DEFORESTATION
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</font><h1 class="pageTitle" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 20px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></h1><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">see rainforest</font></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">see amazon rainforest 2</font></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">wood/paper</font></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">it's extraction, mining for trees</font></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf brkfast of biodiv: oil puts in roads, [also gold?] followed by loggers, followed by agric?</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/record-deforestation-amazon-tipping-point/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/record-deforestation-amazon-tipping-point/</a>
</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">jake j cmn dr</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">the Brazilian government published data Friday showing that more than
2,500 fire hotspots were recorded in the Amazon rainforest last month,
the highest number for June since 2007—one of the <a href="https://news.mongabay.com/2007/10/2007-amazon-fires-among-worst-ever/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">worst years ever</a> for the critical ecosystem.</span></font></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The latest report from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220701-brazil-sets-new-six-month-amazon-deforestation-record" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">showed</a> that the Brazilian Amazon has lost 1,450 square miles of jungle since the start of 2022.</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Greenpeace Brazil said in response to the <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/amazon-rainforest-fires-hit-new-record-for-the-month-of-june/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">alarming figures</a>
that the far-right Bolsonaro government's systematic rampage against
basic environmental protections is responsible for the surge in
rainforest fires and overall deforestation</b>, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">which have helped <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/14/biggest-story-world-right-now-humanity-has-flipped-amazon-carbon-sink-source" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">transform</a> parts of the Amazon—long known as a key carbon "sink"—into sources of planet-warming greenhouse gas.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Agribusiness
is hitting new records for forest destruction as the dry season arrives
in the Amazon," said Cristiane Mazzetti, a spokesperson for Greenpeace
Brazil. "Illegal burnings and deforestation have accelerated over the
last three years as a direct result of the Brazilian government's
anti-environmental agenda that encourages the destruction of the
forest."</font></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If this trend does not change," Mazzetti added, "we will
approach the tipping point of no return in which the Amazon could fail
as a rainforest."</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Brazilian academics have warned in recent months
that a Bolsonaro victory in the October presidential election would
mean total demise for the Brazilian Amazon. Recent polling shows that
Bolsonaro is <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/03/Luiz%20In%C3%A1cio%20Lula%20da%20Silva" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">trailing</a> leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has vowed to pursue "<a href="https://news.trust.org/item/20220621185215-du5vr" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">net-zero deforestation</a>" if elected</span>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"If
Bolsonaro remains in the power of presidency, it's hopeless in terms of
the environment," Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the São
Paulo-based Climate Observatory, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bolsonaro-lula-amazon-rainforest-brazil-election_n_6257353ce4b0e97a351a4430" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">told</a> <em>HuffPost</em> in April, a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/05/06/green-groups-blame-bolsonaro-policies-amazon-deforestation-sets-new-monthly-record" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">record-shattering month</a> for Amazon deforestation</span>.</font></p><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There will be more deforestation," said Astrini. "The Amazon will fast forward to its collapse point."</font></b></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmental
groups have voiced dismay at the Biden administration's failure to
confront Bolsonaro on the international stage over his government's
assault on the Amazon. The U.S. is Brazil's second-largest trading
partner.</font></span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last month, during the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, President Joe Biden went as far as to <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/06/09/remarks-by-president-biden-and-president-jair-bolsonaro-of-brazil-before-bilateral-meeting/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">praise</a> Bolsonaro for trying to "protect the Amazon."</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In
addition to being divorced from reality, Biden's statement is
remarkably tone-deaf," Maria Laura Canineu and Luciana Téllez Chávez of
Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/10/bidens-praise-bolsonaro-affront-brazils-forest-defenders" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class="rm-stats-tracked">wrote</a>
on the final day of the summit, where the two leaders met for the first
time. "Biden has shamefully squandered the opportunity to leverage his
meeting with Bolsonaro to support the courageous defenders of the
Amazon."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"These defenders are putting their lives on the line to
protect the world's largest rainforest and a vital bulwark against
climate change," they continued. "Biden should correct this mistake and
press Bolsonaro to reverse his damaging policies, urging Bolsonaro to
get Brazil back on track in fighting deforestation and protecting forest
defenders from violence."</font></p><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Diana Ruiz, the head of forests at
Greenpeace USA, said in a statement Friday that "up to now, the Biden
administration has only legitimized the Brazilian government's
anti-Indigenous and anti-environmental agenda."</font></b></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The U.S. has a
responsibility to act and stop making deals with President Bolsonaro,
who continues to wage an assault against Indigenous Peoples and
environmental defenders," Ruiz added.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">loki crit an 1121</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The impact of agriculture on climate change is significant. <b>According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the agriculture sector is responsible for <a href="https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">10 percent of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions</a>,</b> after transportation (29 percent), electricity production (25 percent), industry (23 percent), and commercial and residential usage (13 percent).<b> However, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/12/02/5-reasons-agricultures-greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-usually-underestimated/?sh=6b8cd6b96ac8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">according</a> to Peter Lehner, managing attorney for EarthJustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, the EPA estimate is "almost certainly significantly quite low."</b></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lehner <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/12/02/5-reasons-agricultures-greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-usually-underestimated/?sh=1de40f7a6ac8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">argues</a> that most analyses exclude five unique sources of emissions from the farming sector: soil carbon (carbon released during the disturbance of soil), lost sequestration (carbon that would still be sequestered in the ground had that land not been converted into farmland), input footprints (carbon footprint for products used in agriculture, like the manufacturing of fertilizer), difficult measurements (it is harder to measure the carbon emissions of biological systems like agriculture than it is to measure the emissions of other industries that are not biological, like transportation), and potent gases (like methane and nitrous oxide).</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Regarding that last source: Focusing on carbon dioxide as the main greenhouse gas often ignores powerful planet-warming gases that are emitted by agriculture and that are even more potent than carbon dioxide. Methane,</b> which is emitted by the burps and farts of ruminants like cows and sheep, has up to <a href="https://unece.org/challenge" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">86 times</a> more global warming potential over a 20-year period than carbon dioxide (and also impacts public health, <a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/methane-the-forgotten-climate-change-driver-thats-poisoning-frontline-communities-take-action-tuesday-earthfoodlife/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">particularly in frontline communities</a>). Nitrous oxide, a byproduct of fertilizer runoff, has <a href="https://civileats.com/2019/09/19/the-greenhouse-gas-no-ones-talking-about-nitrous-oxide-on-farms-explained/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">300 times</a> more warming potential than carbon dioxide (and also <a href="https://eos.org/articles/index-suggests-that-half-of-nitrogen-applied-to-crops-is-lost" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">harms plants and animals</a>).</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Most other studies, including by the [United Nations (UN)] and others, say that agriculture contributes much closer to 15 or 20 percent or more of world greenhouse gas emissions," Lehner <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/12/02/5-reasons-agricultures-greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-usually-underestimated/?sh=6b8cd6b96ac8" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">points out</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Disappointingly, agriculture was not a central topic of discussion at <a href="https://asiatimes.com/2021/11/world-leaders-face-stark-choices-at-cop26/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">COP26</a>,</b> the international climate summit that recently concluded in Glasgow, Scotland. "Despite [the] huge impact to ecological systems and climate," <a href="https://vegnews.com/2021/11/opinion-cop26-animal-agriculture" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">writes</a> Suzannah Gerber, a nutrition scientist and fellow of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture—a research agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture—"specific high-level talks about agriculture comprised less than 5 percent of all official negotiations and less than 10 percent of side events, favoring the less controversial topic of renewable energy."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And while renewable energy supporters cheered the fact that the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/glasgow-climate-pact-full-text-cop26/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Glasgow Climate Pact</a> is the first UN climate agreement to explicitly mention "coal" and "fossil fuels"—something that the fossil fuel industry fought hard against in previous summits, and that <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/environment/20211113-cop26-climate-deal-reached-in-glasgow-after-marathon-talks" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">China and India managed to water down in the current agreement</a>—the <a href="https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cop26_auv_2f_cover_decision.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">pact</a> makes no mention of the words "agriculture" or "food."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Meat Is Murder—for Animals and the Environment</strong></font></p><p style=""><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="">Forests continue to be clear-cut to <a href="https://sentientmedia.org/how-does-agriculture-cause-deforestation/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">make room for farms</a>, such as factory farms—which supply humans' appetite for meat—and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/07/18/ramen_noodles_partner/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">plantations</a> that produce the world's most used vegetable oil: palm oil.</b> And while deforestation and methane emissions were main topics at COP26 (resulting in pledges to reduce both), agriculture—which is intimately linked to deforestation and land-use change—was relegated to a sideline topic. "Unlike forest, finance and transport—that got the feted 'title of a day' at … [COP26]—agriculture was taken up as part of 'Nature Day' on a Saturday," <a href="https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/cop26-report-card-agriculture-continues-to-remain-subterranean-even-in-glasgow-80180" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reported</a> Richard Mahapatra for Down to Earth. "Outside the venue, thousands protested against a gamut of things, including step-motherly treatment to food systems that have been a major source of greenhouse gas… emissions."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within agriculture, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-how-much-food-contributes-to-climate-change/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">producing meat is the main climate problem</a>: Plant-based foods account for 29 percent of the global food production greenhouse gas emissions, while animal-based food accounts for almost twice as much—57 percent—with beef being the main contributor. "Every bite of burger boosts harmful greenhouse gases," <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1025271" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">said</a> the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). "Research shows that if cows were a nation, they would be the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter," <a href="https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/whats-your-burger-more-you-think" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">according</a> to UNEP. "As humans, meat production is one of the most destructive ways in which we leave our footprint on the planet."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And many, many more human footprints are on the way. By 2050, the human population is <a href="https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/world-population-to-reach-99-billion-by-2050" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">expected</a> to reach a staggering 9.9 billion people. (Today, there are 7.7 billion people on the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">planet</a>; just 50 years ago, the global population was <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">less than half</a> that number.) To ensure global food security in 2050, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that <a href="https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/feeding-world-sustainably" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">food production</a> must increase by 60 percent.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>A More Sustainable Future Is Plant-Powered</strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Animal-based agriculture is ultimately a poor way to feed a skyrocketing human population. "Farming animals is notoriously inefficient and wasteful when compared to growing plants to feed humans directly, with the end result that 'livestock' animals take drastically more food from the global food supply than they provide," <a href="https://awellfedworld.org/issues/hunger/why-we-need-plant-based-approaches/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">writes</a> Ashley Capps, a researcher specializing in farmed animal welfare for A Well-Fed World, an international food security organization advocating for the transition to plant-based agriculture.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is because in order to eat farmed animals, we have to grow the crops necessary to feed them, which amounts to vastly more crops than it would take to feed humans directly," writes Capps. "To give one example, it takes 25 pounds of grain to yield just one pound of beef—while crops such as soy and lentils produce, pound for pound, as much protein as beef, and sometimes more."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Switching to plant-based agriculture would help prevent food shortages, hunger and even famine at a time when <a href="https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/worlds-food-supply-made-insecure-climate-change" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">climate change is creating food insecurity across the globe</a>. Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/24/world-conflict-and-chaos-could-be-the-result-of-a-summit-failure" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">warned</a> during the Saudi Green Initiative Forum on October 24 that failure to stem the climate crisis "would mean less food, so probably a crisis in food security."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Well-Fed World <a href="https://awellfedworld.org/food-insecurity-climate-change/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">points out</a> that "[c]limate change is a hunger risk multiplier, with <a href="https://www.wfp.org/publications/climate-crisis-and-malnutrition-case-acting-now" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">20 percent more people projected to be at risk of hunger by 2050</a> due to extreme weather events. Unfortunately, the world's most food insecure populations are also those disproportionately harmed by climate-related events, including increased heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and flooding."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Climate, Conflict and COVID-19: A Perfect Storm</strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"A perfect storm of conflict, climate crises, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and rising costs for reaching people in need is causing a seismic hunger crisis," <a href="https://www.wfp.org/appeal-billionaires-famine" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">warns</a> the World Food Program, the food assistance branch of the UN. The agency has recently launched a public appeal to the world's billionaires to donate <a href="https://www.wfp.org/appeal-billionaires-famine" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">$6.6 billion to save 42 million people</a> across 43 countries from famine.