated to tracking U.S. climate policy at the National Security Archive, a government watchdog nonprofit, reported on a climate change intelligence assessment that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has kept classified for 17 years.

“Forgotten” fragile states unite to end climate-finance blind spot

In 2008, a panel of intelligence officers produced a National Intelligence Assessment (NIA) which evaluated the “National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030,” and was one of the intelligence community’s first ever climate-focused assessments, a departure from its usual research on more “traditional” national security threats like state violence and terrorism.

Despite the assessment’s reliance on open-source resources, as outlined in a testimony given to Congress by lead study author Dr. Thomas Fingar, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) mandated its classification. In Fingar’s testimony to Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike advocated for the assessment’s declassification, with Democrats arguing that the report could inform government agencies and private industries about the risks of climate change, and Republicans arguing that its reliance on open-source information didn’t contribute anything new to the body of knowledge on climate change.

At the time, several representatives of key House select committees also pushed for declassification on grounds beyond the impacts to U.S. national security: “Information about the likely impact of climate change in other countries should be made available to help those countries prepare and direct their resources appropriately.”

The power of climate intelligence

Reports generated by intelligence agencies like the NIC and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) help predict specific vulnerabilities of various regions around the world – like which cities are most at risk from flooding or which agricultural zones may soon face extreme heatwaves. If made available to all nations, this information could help governments and humanitarian organizations take proactive steps, design better policies, and protect these more vulnerable populations.

Unfortunately, classified reports like the 2008 NIA are still shrouded in secrecy- in part, at least, to maintain strategic U.S. advantage. Intelligence officials who worked on the report, like Fingar, maintain that the 2008 NIA should remain classified because it calls out countries most vulnerable to climate change: if specific countries were named in the report, what would stop them from using it to press the U.S. and other developed countries to provide additional aid and assistance for climate-related threats?

But this argument is moot given the level of climate intelligence already out in the open. Specifically, the NIC released a National Intelligence Estimate in 2021 that names two specific regions and 11 countries as particularly vulnerable to climate change through 2040. It predicted that these countries – Afghanistan, Burma, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Iraq – will experience climate-related and exacerbated events that will strain governments and civil societies.

Despite the age of the 2008 National Intelligence Assessment, it is imperative that this report is declassified to complement the already available climate data. In interviews with other former top intelligence officials, we heard the 2008 NIA is “far superior” to the 2021 NIE and could potentially provide a better roadmap for countries to mitigate against the worst impacts than the available data does.

Why developing countries suffer the most

It is troubling that much of this intelligence remains classified and out of reach for policymakers, scientists, and citizens alike in places where the impacts of climate change are being felt most acutely.

Take, for example, small island states in the Pacific, which are already seeing the impacts of sea level rise yet remain unsure of how quickly these changes will accelerate or what measures they can take to mitigate future risks. Similarly, countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture is heavily dependent on climate conditions, face the double threat of droughts and unpredictable rainfall patterns.

At-risk nations have limited capacity to produce or analyze their own climate data, and access to accurate global climate intelligence would enable them to understand shifts happening in their regions and to secure funding for adaptive infrastructure.

The case for climate transparency

U.S. national security concerns must be weighed against the global nature of climate change, which affects all nations regardless of geopolitical standing. By withholding key climate data, wealthy countries are not only perpetuating environmental inequality but also undermine global efforts to curb the impacts of climate change. Providing developing nations with the same level of climate intelligence that wealthier ones receive would enable them to make better-informed decisions, prioritize resources, and act more swiftly in response to emerging climate threats.

Trump’s aid cuts make Malawians more vulnerable to climate change

Declassifying the 2008 National Intelligence Assessment could also strengthen regional cooperation between mentioned nations, which developing countries may increasingly look to as the current Trump administration continues to withdraw from previous environmental international commitments, including the Paris Agreement and the new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage. As the United States abdicates its responsibility as a global climate leader, countries like China and India will most likely step up – and developing countries may choose to rely more heavily on them as a partner in mitigation and adaptation measures.

Climate change is a global issue that demands a coordinated response. If certain nations hoard climate intelligence, they not only hinder the adaptation efforts of developing countries but also undermine the collective action necessary to lessen future climate impacts. The sharing of climate data can foster trust and collaboration, enabling countries to work together to create a more resilient global climate framework.

The post Hidden cost: How keeping climate data classified hurts developing countries appeared first on Climate Home News.