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Concurrently replacing all animal-based items in the U.S. diet with plant-based alternatives will add enough food to feed, in full, 350 million additional people, well above the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food waste," according to a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/115/15/3804" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">2018 study</a> by an international team of researchers published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. The authors note that the results of their study "highlight the importance of dietary shifts to improving food availability and security."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The dietary shift from meat to plants is something that UNEP has underscored as a way to combat climate change and increase the efficiency of our food system. In their <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2021" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Emissions Gap Report 2021</a>, the agency noted that—in addition to switching from the combustion of natural gas to renewables—"behavioral changes such as reduced consumption of cattle-based foods and reduced food waste and loss" present a significant opportunity to reduce methane emissions. "[F]ast methane action, as opposed to slower or delayed action, can contribute greatly to reducing midterm (2050) temperatures," the <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2021" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">report</a> states.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>COP26's Missed Opportunity</strong></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In many ways, this behavioral change is already underway, as <a href="https://sentientmedia.org/increase-in-veganism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">veganism is on the rise</a>. "It can be difficult to get an accurate picture of how many vegans there are in the U.S., but one survey found a 300 percent increase in vegans between 2004 and 2019, amounting to about 3 percent of the total population or nearly 10 million people," <a href="https://sentientmedia.org/increase-in-veganism/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">notes</a> Sentient Media, a nonprofit animal rights journalism organization. Still, even though there has been a steady increase in plant-based diets, <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/26/1023636/sustainable-meat-livestock-production-climate-change/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">meat consumption is hitting record levels</a>, aided by carnivores in low- and middle-income countries where incomes are on the rise, like <a href="https://sentientmedia.org/in-veg-friendly-india-meat-consumption-is-on-the-rise/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">India</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/sponsored/china-appetite-still-growing" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">China</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Considering the growing interest in plant-based eating, the COP26 negotiators missed an opportunity to make dietary and agricultural changes a main thrust of the global climate solution. "Without positions and main messages from COP26 leadership, the need to address the climate change contributions from diet will not be able to gain ground," <a href="https://vegnews.com/2021/11/opinion-cop26-animal-agriculture" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">writes</a> Gerber. In the UN-managed "Blue Zone" at the Glasgow Science Center, for example, while COP26 attendees were presented with mainly animal-based food choices, only <a href="https://vegnews.com/2021/11/opinion-cop26-animal-agriculture" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">38 percent</a> of the menu was plant-based, as opposed to the earlier promise of ensuring "50 percent plant-based offerings within the Blue Zone."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels (which will help avoid the worst impacts of climate change), the world must achieve net zero emissions by 2050. To meet this goal, the COP26 organizers <a href="https://ukcop26.org/cop26-goals/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">listed</a> four distinct strategies: accelerate the phase-out of coal; curtail deforestation; speed up the switch to electric vehicles, and encourage investment in renewables.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They would have done well to add a fifth: transition the world to a plant-based diet.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58508001">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58508001</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Record number of environmental activists murdered</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Claire Marshall</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BBC Environment & Rural Affairs Correspondent</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Published 13 September</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">image captionSouth African environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was shot dead in her own home</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global Witness said.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Almost a third of the murders were reportedly linked to resource exploitation - logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The report called the victims "environmental defenders" killed for protecting natural resources that need to be preserved, including forests, water supplies and oceans.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Since the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed in 2015, the organisation says on average four activists have been killed each week.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It said this "shocking figure" was likely to be an underestimate because of growing restrictions on journalists and other civic freedoms.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Logging was the industry linked to the most murders with 23 cases - with attacks in Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indigenous peoples, most often on the frontline of climate change, accounted for a further one third of cases. Colombia had the highest recorded attacks, with 65 people killed last year.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Unbearably heavy burden'</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A senior campaigner for Global Witness, Chris Madden, called on governments to "get serious about protecting defenders." He said companies must start "putting people and planet before profit' or he warned that "both climate breakdown and the killings" would continue.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This dataset is another stark reminder that fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers and biospheres that are essential to counteract unsustainable global warming. This must stop''.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The organisation called on governments to formally recognise the human right to a safe, healthy and sustainable environment, and ensure commitments made at November's UN climate change conference, COP26, integrate human rights protections.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response, COP26 president Alok Sharma told the BBC he had "prioritised meeting people on the front line of climate change," to ensure the voices of all are heard."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Shot dead in her living room'</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those murdered included<b> South African</b> Fikile Ntshangase, 65, who was involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele in KwaZulu-Natal province. She was shot dead in her own living room.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Her daughter, Malungelo Xhakaza, 31, said her "mother's struggle lives on." She said: "To this day no arrests have been made in the investigation into my mother's murder. There has been no accountability. It seems to me that someone wants this mine expansion and the extraction to go ahead, no matter the cost."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Petmin Limited, which owns the Somkhele mine through its subsidiary Tendele Coal Mining, told Global Witness that it "acknowledges community tensions may have been a factor in Fikile's death." The company said it "strongly condemns any form of violence or intimidation" and has offered full co-operation with the police.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Óscar Eyraud Adams</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">image captionÓscar Eyraud was killed in his home in Mexico in 2020</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The killings also included Óscar Eyraud Adams, who was murdered in Mexico in September 2020. He was working to help the indigenous Kumiai community in Baja California have better access to water.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Witness said activists still under threat included communities in Guapinol in Honduras, where dozens of people have been protesting against an iron oxide mining concession that was granted by the central government in a protected area. Campaigners believe the Guapinol river, a vital water source, is threatened. The organisation says "many community members remain incarcerated."</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha hmmn // Brazil buffer flips to emitter?! i had not thought of wildfire as factor in deforestation (it grows back?)</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://grist.org/climate/arctic-fires-released-more-carbon-in-two-months-than-scandinavia-will-all-year/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">https://grist.org/climate/arctic-fires-released-more-carbon-in-two-months-than-scandinavia-will-all-year/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8/20</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A<span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px">lmost exactly a year ago, we</span><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><a href="https://grist.org/article/the-arctic-is-having-unprecedented-wildfires-heres-why-that-matters/" droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" color="color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" inherit="inherit" text-decoration-skip-ink="text-decoration-skip-ink" auto="auto" border-bottom="border-bottom" rem="rem" solid="solid" transition="transition" border-color="border-color" s="s" ease-out="ease-out" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" important="important" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">reported</a><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px">that June and July wildfires in the Arctic had released as much carbon as Belgium does in an entire year — an</span><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><a href="https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cams-monitors-unprecedented-wildfires-arctic" droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" color="color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" inherit="inherit" text-decoration-skip-ink="text-decoration-skip-ink" auto="auto" border-bottom="border-bottom" rem="rem" solid="solid" transition="transition" border-color="border-color" s="s" ease-out="ease-out" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" important="important" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">unprecedented</a><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px">summertime burn that would amplify the region’s climate change–fueled fever. But everything, apparently, is worse in 2020, including the climate toll of</span><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><a href="https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/index.php/another-active-year-arctic-wildfires" droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" color="color" rgb="rgb" line-height="line-height" inherit="inherit" text-decoration-skip-ink="text-decoration-skip-ink" auto="auto" border-bottom="border-bottom" rem="rem" solid="solid" transition="transition" border-color="border-color" s="s" ease-out="ease-out" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" none="none" important="important" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">this year’s Arctic fires</a><span droid="Droid" serif="serif" cambria="Cambria" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" px="px">, which makes 2019 seem like a warm-up.</span></span></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">=</span></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">covid 2x!</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html</a></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url css-listicle-body-2646072407 expanded" data-elid="2646072407" data-post-url="https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html" data-authors="Deutsche Welle" data-headline="Rainforest Deforestation More Than Doubled Under Cover of Coronavirus" style="margin-top: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><div class="body-description" style="clear: both;"><div class="widgetbrief" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the COVID-19 virus was spreading around the world, deforestation in the world's rainforests rose at an alarming rate, the German arm of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said <a href="https://blog.wwf.de/wald-corona/?ga=2.191480681.232588903.1590074315-1039827102.1590074315&gac=1.225442152.1590074315.Cj0KCQjwzZj2BRDVARIsABs3l9KYLYW7DJ-84K-sdx0sDJY69EZh37S104nIwYCPVCrWdVGSVGSARTgaAqs5EALw_wcB" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">in a study published on Thursday</a>.</font></p></div><div class="content-container"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The study, which analyzed satellite data of 18 countries compiled by the University of Maryland, found that deforestation rose by 150% this March compared 2017-2019 average for the same calendar month.</font></p><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-published-at="1590255145" data-basename="particle-1" data-post-id="2646072407" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Around 6,500 square kilometers (2,510 square miles) of rainforest were felled in March alone — an area seven times the size of Berlin, the WWF said.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This indicates that we're dealing with a coronavirus effect on the exploding rates of deforestation," Christoph Heinrich, the head of nature conservation with WWF Germany, said in a statement.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-published-at="1590255145" data-basename="indonesia-forests-hit-hardest" data-post-id="2646072407" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 data-role="headline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indonesia Forests Hit Hardest</font></h3><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The forests most heavily hit by deforestation in March were in Indonesia, with more than 1,300 square kilometers lost.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democratic Republic of Congo saw the second-largest forest loss with 1,000 square kilometers followed by Brazil with 950 square kilometers.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Brazilian non-profit research institute Imazon told news agency DPA that deforestation was up in April as well. The institute recorded a loss of 529 square kilometers in the Amazon in April, a rise of 171% compared to last year.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-published-at="1590255145" data-basename="tied-to-covid-19" data-post-id="2646072407" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 data-role="headline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tied to COVID-19</font></h3><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The WWF says there's ample evidence to suggest the boom in rainforest deforestation is being fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With stay-at-home orders and strict lockdowns in place in countries around the world, authorities haven't been able to patrol nature preserves and indigenous territories as often — a situation that criminal organizations and illegal loggers have been using to their advantage.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The virus has also prompted massive job losses in many countries, leaving many newly-unemployed people increasingly desperate for sources of income.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem4" data-id="4" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/rainforest-deforestation-coronavirus-2646072407.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4" data-published-at="1590255145" data-basename="particle-4" data-post-id="2646072407" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The WWF noted that the legal timber trade is a substantial source of income for several African countries but is virtually on ice amid various coronavirus shutdowns. The broken supply chains have led to concerns that the forests are losing their value and forest conservation efforts are losing their foothold.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along the Mekong River in southeast Asia, tourists have disappeared and with them a substantial source of income for local merchants selling forest products like honey, nuts or berries. Many have left the cities and returned to their home villages and are cutting down trees for firewood or a source of income.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The WWF said governments providing financial and technological support to locals could help reduce the rise in deforestation.</font></p></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/27/headlines/insect_populations_plummet_amid_urbanization_and_deforestation" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/27/headlines/insect_populations_plummet_amid_urbanization_and_deforestation</a></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">illegal </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url css-listicle-body-2645732733 expanded" data-elid="2645732733" data-post-url="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html" data-authors="Deutsche Welle" data-headline="Brazil's Amazon Rainforest Has Become the Wild West for Illegal Gold Miners" style="margin-top: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><div class="body-description" style="clear: both;"><div class="widgetbrief" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Peter Yeung</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From the skies above Creporizao, a remote town in the south of the Brazilian Amazon, the surrounding area looks like a vast blanket of dark green rainforest. But along the dirt roads and rivers that run through it like arteries are telling patches of muddy brown: illegal gold mines.</font></p></div><div class="js-appear-on-expand" style="transition: all 350ms ease 0s; height: auto; overflow: hidden; opacity: 1;"><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-basename="particle-1" data-post-id="2645732733" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wildcat miners come to the area seeking their fortune. Every day, hundreds of laborers embark on long journeys up and down the Crepori river to reach the gold pits, while others fly in on small planes that land on makeshift airstrips. Such scenes have become common across the world's largest rainforest, and are being held up as the cause of widespread destruction.
</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jose Maria, a miner from the state of Maranhao, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the east — who does not reveal his full name — is waiting on the river banks for a ride. "We're here to do honest work and earn a living," he said. "I don't see what the problem is."</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-basename="particle-2" data-post-id="2645732733"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the pits where Jose Maria and fellow miners work are located on the more than two million-hectare territory of the Munduruku, one of the largest indigenous tribes in the Amazon, whose mineral-rich lands are protected under Brazil's 1988 Constitution.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A 2019 survey by polling institute Datafolha showed </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">86% of Brazilians oppose mining on indigenous territory, yet it has been encouraged by Brazilian president <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-bolsonaro-proposes-bill-allowing-mining-on-indigenous-land/a-52273665" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Jair Bolsonaro's controversial bill, which calls for the legalization of commercial mining on indigenous land.</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Submitted to Brazil's Congress in early February, the bill has yet to be put to a vote. A planned ballot was pushed back with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, telling Congress it was "not the right moment." But he also stressed that the bill was "not unconstitutional."</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-basename="particle-3" data-post-id="2645732733" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it was planning to "regulate activities" on indigenous land, adding that the process would require "consultation with the indigenous communities," which would be able to participate in mining activity.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While some in the Munduruku have been won over by the allure of riches, and allow gold extraction on their land in exchange for money, the majority remain opposed to illegal mining.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem4" data-id="4" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4" data-basename="full-scale-gold-rush" data-post-id="2645732733"><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Full-scale gold rush'</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">About 13% of Brazil's territory is classified as indigenous land, spread across more than 400 reserves. But <a href="https://www.amazoniasocioambiental.org/en/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">according to the Amazon Geo-Referenced Socio-Environmental Information Network</a>, there are more than 450 illegal mining sites in the Brazilian Amazon, where most of those reserves are located.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The proposed law would likely lead to a dramatic rise in the level of mining activity.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Once you open the door, it will become a flood," Glenn Shepard, an American anthropologist who works with indigenous populations affected by illegal mining, told DW. "The law will create a precedent for miners to go in. It's already a full-scale gold rush going on, and these indigenous groups are losing control."</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greenpeace's journalism team, Unearthed, has reported that <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2020/04/03/coronavirus-brazil-amazon-gold-rush-indigenous-groups-deforestation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">gold miners planned to continue working through the coronavirus pandemic</a>, increasing fears of spreading the disease to indigenous groups.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem5" data-id="5" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5" data-basename="particle-5" data-post-id="2645732733" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In advance of the vote on the bill, the Ministry of Mines and Energy told DW it had received more than 4,000 applications for mining-related activities on indigenous land.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazilian-indigenous-tribesmen-shot-in-hit-and-run-attack/a-51574624" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Tensions between miners and local communities are already high.</a> In June last year, Brazil's indigenous rights agency, Funai, reported dozens of miners dressed in military uniform invading the Wajapi community, in the Brazilian Amazon, stabbing and killing one of its leaders.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/spotlight-criminalisation-land-and-environmental-defenders/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">According to research by international NGO, Global Witness</a>, 20 land and environmental defenders were killed in Brazil in 2018 alone. Globally, the nonprofit cited mining as the deadliest sector, with 46 reported murders in the same year.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem6" data-id="6" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=6#rebelltitem6" data-basename="the-deforestation-issue" data-post-id="2645732733"><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The deforestation issue</font></h3><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Environmentally, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-sees-alarming-rise-in-deforestation/a-51668498" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">one of the biggest impacts of mining is logging.</a> A 2017 report published in the journal Nature Communications found that mining accounted for 9% of all forest loss in the Amazon between 2005 and 2015.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Satellite <a href="https://maaproject.org/2020/gold_brazil/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">analysis </a>published by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project revealed that 2,000 hectares of gold mining-related deforestation occurred in 2019 across the Munduruku indigenous reserve, more than double the amount recorded the year before.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last November dozens of tribal leaders from the Amazon met with officials in Brasilia to file claims and report serious threats to their territories.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a leader from Para state who attended the meeting, says the legalization of mining would "be the death of our people."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Besides bringing "disease and prostitution to our people, drug addiction to our children, and violent conflict to the Munduruku men," she said gold mining activity is also killing fish through mercury poisoning.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem7" data-id="7" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=7#rebelltitem7" data-basename="particle-7" data-post-id="2645732733" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Released across the region's major Tapajos River during the mining process, mercury is seeping into the tributaries like those that snake past the mining town of Creporizao. Local communities rely on these rivers for many of their water needs.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Late last year, in the first study of its kind, Erik Jennings, a neurologist based in the city of Santarem, took blood and hair samples from 112 tribespeople to assess mercury levels.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's a slow genocide," Jennings told DW. "The mercury can cause serious cognitive and visual impairment, and deform fetuses."</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem8" data-id="8" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-brazil-gold-mining-2645732733.html?rebelltitem=8#rebelltitem8" data-basename="problematic-legal-trade" data-post-id="2645732733" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Problematic legal trade</font></h3><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even the legal gold trade in Brazil is largely unregulated, which facilitates illegal business and plays a significant role in the destruction of the Amazon. Prosecutors in Para state say the lack of regulation in the legal trade and the fact that receipts are paper-based carbon copies make it easy for criminals to thrive and illegal gold to enter the legal system.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The practice of fraud in the sector is quite easy, and the investigation of illegalities becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle," Luis de Camoes Lima Boaventura, public prosecutor in the Amazonian city of Santarem said.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Until a computerized system is installed, the authorities cannot check, in real time, the legality of the transactions. To make a transaction of illegal gold, all you currently need is a pen and paper."</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to National Mining Agency estimates, around 30 tons of gold worth some 4.5 billion reals ($1.1 billion, €900 million) are illegally traded in the state of Para annually. That is around six times more than the amount legally declared.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When miners like Jose Maria return to Creporizao at the end of what can be days away, they come to one of a dozen gold shops that line the main drag to melt what they have mined into standardized bars. Once that is done, illegally-mined gold, which is responsible for widespread deforestation, pollution and violence in the Amazon, has entered the system and can no longer be traced.</font></p></div><p class="" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/brazils-amazon-rainforest-has-become-the-wild-west-for-illegal-gold-miners/a-52623368?maca=en-VAM_volltext_ecowatch-28485-html-copypaste" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5;">Deutsche Welle</a>.</font></p><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 20px !important;"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; visibility: hidden !important; margin-bottom: -5px !important;"><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><li class="from-your-siteitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/gold-miners-murder-indigenous-leader-amazon-2639458840.html" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Gold Miners Murder Indigenous Leader, Force Villagers in Brazil's ... ›</a></font></li><li class="from-your-siteitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/illegal-gold-mining-amazon-rainforest-2641295413.html" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Illegal Gold Mining Is Laying Waste to the Amazon - EcoWatch ›</a></font></li></ul><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; visibility: hidden; margin-top: 20px !important; margin-bottom: -5px !important;"><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-rainforest-gold-mining-gallery/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Aerial Images Capture Swathes of Amazon Rainforest Destroyed by ... ›</a></font></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-devastating-costs-of-the-amazon-gold-rush-19365506/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Devastating Costs of the Amazon Gold Rush | Travel ... ›</a></font></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/gold-mining-amazon-rainforest" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Global Demand For Gold Is Destroying The Amazon Rainforest ›</a></font></li></ul></div></div></div></div><div class="tags" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/mining" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">mining</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">deforestation</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/environment" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">environment</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/indigenous-rights" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">indigenous rights</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pollution" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">pollution</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/brazil" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">brazil</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/amazon-rainforest" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">amazon rainforest</a> <a class="tagsitem" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rainforests" style="text-decoration-line: none; margin: 4px 2px; display: inline-block; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1; border-radius: 20px; border: 2px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); padding: 6px 11px;">rainforests</a></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">deforestation</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/worlds-largest-palm-oil-plantation-2645576807.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/worlds-largest-palm-oil-plantation-2645576807.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3.20</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A new company has begun clearing rainforest in an area of Indonesia's easternmost Papua province earmarked to become the world's largest oil palm plantation, in a vast project that has been mired in allegations of lawbreaking.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If seen through to completion, the Tanah Merah project will generate an estimated $6 billion in timber and create a plantation almost twice the size of London, at the heart of the largest tract of intact rainforest left in Asia. It will also release an immense amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, at a time when Indonesia has committed to reducing emissions from deforestation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since March of last year, the Digoel Agri Group, founded by a politically connected Jakarta family and now backed by an investor from New Zealand, has bulldozed 170 hectares (420 acres) of rainforest in a section of the project previously spared from land clearing, satellite imagery shows.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The clearance amounts to a fraction of the 280,000 hectares (692,000 acres) allocated for the project, now controlled by several different conglomerates. But it signals that deforestation could quickly accelerate after a decade of false starts by other investors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A satellite view of Digoel Agri's forest clearance, seen in late November 2019.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Since it was first conceived in 2007, the rights to the project have changed hands several times, involving a string of investors who have deployed crude and complex corporate secrecy techniques to hide their identities.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The licensing process for the project has been plagued by irregularities. A cross-border investigation by The Gecko Project, Mongabay, Malaysiakini and Tempo, published in November 2018, revealed that key permits were signed by an elected official who was simultaneously serving a prison sentence for embezzling state funds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A subsequent report found that officials believe other essential permits — for both the plantation and a giant sawmill to process the timber — were falsified.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Two companies, majority-owned by anonymous firms registered in the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">United Arab Emirates,</span> began operating on the basis of these permits, to the north of the land now held by Digoel Agri. In response to written questions from The Gecko Project and Mongabay they have denied the allegation that the permits were falsified.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On paper, Digoel Agri's involvement in the project represents a clean break from those allegations. The firm arrived on the scene after the suspect permits held by earlier investors were revoked and reassigned to it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jackson Iqbal de Hesselle, 32, a member of the Rumangkang family, which is behind Digoel Agri, said its operations were clean. "We're obeying the rules," he said in a recent interview at the firm's office in Jayapura, the capital of Papua province.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, while there are no apparent links between Digoel Agri and the previous investors, its ability to operate is partly predicated on the allegedly compromised licensing process that went before....</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.44em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.44em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">ew 220</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.44em; vertical-align: baseline; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T<font style="">wo men connected to a famous <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/monarch-butterflies" target="self">monarch butterfly</a>
reserve in Mexico have been found dead within a week of each other,
raising concerns for the safety of environmental activists in the
country.</font></font></p><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-1" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/butterfly-defenders-dead-mexico-2645023961.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1">
<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Homero Gómez González, 50, who managed a butterfly reserve in Mexico's Michoacán state and campaigned against illegal
logging in the butterflies' winter habitat, was found dead in a well on
Jan. 29, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-51356265?fbclid=IwAR246vnWdkp4CnQ3DyVVMq1AkC_wdOH2Y8NWfovQu1DNwR0eA8HJSl_GACY" target="_blank">BBC News reported</a>.
Three days later, part-time reserve tour guide Raúl Hernández Romero,
44, was also found dead on top of a hill in the El Campanario monarch
butterfly sanctuary.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"How can you protect the butterflies if
Homero Gómez or other people are not protected?" poet and environmental
activist Homero Aridjis <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/03/802359415/sadness-and-worry-after-2-men-connected-to-butterfly-sanctuary-are-found-dead?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&fbclid=IwAR04rBEOTtK4TCTuwYOz_kr2qHsfB7pW-FLmyGVMEV07xixDWZPuv4lKO8w&t=1580806622067" target="_blank">asked NPR</a>.</font></p>
</div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gómez González managed the El Rosario sanctuary, which is part of the <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1290/" target="_blank">Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve</a>,a UNESCO World Heritage site. The site, located in forested mountains
around 100 kilometers (approximately 62 miles) northwest of Mexico City,
is where more than half of eastern monarch butterfly colonies spend
their winters. The butterflies travel all the way to Canada each spring
and then back again in the fall. Because four generations of butterflies
are born and die during this time, it is unclear how they know to find
their way back, but they do.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Every autumn, millions, perhaps a
billion, butterflies from wide areas of North America return to the site
and cluster on small areas of the forest reserve, coloring its trees
orange and literally bending their branches under their collective
weight," UNESCO described.</font></p>
</div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-3" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/butterfly-defenders-dead-mexico-2645023961.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem3">
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<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the butterflies' winter home is threatened by logging and the planting of avocado farms, according to NPR. Between
2005 and 2006, loggers felled 461 hectares in the area, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/second-man-with-ties-to-mexicos-largest-monarch-butterfly-reserve-found-dead/2020/02/02/d655c3b4-460b-11ea-91ab-ce439aa5c7c1_story.html" target="_blank">The Washington Post reported</a>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gómez
González, a former logger himself, campaigned to protect the reserve
and argued that tourism from the butterfly migration was worth more to
the region than illegal logging. The El Rosario sanctuary he managed
opened in November to help prevent logging, BBC News reported, and his
family said he received threats before he disappeared Jan. 13.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His funeral on Friday was widely attended.</font></p>
</div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-5" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/butterfly-defenders-dead-mexico-2645023961.html?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5" data-id="5" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem5">
<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I offer my condolences to Mr. Gómez González's family, his colleagues and all of those who, in Mexico and elsewhere,
sometimes at the risk of their lives, work every day to protect this
natural heritage which is shared by all of humanity," Director of the
World Heritage Centre Mechtild Rössler said in a <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2080/" target="_blank">statement</a>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gómez
González was found to have received a blow to the head before drowning
in a well, BBC News reported. His death was apparently not a robbery,
since he was found with the equivalent of more than $500 in pesos,
according to NPR.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hernández Romero worked showing tourists around the El Rosario sanctuary, according to The Washington Post.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He was last seen Jan. 27 leaving his home, and then found dead Saturday after having been badly beaten with a sharp object.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Authorities are unclear if the deaths are connected to each other or to both men's work protecting the butterflies. However, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/mexico-second-monarch-butterfly-sanctuary-worker-found-murdered" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>
pointed out that there is a trend of environmental defenders being
murdered in Mexico in conflicts with developers or criminal groups.
Mexico's murder rate is also generally on the rise, BBC News reported.
In 2019, the country saw its highest murder rate ever with 34,582
reported killed.</font></p>
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<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHvhVBHTWzs" class="around-the-web__link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mexico's butterfly defender found dead - YouTube ›</a></font>
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</font><div class="tags">
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="tags__item" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/activism">activism</a>
<a class="tags__item" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/logging">logging</a>
<a class="tags__item" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/insects">insects</a>
<a class="tags__item" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/animals">animals</a>
<a class="tags__item" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife">wildlife</a>
<a class="tags__item" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/conservation">conservation</a></font>
</div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08012020/australia-wildfires-forest-tipping-points-climate-change-impact-wildlife-survival?">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08012020/australia-wildfires-forest-tipping-points-climate-change-impact-wildlife-survival</a></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As extreme wildfires burn across large swaths of Australia, scientists say we're witnessing how global warming can push forest ecosystems past a point of no return.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br /></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Some of those forests won't recover in today's warmer climate, scientists say. They expect the same in other regions scarred by flames in recent years; in semi-arid areas like parts of the American West, the Mediterranean Basin and Australia, some post-fire forest landscapes will shift to brush or grassland.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br /></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More than 17 million acres have burned in Australia over the last three months amid record heat that has dried vegetation and pulled moisture from the land. Hundreds of millions of animals, including a large number of koalas, are believed to have perished in the infernos. The survivors will face drastically changed habitats. Water flows and vegetation will change, and carbon emissions will rise as burning trees release carbon and fewer living trees are left to pull CO2 out of the air and store it.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br /></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In many ways, it's the definition of a tipping point, as ecosystems transform from one type into another.</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The surge of large, destructive forest fires from the Arctic to the tropics just in the last few years has shocked even researchers who focus on forests and fires and who have warned of such tipping points for years.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The projections were seen as remote, "something that would happen much farther in the future," said University of Arizona climate scientist David Breashers. "But it's happening now. Nobody saw it coming this soon, even though it was like a freight train.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><br /></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"It's likely the forests won't be coming back as we know them."[end no lnx]</span></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The link between global warming, forests and wildfires is multifaceted but very clear, said <a href="https://twitter.com/dr_nerilie" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Nerilie Abram</a>, a climate researcher at Australian National University.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Increasing temperatures dry out fuel and lead to more days of extreme fire weather," she said. "The poleward <a href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JAS-D-13-0105.1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">shift</a> of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds is drawing winter rainfall away from southern Australia, causing a long-term drying trend that makes the landscape more vulnerable to burning."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The cycle feeds itself, she explained: Drought and loss of forests cause higher temperatures over the land and a lower humidity, which, in turn, worsens wildfire conditions.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> And there's no reason to think that a gradual temperature rise will cause a similar gradual increase in fire risk, she said, citing a recent </span><a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019EF001210" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">study</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> showing that incremental warming increases fire damage exponentially by drying out fuels.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"Each degree of warming has a bigger effect on forest fire than did the previous degree of warming,"</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> that study's lead author, Park Williams of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, </span><a href="https://twitter.com/peedublya/status/1150868646681612288" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">wrote on Twitter</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> when the study was released.</span></font></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_full" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; width: 924px;"><figure id="file-274019" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg with-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><figcaption class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 2em; line-height: 1.6; border-right: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-left: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-image: initial; border-top: none;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix A koala named Paul recovers from wildfire burns at Australia's Port Macquarie Koala Hospital on Nov. 29, 2019. Volunteers from the Koala Hospital have been working alongside National Parks and Wildlife Service crews searching for koalas following weeks of devastating bushfires. Credit: Nathan Edwards/Getty Images</font></p></div></figcaption></figure></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a recent Australian television <a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1213389383702740997" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">interview</a>, Pennsylvania State University climate scientist </b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Michael Mann said the heartbreaking loss of irreplaceable forests in Australia is a clear sign of a climate tipping point playing out before our eyes.</b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Similar scenarios are apparent in forests around the world, he said.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of the forests lost to the ongoing fires in Australia aren't likely to come back anytime soon, said Australian National University climate scientist Christopher Brack.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"These fires burning through the Southern Alps (in Australia) at the moment are re-burning alpine and mountain ash trees that were regenerating from fires less than 20 years ago," Brack said.<b> In the warming climate, the current forests are likely to be replaced by brush and other shorter-lived and more flammable species that will intensify the fire cycle, </b>he said.</font></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_centered_medium" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 648px; margin: 0.25em auto;"><figure id="file-274021" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="file file-image file-image-png with-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><figcaption class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 2em; line-height: 1.6; border-right: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-left: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-image: initial; border-top: none;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Smoke from wildfires in Australia's Alpine and Kosciuszko National Parks on Jan. 3, 2020, shows up clearly on satellite images. Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay is in the lower left corner. The Credit: NASA Worldview</font></p></div></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On the world's current emissions path, with warming of about 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3°F) by the end of the century, fire frequency is expected to increase on more than 60 percent of global land area,</b> the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in a 2018 <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-3/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">report</a> that identified Southern Australia, along with Central and South America, South Africa and the U.S. West as at risk.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Human activity has also contributed to increased fire risk in other ways. Logging <a href="https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1755-263X.2009.00080.x" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">can dry up forests</a> and make the remaining trees more susceptible to fire, and the building of more roads and residential areas in the forests means there is more chance of fires igniting from power lines or cars, as well as more property damage and people at risk when fires break out.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mountain Forests and Even Rainforests Are Drying</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Australian <a href="https://twitter.com/Cam_Walker" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Cam Walker</a>, a forest conservation advocate and volunteer firefighter, has been battling to keep the flames away from a resort village near the Mt. Hotham Ski Area.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is subalpine country dominated by snow gums, a type of eucalyptus. This area has been burnt three times in about 12 years, and snow gums have a limited ability to cope with repeated fire," he said.</font></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_full" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; width: 924px;"><figure id="file-274020" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg with-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><figcaption class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 2em; line-height: 1.6; border-right: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-left: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-image: initial; border-top: none;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix Burned trees covered the landscape across parts of the Blue Mountains northwest of Sydney in December 2019 as Australia experienced its hottest day on record, with the average high temperature nationwide reaching 107°F. Credit: Saeed Khan /AFP/Getty Images</font></p></div></figcaption></figure></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The fires are also <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2062" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">threatening</a> some of the most ancient forests on Earth, relics from 180 million years ago</b>, when all the planet's continents were joined in the super-continent of Gondwana. The moist Gondwana rainforests, with damp microclimates under a dense canopy, have little history of fires, but global warming is drying them out.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We are seeing ever more of these areas burning because conditions are so dry. This has been happening also in relic sub-alpine vegetation in Tasmania, where we are witnessing more regular dry lightning strikes," Walker said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The costs to Australia of not acting on climate change will be catastrophic. Already scientists are warning that many ecosystems will collapse under high-emissions scenarios," he said.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[twy graf]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research in recent years reinforces that view, said David Bowman, director of the Fire Centre Research Hub at the University of Tasmania.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"Global climate change is stressing vegetation much more than we realized. Stressed vegetation recovers more slowly and rapid changes from forest to non-forest are possible," he said. "Increased fire frequency reduces the capacity of forests to bounce back after recurrent fires."</b></font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warming Also Drives Forest Die-Offs and Fire Risk in Other Ways</font></h3><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even without fire, trees are dying around the world at increasing rates because of global warming.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">During extreme heat events and droughts, <b><a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/prolonged-drought-causes-air-bubbles-to-choke-trees" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">air bubbles</a> can form in their moisture transport systems, essentially choking them to death. Warming also increases outbreaks of tree-killing insects. And logging, as well as land-clearing fires in the Amazon are threatening to push that critical forest ecosystem past a tipping point with global implications for carbon cycling.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Why are these trees in all these different regions dying at the same time when they've been around for such a long time? It's heartbreaking," said Breshears. "Ten years ago, I didn't think we'd be in this situation. I'm still kind of shocked myself at how much is occurring."</font></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_full" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; width: 924px;"><figure id="file-274023" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg with-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><figcaption class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 2em; line-height: 1.6; border-right: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-left: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-image: initial; border-top: none;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix: Mountain pine beetle and blue fungus infections have created ghost forests of dead lodgepole pines in parts of the U.S. West. As climate change makes summers hotter and drier, U.S. forests are threatened with increasing wildfire activity, deadly pathogens and insect infestations. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</font></p></div></figcaption></figure></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A series of studies in the past 10 years help explain the global tree die-off, </b>said U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist Craig D. Allen.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11688" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">evidence</a> that most tree species around the world already routinely operate near damaging thresholds of water stress, and that they are unable to cope with the rising frequency and intensity of heat extremes, Allen said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another recent <a href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecy.2134" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">study</a> showed how a declining snowpack and rising summer temperatures combine to limit regrowth, which is clear evidence of the negative impact of human-caused climate warming on subalpine forests. Pine seedlings need cool and moist summers to thrive, but those conditions occur less frequently with global warming. As a result, some Rocky Mountain forests will pass a tipping point with "shifts from forest to non-forest vegetation types across a broad range of elevations in Front Range forests," the study concluded.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some tipping points may be less sudden than we think and already underway, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">said University of Montana forest entomologist </span><a href="https://twitter.com/DianaSix1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Diana Six</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, who studies how global warming affects destructive insects that have been </span><a href="https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.2744" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">killing trees</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> in the U.S. West in the past few decades.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"Older forests are established and may look fine. But what happens when they die? What comes back?</b>" she said. On a warming planet, there's no guarantee that those older carbon-sequestering forests will regenerate—in fact there is plenty of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11056-019-09745-6" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">research</a> suggesting that many will not.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Even limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F) as targeted by the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/paris-climate-agreement" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Paris climate agreement</a> may not be enough to save some forests</b>. "With the changes and extinction we are seeing now, I would say no. But less bad than if we let things go further," she said.</font></p><div class="media media-element-container media-image_full" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; width: 924px;"><figure id="file-274022" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="file file-image file-image-jpeg with-caption" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 100%; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><figcaption class="field field-name-field-image-caption field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 2em; line-height: 1.6; border-right: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-left: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); border-image: initial; border-top: none;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pixSpot fires flare up in Victoria, Australia, on Jan. 5, 2020. In the coastal town of Mallacoota, thousands of people fled to a beach to escape fires there and were being evacuated by navy ships. Credit: Darrian Traynor/Getty Images</font></p></div></figcaption></figure></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The multiple studies and reports on increases in fire season length, fire size, magnitude and intensity, as well as forest die-back events and pest outbreaks show that forest ecosystems at the very core of our life support on the planet are under severe stress,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> said </span><a href="https://twitter.com/alistairjump?lang=en" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Alistair Jump</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, head of biological and environmental sciences at the University of Stirling (UK).</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"The changing climate is massively exacerbating the risk of catastrophic fire, and we are seeing the consequences of that globally," he said. </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"Even where fire isn't taking forests out, we are seeing drought-driven mortality risk escalate. Add to that changing pest and pathogen distributions and rampant deforestation, and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">trees are really in trouble just at the time that we need them most</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. The big risk of all of this being that carbon already locked away gets released in the blink of an eye.</span></b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; padding: 0px 138.594px;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We take forests for granted—but we can see just how fast we can change the way forests work and how seriously it can impact us in return."</font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/statistic-of-the-decade-the-massive-deforestation-of-the-amazon-128307" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">https://theconversation.com/statistic-of-the-decade-the-massive-deforestation-of-the-amazon-128307</a></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This year, I was on the judging panel for the Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistic of the Decade.</font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much like <a href="https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2019/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” competition</a>, the international statistic is meant to capture the zeitgeist of this decade. The judging panel accepted nominations from the statistical community and the public at large for a statistic that shines a light on the decade’s most pressing issues.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On Dec. 23, we announced the winner: the <a href="https://www.statslife.org.uk/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">8.4 million</a> soccer fields of land deforested in the Amazon over the past decade. That’s 24,000 square miles, or about 10.3 million American football fields.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This statistic, while giving only a snapshot of the issue, provides insight into the <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-brazils-rainforests-the-worst-fires-are-likely-still-to-come-122840" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">dramatic change to this landscape</a> over the last 10 years. Since 2010, mile upon mile of rainforest has been replaced with a wide range of commercial developments, <a href="https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/forests/deforestation_fronts2/deforestation_in_the_amazon/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">including cattle ranching, logging and the palm oil industry</a>.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This calculation by the committee is based on <a href="http://www.obt.inpe.br/OBT/assuntos/programas/amazonia/deter" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">deforestation monitoring</a> results from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, as well as <a href="https://img.fifa.com/image/upload/khhloe2xoigyna8juxw3.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">FIFA’s regulations</a> on soccer pitch dimensions.</font></p><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Calculating the cost</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There are a number of reasons <b>why this deforestation matters – financial, environmental and social.</b></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">First of all, <a href="https://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/amazon_people.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">20 million to</a> <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/places/amazon" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">30 million people live in</a> the Amazon rainforest and depend on it for survival. It’s also the home to <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-animals-live-in-the-amazon-rainforest.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">thousands of species of plants and animals</a>, many at risk of extinction.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Second, <a href="https://www.livescience.com/57266-amazon-river.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">one-fifth of the world’s fresh water</a> is in the Amazon Basin, supplying water to the world by releasing water vapor into the atmosphere that <a href="https://eos.org/articles/deforestation-could-exacerbate-drought-in-the-amazon" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">can travel</a> thousands of miles. But unprecedented droughts have plagued Brazil this decade, <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/deforestation-lead-drought/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">attributed to the deforestation</a> of the Amazon.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.as-coa.org/articles/brazil-update-historic-drought-takes-toll-agriculture" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">During the droughts</a>, in Sao Paulo state, some farmers say they lost over one-third of their crops due to the water shortage. The government promised the coffee industry almost US$300 million to help with their losses.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Finally, the Amazon rainforest is responsible for storing over <a href="https://interactive.pri.org/2018/10/amazon-carbon/science.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">180 billion tons</a> of carbon alone. When trees are cleared or burned, <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/amazon-rainforest-is-taking-up-a-third-less-carbon-than-a-decade-ago" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">that carbon is released</a> back into the atmosphere. Studies show that <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17897614/climate-change-social-cost-carbon" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">the social cost of carbon emissions is about $417 per ton</a>.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0175-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">a November 2018 study shows</a>, the Amazon <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bje7wd/the-amazon-is-worth-more-money-left-standing-study-shows" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">could generate</a> over $8 billion each year if just left alone, from sustainable industries including nut farming and rubber, as well as the environmental effects.</font></p><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Financial gain?</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some might argue that there has been a financial gain from deforestation and that it really <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/08/26/why-everything-they-say-about-the-amazon-including-that-its-the-lungs-of-the-world-is-wrong/#6e56c7b35bde" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">isn’t a bad</a> thing. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, went so far as to say that saving the Amazon is an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/climate/brazil-election-amazon-environment.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">impediment to economic growth</a> and that “where there is indigenous land, there is wealth underneath it.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an effort to be just as thoughtful in that sense, let’s take a look. Assume each acre of rainforest converted into farmland is worth about $1,000, which is <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/09/2012913112137744956.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">about what U.S. farmers have paid</a> to buy productive farmland in Brazil. Then, over the past decade, that farmland amounts to about $1 billion.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The deforested land <a href="https://globalforestatlas.yale.edu/amazon/land-use/cattle-ranching" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">mainly contributes</a> to cattle raising for slaughter and sale. There are a little over 200 million <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2019/july/brazil-once-again-becomes-the-world-s-largest-beef-exporter/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">cattle in Brazil</a>. Assuming the <a href="https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb1167344.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">two cows per acre</a>, the extra land means a gain of about $20 billion for Brazil.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Chump change compared to the economic loss from deforestation. The farmers, commercial interest groups and others looking for cheap land all have a clear vested interest in deforestation going ahead, but any possible short-term gain is clearly <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bje7wd/the-amazon-is-worth-more-money-left-standing-study-shows" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">outweighed by long-term loss</a>.</font></font></p><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rebounding</font></h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right now, <a href="http://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/app/dashboard/alerts/legal/amazon/aggregated/en" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">every minute</a>, over three football fields of Amazon rainforest are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-losing-3-football-fields-worth-of-rainforest-per-minute-2019-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">being lost</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What if someone wanted to replant the lost rainforest? Many charity organizations are raising money to do just that.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At the cost of over <a href="https://www.eniday.com/en/technology_en/largest-reforestation-project-rainforest/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: currentcolor none medium; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">$2,000 per acre</a> – and that is the cheapest I could find – it isn’t cheap, totaling over $30 billion to replace what the Amazon lost this decade.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; font-size: small; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Still, the studies that I’ve seen and my calculations suggest that trillions have been lost due to deforestation over the past decade alone.</b></font></p><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://time.com/5638438/global-witness-environmental-activists-murdered/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://time.com/5638438/global-witness-environmental-activists-murdered/</a></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Across the world calls to protect the planet are growing louder, yet standing up against the deleterious effects of</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> mining, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">logging</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and agribusiness</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> continues to be fatal, U.K.-based watchdog Global Witness said in a new report Tuesday.</span></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By sheer number, the Philippines was found to be the deadliest country for environmental defenders in 2018, with 30 environmentalists murdered. But around the globe, more than three defenders were killed each week of last year, the group’s latest report Enemies of the State? says.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These are ordinary people trying to protect their homes and livelihoods, and standing up for the health of our planet,” Global Witness said in a release.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>While the total last year, 164 deaths, represents a drop from the 2017 peak of 201, the group notes that non-lethal means of quashing dissent are also rampant.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Countless more people were threatened, arrested or thrown in jail for daring to oppose the governments or companies seeking to profit from their land,” it said. It is common for businesses and authorities to “use courts and legal systems to silence those who threaten their interests,” the report notes.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The report calls renewed international attention to the bloodshed that has occurred under President Rodrigo Duterte’s watch</b>. Soon after coming to power in 2016, Duterte declared a deadly crackdown on drugs and his administration has been mired in accusations of human rights abuses and violence. <b>In 2017, Global Witness said 48 environmental defenders were killed on the archipelagic nation, the highest ever recorded in an Asian country. In both 2017 and 2018, a large number of those deaths were linked to agribusiness.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix PI protest]</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>globally, mining was responsible for the largest number of killings—43 deaths—while conflicts over water projects surged at 17 deaths.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Across sectors, demand for consumer products—from food to jewelry to mobile phones—drives the persecution, the report says.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Witness warned that despite a dip in total deaths, the overall climate for environmental activists does not look to be improving. “Signs are worrying that the situation for environmental and land defenders will worsen,” it says. For example, Brazil’s strongman leader Jair Bolsonaro has pledged to open indigenous reserves for commercial development and in the U.S., President Donald Trump has sought to open more land to oil and gas companies.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And in the U.K., anti-fracking activists were targeted with terrorism related charges carrying potential life sentences, charges far more serious than are usually brought against protesters.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is a phenomenon seen around the world: land and environmental defenders are declared terrorists, locked up or hit with paralyzing legal attacks, for defending their rights, or simply for living on lands that are coveted by others,” Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said in a statement.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Companies and governments must act to stop land and resource conflicts, the report says.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As we hurtle towards climate breakdown, it has never been more important to stand with those who are trying to defend their land and our planet against the reckless destruction being meted out by the rich and powerful,” Alice Harrison, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">919 icn</font></div><div><table class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionBlock" style="border-collapse: collapse;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionBlockOuter"><tr><td class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionBlockInner" style="padding: 9px;" valign="top"><table class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionRightContentOuter" style="border-collapse: collapse;" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionRightContentInner" style="padding: 0px 9px;" valign="top"><table class="yiv0362650747mcnCaptionRightTextContentContainer" style="border-collapse: collapse;" width="352" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" align="right"><tbody><tr><td class="yiv0362650747mcnTextContent" style="line-height: 24px;" valign="top"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="font-family: " helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" arial="arial" verdana="verdana" sans-serif="sans-serif">D<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=fef9bcd3fa&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none;">eforestation Is Getting Worse, 5 Years After Countries and Companies Vowed to Stop It</a></span></span><br /><font style="background-color: inherit;">BY: GEORGINA GUSTIN</font><br /><span style="font-family: arial, " helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" sans-serif="sans-serif">As fires in the Amazon draw attention to the problem, critics say big agribusiness isn't doing enough to stop deforestation in its supply chains.</span></font></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonBlock" style="border-collapse: collapse;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" min-width="min-width" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonBlockOuter"><tr><td class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonBlockInner" style="padding: 0px 18px 18px;" valign="top" align="center"><table class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonContentContainer" style="border-radius: 5px; background-color: rgb(142, 196, 77);" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td class="yiv0362650747mcnButtonContent" style="padding: 6px;" valign="middle" align="center"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv0362650747mcnButton " title="Read More" target="_blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=0fffee2554&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none; display: block; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 14px;">Read More</a></font></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">P<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/6xz81m/406898806?h=OeuCGNJw1xjW_0YfQErd8E6LeEQCOYYtaEwoWt_jzWY" style="text-decoration-line: none;">roposed California Law Would Punish Companies for Failing to Limit Harm to the Planet’s Forests</a></font></p><p style="line-height: 1.375; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The legislation could affect everything from what paper gets used in state offices to what gets served in California cafeterias.</font></p><div class="yiv6988525144byline" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-top: 0.25em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); padding: 0.25em 0em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Abrahm Lustgarten</font></div><div class="yiv6988525144button-holder" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a rel="nofollow" class="yiv6988525144button" target="_blank" href="https://go.propublica.org/e/125411/l-utm-campaign-dailynewsletter/6xz81m/406898806?h=OeuCGNJw1xjW_0YfQErd8E6LeEQCOYYtaEwoWt_jzWY" style="text-decoration-line: none; display: inline-block; border: 1px solid rgb(33, 124, 227); font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 40px; padding: 10px 20px; margin-top: 15px; border-radius: 3px;">View Story</a></font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></p></div><div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>trump faLLOUT: DOOM TIP PT</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-unrecoverable-tipping-point-2639358982.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-deforestation-unrecoverable-tipping-point-2639358982.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><p style=""><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is being clear cut so rapidly — a rate of three football fields per minute — that it is approaching a </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">"tipping point"</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> from which it will not recover, </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">according to </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the Guardian</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.lnx]</span></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">As trees are lost, researchers said there is a <b>risk that large areas could transition from rainforest to savannah as they lose the ability to make their own rainfall from evaporation and from plants giving off water </b>vapor, according to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/brazil-bolsonaro-illegal-deforestation-amazon-rainforest-tipping-point-1451270" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Newsweek</a>.</font></p><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1"><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">A transition on that scale could have significant implications for global warming since the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rainforests" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">rainforest</a> absorbs vast amounts of atmospheric carbon. Recent <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76?hwshib2=authn%253A1562396078%253A20190704%253Ac3ad5971-c185-4942-9acd-92aa24c51c06%253A0%253A0%253A0%253AS1lvoYPtq07c7tMzRommqA%253D%253D" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">research</a> has shown the potential for massive tree plantings to remove excess carbon from the atmosphere.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away," said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research, as <span style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the Guardian</span> reported. "We can't see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The alarming rate of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/deforestation" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">deforestation</a> and its acceleration confirms suspicions that new president <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/jair-bolsonaro" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Jair Bolsonaro</a> has allowed illegal land invasion, logging and burning. Bolsonaro has called his <a href="http://terrabrasilis.dpi.inpe.br/app/dashboard/alerts/legal/amazon/aggregated/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">own government's satellite data</a> lies. </b>The president's comments followed preliminary satellite data that showed more than 400 square miles of the rainforest had been cleared in the first half of July — an increase of 68 percent from the entire month of July last year, according to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49052360" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">BBC</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bolsonaro, the far right politician who has said he is fulfilling a mission from God, dismissed concerns expressed by European Union members and called it hypocritical since so many European forests have been wiped out.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"You have to understand that the Amazon is Brazil's, not yours," Bolsonaro said, as <span style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the Guardian</span> reported. "If all this devastation you accuse us of doing was done in the past the Amazon would have stopped existing, it would be a big desert."</font></p></div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The DETER-B satellite system that the Brazilian government started to use in 2015 to track deforestation has shown that the record setting July deforestation is on pace to clear enough forest to fit New York City twice by the end of the month.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The DETER satellite data is considered preliminary. Detailed figures are released at the end of the year when data from other satellites and observatories is also collected, according to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/brazil-bolsonaro-illegal-deforestation-amazon-rainforest-tipping-point-1451270" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Newsweek</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch anyone by surprise. President Jair Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental policies," said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the <a href="http://www.observatoriodoclima.eco.br/en/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Climate Observatory</a>, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/amazonian-rainforest-near-unrecoverable-tipping-point" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the Guardian</a> reported.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After years of conservation, Brazil's environmental track record has nose-dived in the first seven months of Bolsonaro's administration</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He has given environmental oversight to the agriculture minister, who is the leader of a farming lobby. <b>His foreign minister called climate science a part of a global Marxist plot.</b>The government has invited businesses to register land counter-claims in areas that are protected nature reserves, indigenous territories and areas dedicated to sustainable production by native forest people, according to <span style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">the Guardian</span>.</span></font></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/25/amazonian-rainforest-near-unrecoverable-tipping-point</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">guk no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Amazon deforestation accelerating towards unrecoverable 'tipping point'</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Data confirms fears that Jair Bolsonaro’s policy encourages illegal logging in Brazil</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jonathan Watts in Altamira</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> @jonathanwatts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thu 25 Jul 2019 17.40 BST Last modified on Thu 25 Jul 2019 21.37 BST</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Amazon rainforest turned into farmland. An area the size of Greater London has been lost this month. Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sharp rise – following year-on-year increases in May and June – confirms fears that president Jair Bolsonaro has given a green light to illegal land invasion, logging and burning.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clearance so far in July has hit 1,345 sq km, a third higher than the previous monthly record under the current monitoring system by the Deter B satellite system, which started in 2015.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">With five days remaining, this is on course to be the first month for several years in which Brazil loses an area of forest bigger than Greater London.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The steady erosion of tree cover weakens the role of the rainforest in stabilising the global climate. Scientists warn that the forest is in growing danger of degrading into a savannah, after which its capacity to absorb carbon will be severely diminished, with consequences for the rest of the planet.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s very important to keep repeating these concerns. There are a number of tipping points which are not far away,” said Philip Fearnside, a professor at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research. “We can’t see exactly where they are, but we know they are very close. It means we have to do things right away. Unfortunately that is not what is happening. There are people denying we even have a problem.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It may also complicate ratification of Brazil’s biggest ever trade deal with the European Union if EU legislators decide the South American nation is not keeping its side of the bargain, which includes a commitment to slow deforestation in line with the Paris climate agreement.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The official numbers from the National Institute for Space Research are a growing embarrassment to Bolsonaro, who has tried to fob them off as lies and criticised the head of the institute.<b> Earlier this week, the president insisted the numbers should be screened by the ministry of science and technology and shown to him before being made public so that he did not get “caught with his pants down”</b>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This has raised fears that the data could be vetted in future rather than automatically updated online each day as is currently the case.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his first seven months in power, Bolsonaro, who was elected with strong support from agribusiness and mining interests, has moved rapidly to erode government agencies responsible for forest protection.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>He has weakened the environment agency and effectively put it under the supervision of the agricultural ministry, which is headed by the leader of the farming lobby</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> His foreign minister has dismissed climate science as part of a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> global Marxist plot.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> The president and other ministers have criticised the forest monitoring agency, Ibama, for imposing fines on illegal land grabbers and loggers. The government has also moved to weaken protections for nature reserves, indigenous territories and zones of sustainable production by forest peoples and invited businesspeople to register land counter-claims within those areas.</span></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">This has emboldened those who want to invade the forest, clear it and claim it for commercial purposes, mostly in the speculative expectation it will rise in value, but also partly for <b>cattle pastures, soya fields and mines.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earlier this month, it was reported that <b>thousands of gold miners illegally invaded Yanomami indigenous territory near the border with Venezuela. Elsewhere, illegal loggers have mounted at least two attacks in response to Ibama enforcement operations, </b>according to the Folha newspaper. On 4 July, they reportedly burned an Ibama truck in Espigão d’Oeste, Rondônia state and last week they were said to have burned bridges in Placas, Pará state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather than defend his officials, the environment minister Ricardo Salles appeared to side with the loggers when he gave a speech to a group of them in Rondônia soon afterwards, in which he reportedly told them: “The timber industry deserves to be respected … What happens today in Brazil, unfortunately, is the result of years and years and years of a public policy of producing laws, rules, regulations that are not always related to the real world. What we are doing now is precisely bringing the legal part of the real world that happens in every country from north to south.”</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">During a recent G20 meeting, Bolsonaro told the German chancellor Angela Merkel that she had no right to criticise because Brazil’s conservation record was superior to that of Europe’s. This is a dubious claim, according to Climate Observatory, which cites World Bank data that shows Germany has given protected status to a bigger share of its land than Brazil.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Brazil is also going backwards fast.</b> After an 80% reduction in the rate of deforestation between 2006 and 2012, successive governments have relaxed protections. Clearance has been creeping up. Last year, deforestation rose 13% to the highest level in a decade. This year is on course to be far worse and the trend is back towards the dark days of the early 2000s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Unfortunately, it is absurd, but it should not catch anyone by surprise. President Jair Bolsonaro and minister Ricardo Salles are dismantling our socio-environmental policies,” said Carlos Rittl, the executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, an NGO formed by a coalition of environmental groups.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">He said Salles had eradicated the department responsible for policies to combat deforestation, that no leaders have been appointed in eight of the nine Ibama regional offices, and that operations to combat environmental crimes declined 70% between January and April 2019 compared with the same period last year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Deter satellite data is considered preliminary, but it is usually a guide to the longer-term trends. More detailed annual figures are usually released towards the end of the year, after the National Institute for Space Research has calculated data from the more powerful Prodes satellite system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trees are considered essential to climate stability. Earlier this month, a study indicated that planting a trillion trees could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities. <b>But scientists say maintaining existing forests, particularly in the tropics, is far more important.</b></font></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></p></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-surprisingly-cheap-and-simple-plan-could-put-a-huge-dent-in-climate-change/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-surprisingly-cheap-and-simple-plan-could-put-a-huge-dent-in-climate-change/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A surprisingly cheap and simple plan could put a huge dent in climate change</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>July 5, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amid record-setting temperatures worldwide and predictions by experts that this year will be among the hottest humanity has ever seen, researchers behind a new study say a rapid global effort to plant billions of trees and the restoration of forests would be the “most effective” strategy for battling the planetary climate emergency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Based on a model of the potential for restoring trees worldwide to capture atmospheric carbon that is heating the planet, a Europe-based research team found that currently “there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares (2.22 billion acres) of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lead researcher Tom Crowther, a professor at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, explained to Metrothat “if we act now, this could cut carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by up to 25 percent to levels last seen almost a century ago.” A worldwide planting program, researchers estimate, could remove two-thirds of the carbon that human activity has put into the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">In terms of cost, Crowther said that “the most effective projects” do restoration at about ¢30 per tree, meaning that restoring a trillion trees would be about $300 billion—which, he added, makes tree restoration “by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Putting that figure into context, the U.S.-based youth-led Sunrise Movement tweeted, “For a fraction of the cost of the Trump tax cuts, we could pay for a trillion new trees and offset 2/3rd of all emissions to date.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sunrise Movement ??</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@sunrisemvmt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> For a fraction of the cost of the Trump tax cuts, we could pay for a trillion new trees and offset 2/3rd of all emissions to date.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(^rough cost estimate but still crazy cheap)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We have solutions ready to go; we’re just missing the political will to act.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2,690</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to tackle climate crisis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">theguardian.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1,161 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report, published Friday in the journal Science, describes tree restoration on a global scale as “our most effective climate change solution to date” while also warning that “climate change will alter this potential tree coverage.”</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">We estimate that if we cannot deviate from the current trajectory, the global potential canopy cover may shrink by ~223 million hectares (~551 million acres) by 2050, with the vast majority of losses occurring in the tropics. Our results highlight the opportunity of climate change mitigation through global tree restoration but also the urgent need for action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its reporting on the new research, Vox noted that “there is distinction here between restoration, also known as reforestation, and afforestation. The latter refers to planting new trees where there were none before. The former refers to bringing trees back to areas that were previously forested, whether that’s through planting trees or allowing the woodlands to regrow on their own.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This research team focused on the former—planting trees where they once were. While the potential is great, accomplishing it is no easy task, Vox reported, because “deforestation is still rampant and is accelerating in some parts of the world. Rather than building up forests as a resource to offset greenhouse gas emissions, we’re currently losing them, and emitting more carbon in the process.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther, however, appeared optimistic—given the potential impact and wide range of people and institutions that can actually take action.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What blows my mind is the scale,” Crowther told The Guardian. “I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the newspaper:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther emphasized that it remains vital to reverse the current trends of rising greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and forest destruction, and bring them down to zero. He said this is needed to stop the climate crisis becoming even worse and because the forest restoration envisaged would take 50-100 years to have its full effect of removing 200bn tonnes of carbon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some activists and experts—including Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and Glen Peters, a research director at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research—responded to the new study by emphasizing the importance of also changing human behaviors that produce planet-heating emissions, considering how long it could take to plant enough trees to remove carbon from the atmosphere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greta Thunberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@GretaThunberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Yes, of course we need to plant as many trees as possible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes, of course we need to keep the existing trees standing and rewild and restore nature.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there’s absolutely no way around stopping our emissions of greenhouse gases and leaving the fossil fuels in the ground. https://twitter.com/Peters_Glen/status/1147037393725329408 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Glen Peters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@Peters_Glen</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The only way we can keep below 1.5°C or 2°C is to stop emitting fossil fuels”...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It could take hundreds of years to add enough mature forests to remove what we will emit in 20 years at the current rate of 40GtCO2/yr.@StephenLeahyhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/07/how-to-erase-100-years-carbon-emissions-plant-trees/ …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther pointed out that planting trees is a solution that doesn’t require U.S. President Donald Trump “to immediately start believing in climate change, or scientists to come up with technological solutions to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is available now, it is the cheapest one possible, and every one of us can get involved,” he said, considering that in addition to any government-backed efforts individuals and charities can plant trees.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The model reveals restoration opportunities worldwide, with the six largest countries—Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Russia, and the United States—collectively containing about half of the sites.</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crowther described Brazil—which contains the majority of the Amazon rainforest and is currently under the control of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro—as his “dream hotspot to get it right,” but he reiterated that “the potential is literally everywhere—the entire globe. In terms of carbon capture, you get by far your biggest bang for your buck in the tropics, but every one of us can get involved.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Author and anthropologist Jason Hickel praised the research as “brilliant” and noted that in addition to sucking carbon out of the atmosphere to combat the global climate crisis, tree restoration could provide job opportunities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jason Hickel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@jasonhickel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Brilliant new research showing how much carbon can be sequestered by reforestation around the world. I suggest that everyone who has a #bullshitjob - or no job - should have the opportunity to switch to tree-planting until we hit the full 1.2 trillion. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/04/planting-billions-trees-best-tackle-climate-crisis-scientists-canopy-emissions …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3,332</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1:03 PM - Jul 4, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tree planting 'has mind-blowing potential' to tackle climate crisis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research shows a trillion trees could be planted to capture huge amount of carbon dioxide</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">theguardian.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1,549 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The environmental advocacy group 350.org, which welcomed the research, tweeted that “we also need to remember indigenous communities and their important role as forest stewards.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">350 dot org</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@350</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Good news: allowing the Earth’s forests to recover could cancel out the majority of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We also need to remember indigenous communities and their important role as forest stewards. http://fal.cn/32LDV </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">536</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9:34 PM - Jul 4, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Restoring forests may be one of our most powerful weapons in fighting climate change</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Adding 2.2 billion acres of tree cover would capture two-thirds of man-made carbon emissions, a new study found.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">vox.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">341 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The organization’s co-founder Bill McKibben was among the activists, experts, and writers who came together in April to launch a bold campaign that, as Common Dreams reported at the time, called for “embracing nature’s awesome restorative powers to battle the existential crises of climate and ecological breakdown.” In a tweet promoting the campaign, McKibben said that “along with stopping fossil fuel emissions, we badly need to restore natural systems.”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">====</font></div><div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/high-value-opportunities-exist-to-restore-tropical-rainforests-around-the-world-heres-how-we-mapped-them-119508">https://theconversation.com/high-value-opportunities-exist-to-restore-tropical-rainforests-around-the-world-heres-how-we-mapped-them-119508</a></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);" libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The green belt of tropical rainforests that covers equatorial regions of the Americas, Africa, Indonesia and Southeast Asia is turning brown. Since 1990, <a href="https://www.oneearth.org/protecting-50-of-our-lands-and-oceans/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Indonesia has lost 50% of its original forest, the Amazon 30% and Central Africa 14%</a>. Fires, logging, hunting, road building and fragmentation have heavily damaged <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa9932" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">more than 30% of those that remain</a>.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);" libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These forests <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-018-0490-x" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">provide many benefits</a>: They store large amounts of carbon, are home to numerous wild species, provide food and fuel for local people, purify water supplies and improve air quality. Replenishing them is an urgent global imperative.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);" libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there aren’t enough resources to restore all tropical forests that have been lost or damaged. And restoration can conflict with other activities, such as farming and forestry. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=utgfbkgAAAAJ&hl=en" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">tropical forest ecologist</a>, I am interested in developing better tools for assessing where these efforts will be most cost-effective and beneficial.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);" libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the past four years, tropical forestry professor <a href="https://scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=0f_YV1wAAAAJ&hl=en" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Pedro Brancalion</a> and I have led a team of researchers from <a href="https://partners-rcn.org/" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">an international network</a> in evaluating the benefits and feasibility of restoration across tropical rainforests around the world. Our newly published findings <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaav3223" style="outline: none; white-space: pre-wrap; overflow-wrap: break-word;">identify restoration hotspots</a> – areas where restoring tropical forests would be most beneficial and least costly and risky. They cover over 385,000 square miles (100 million hectares), an area as large as Spain and Sweden combined.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);" libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The five countries with the largest areas of restoration hotpots are Brazil, Indonesia, India, Madagascar and Colombia. </b>Six countries in Africa – Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Togo, South Sudan and Madagascar – hold rainforest areas where restoration is expected to yield the highest benefits with the highest feasibility. We hope our results can help governments, conservation groups and international funders target areas where there is high potential for success.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);" libre="Libre" baskerville="Baskerville" georgia="Georgia" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br /></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" text-align="text-align" center="center" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><li class="hidden-xs" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.33;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/29/headlines/deforestation_of_amazon_up_by_20_over_9_months" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; border: 0px;">Deforestation of Amazon Up by 20% Over 9 Months</a></font></li></ul></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=9381f3c3ff&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal;">World's Alarming Rate of Forest Loss Threatens a Crucial Climate Solution</a><br />BY: GEORGINA GUSTIN
More
corporations and countries are committing to preserve forests, yet new
global data show tree loss rates are still dangerously high — with
severe climate consequences.
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world's forests continue to disappear at an alarming rate,
threatening a resource that scientists say is a crucial "natural
solution" for controlling climate change on an urgently short timescale.
</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, the planet saw its fourth-highest level of tropical tree
loss since the early 2000s—about 30 million acres, according to a new
analysis published Thursday.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those losses have continued even as more corporations and countries
made commitments to preserve forests, and as scientists emphasized that
maintaining forests must be a global priority—as crucial to staving off
the worst risks of climate change as cutting fossil fuel use.</font></p><div class="widget widget-newsletter-block mc-embed-signup embed-horiz fbia-strip">
</div>
<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forests absorb roughly a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted by
human activity each year. Destroying all of the world's forests would
release the same amount of stored carbon as burning all the planet's
readily extractable fossil fuel deposits, a <a href="http://www.climateandlandusealliance.org/scientists-statement/">group of prominent scientists wrote</a>.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Continued tropical forest loss pulls the rug out from under efforts
to stabilize the global climate," said Frances Seymour, a senior fellow
with the World Resources Institute (WRI), which publishes the annual
forest assessment. "For every hectare of forest lost, we're one step
closer to the scary scenario of runaway climate change, because forests
not only store carbon, they continue to absorb it as they grow."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">....
</font></p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/farm-bill-endangered-species-environment-2561444014.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/farm-bill-endangered-species-environment-2561444014.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">house agric conaway pesticides</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/china-trees-soldiers-2534965590.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/china-trees-soldiers-2534965590.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/what-planet-would-be-without-trees" class="external text" title="https://www.alternet.org/environment/what-planet-would-be-without-trees" rel="nofollow" style="margin: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) url(" repeat="repeat" scroll="scroll" lock_icon.gif="lock_icon.gif" right="right" center="center" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-family="font-family" georgia="Georgia" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size">This Is What the Planet Would Be Like Without Trees</a>: The Earth is losing a forest area the size of Panama every year 1/18 see <a href="https://ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php?title=Category:Forests" class="external text" title="https://ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php?title=Category:Forests" rel="nofollow" style="margin: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0) url(" repeat="repeat" scroll="scroll" lock_icon.gif="lock_icon.gif" right="right" center="center" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-family="font-family" georgia="Georgia" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size">Forests</a>.</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/china/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">China</a>'s government announced plans for a major <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/reforestation/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">reforestation</a> project. The country aims to grow about 6.66 million hectares of new forests this year, an area roughly the size of Ireland.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/05/c_136874519.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">announcement</a> was made last week by Zhang Jianlong, the head of China's State Forestry Administration, in an effort to shed the country's image as a major polluter and become a global environmental leader, the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/05/china-plant-forest-size-ireland-bid-become-world-leader-conservation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Telegraph</a> reported.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/china-reforestation-project-2524893906.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/china-reforestation-project-2524893906.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/environment/amazon-deforestation-linked-mcdonalds-other-retail-food-giants" class="external text" title="https://www.alternet.org/environment/amazon-deforestation-linked-mcdonalds-other-retail-food-giants" rel="nofollow" style="margin: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; background: url(" lock_icon.gif="lock_icon.gif" right="right" center="center" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-family="font-family" georgia="Georgia" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size">Amazon Deforestation Linked to McDonald's, Other Retail Food Giants</a><span style="" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">: Large-scale agribusiness operations clear large swathes of native forest to make way for soy plantations. See </span><a href="https://ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php/Category:Food" class="external text" title="https://ic.ucsc.edu/college8core/c8wiki/index.php/Category:Food" rel="nofollow" style="margin: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; background: url(" lock_icon.gif="lock_icon.gif" right="right" center="center" no-repeat="no-repeat" rgb="rgb" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" font-family="font-family" georgia="Georgia" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size">Food</a><span style="" lucida="Lucida" grande="Grande" verdana="Verdana" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">.cargil</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://grist.org/climate-energy/indonesias-huge-fires-might-be-the-worst-climate-change-crisis-on-earth-right-now/">http://grist.org/climate-energy/indonesias-huge-fires-might-be-the-worst-climate-change-crisis-on-earth-right-now/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>see also wood/paper, primarily US</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FORMERLY AMAZON RAINFOREST, THIS NOW REFERS TO CARBON SINK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>best/easiest/cheapest way to deal with carbon, aside from not digging it up, is to store in trees, eg REDD</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>thus wildfire double whammy (runaway?) </b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>see also water</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see blm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/national-forests-logging-bill-2505370570.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/national-forests-logging-bill-2505370570.html</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Forests, Endangered Species Under Attack as House Republicans Pass Reckless Logging Bill</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In a partisan vote, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation Wednesday that would devastate national forests by gutting endangered species protections and rubber-stamping huge logging projects. The final vote was 232 to 188.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HR 2936, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), also limits public comment and environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Under the guise of reducing forest fires, the bill would increase unfettered logging across national forests and public lands, increase fire risk and harm forest health, while doing nothing to protect communities.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This bill is a dangerous bait-and-switch that rewards the timber industry. It puts the health of our forests and wildlife in grave danger and ignores real solutions," said Randi Spivak, public lands program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "It would green-light the worst forest management practices from decades ago, when reckless logging devastated wildlife, degraded rivers and ruined recreation opportunities for countless Americans."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Westerman's bill is a timber-industry wish list. Among other harmful provisions, it would allow rushed logging projects up to 30,000 acres—46 square miles—without public notice or scientific assessment of potential harm to the environment as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bill would render forest plans meaningless, roll back measures designed to protect old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, waive protections for waterways and water quality across the national forest system, promote harmful logging in otherwise protected roadless areas and force the Forest Service to ignore potential harm to thousands of imperiled species.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It would also give private landowners with easements on public land full ownership of that land and allow herbicides to be sprayed without reviewing the harm to water, fish and wildlife.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The knee-jerk response from Republicans is always to gut our environmental laws, no matter what the issue is," said Spivak. "They're willing to sacrifice our wildlife, healthy streams and rivers, and vibrant public lands for private profit."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the first four months of the 115th Congress, Republicans have introduced more than 80 bills that attack public lands, weaken environmental safeguards on those lands or turn over control to states and local governments. These attacks go against the wishes of most Americans, since the vast majority of voters across political parties support protecting and maintaining forests, national parks, monuments and other public lands and waters.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/carbon-farming-2457937143.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/carbon-farming-2457937143.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/biomass-industrys-hollow-self-regulatory-scheme-has-been-exposed-smokescreen-destroy">http://www.alternet.org/environment/biomass-industrys-hollow-self-regulatory-scheme-has-been-exposed-smokescreen-destroy</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.globalpossibilities.org/south-african-insurance-company-backs-tree-planting-effort-to-reduce-effects-of-drought/">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/south-african-insurance-company-backs-tree-planting-effort-to-reduce-effects-of-drought/</a></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="line-height: 18px;">...Rather than sit idly by and watch farmers lose untold acreage of croplands, </span><a href="https://www.santam.co.za/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Santam</a><span style="line-height: 18px;"> is working to actively reduce drought risk for its customers by funding </span><a href="http://livinglands.co.za/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">Living Lands</a><span style="line-height: 18px;">, an international nonprofit that has been active in South Africa since 2008. Working with government agencies, community organizations, and individual farmers, the project has planted more than 3.7 million trees so far in an effort to stop land degradation and restore the compromised water catchment system. All of this falls under a larger project intended to create “a living landscape” in the Baviaanskloof.</span></font><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a business imperative for us, the likelihood of our sustainability is highly dependent on this,” Ray-Ann Sedres, head of integrated sustainability at Santam, told The Guardian. She explained Santam recognizes how climate change is impacting businesses, and feels projects like this tree-planting effort are crucial for the company’s survival.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The city of Port Elizabeth, now home to 1.4 million residents, hopes to reap direct benefits from the tree-planting program. The city has doubled in size since 1997 and endured water restrictions on and off since 2007. Baviaanskloof area farmers report the rate of topsoil loss has slowed, indicating the runoff which causes erosion has been reduced. With any luck, Port Elizabeth’s water supply will also stabilize as the result of this unique approach to risk management.</font></p></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3 trill trees yay</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.globalpossibilities.org/new-estimate-earth-has-3-trillion-trees/">http://www.globalpossibilities.org/new-estimate-earth-has-3-trillion-trees/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">g20 roads thin edge of wedge</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/environment/worlds-biggest-economies-have-devised-plan-spells-doom-planet-earth">http://www.alternet.org/environment/worlds-biggest-economies-have-devised-plan-spells-doom-planet-earth</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two Republican bills currently making their way through Congress should anger any American who cares about the nation's forests. Introduced this summer, both bills are pro-industry and anti-environment, and seek to eliminate public participation in federal decisions about forest management that could negatively impact local communities, ecological health and wildlife.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first bill, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2647" style="text-decoration: none;">HR 2647</a>, the so-called Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015, was introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman of (R-AR-4). It passed the House and is now under consideration in the Senate. The other bill, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/1691" style="text-decoration: none;">S 1691</a>, called the National Forest Ecosystem Improvement Act of 2015, was introduced Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY). Hearings held last month by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources were chaired by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has consistently supported corporate interests over the <a href="http://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/lisa-murkowski" style="text-decoration: none;">environment and wildlif</a>e.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Both bills would suspend or weaken several federal environmental laws and clear the way for the timber industry to dramatically increase commercial logging across U.S. national forests.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Empowering corporations, disenfranchising citizens</strong></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Introduced on June 4, HR 2647 is a pro-industry bill that seeks to streamline the process by which commercial logging projects are managed by the federal government. One of the ways it wants to accomplish this is by limiting public debate on timber projects, effectively excluding the American public from their legal right to generate and review agency actions regarding forest management. HR 2647 appears to favor the rubber-stamping of industrial logging projects in national forests by establishing several worrisome environmental review requirement exclusions from such projects. These exclusions would effectively remove critical opportunities for American voters to participate in governmental decisions regarding how forests are managed by federal executive departments such as the Department of Agriculture and the Interior Department.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Specifically, HR 2647 would:</font></p><ul style="line-height: 25px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Create new categorial exclusions from review under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Introduce provisions to limit opportunities for judicial review by creating attorneys' fee recovery provisions and binding requirements that would effectively impede access to the courts</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lower the membership of resource advisory committees that advise the Forest Service on land use decisions, from 15 to six, which would significantly reduce the diversity of stakeholders.</font></li></ul><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Outdoor Alliance, a non-profit coalition that represents the interests of millions of Americans, said that the bill "<a href="http://www.outdooralliance.org/policy-news/2015/7/9/protecting-the-public-process-on-our-national-forests-hr-2647" style="text-decoration: none;">elevates a single interest</a> — timber — over the diverse activities that take place on national forests, including recreation."</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/19/alaska-fires-glaciers-melting</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On May 20, the shareholders of <a href="http://www.bunge.com/About-Bunge" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">Bunge</a>, one of the biggest farm commodity businesses in the world, will walk into some well-appointed meeting room at the Sofitel in midtown Manhattan to vote on five proposals. The first four votes will be utterly boring to anyone who isn’t deeply absorbed with Bunge’s corporate governance (e.g., appoint Deloitte & Touche as auditor?). But the fifth is unusual: It’s a proposal from shareholders suggesting that the company act decisively to curb deforestation. And so in addition to conducting pro-forma votes on new board members and executive compensation, Bunge shareholders will also hold a referendum on global sustainability.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This proposal asks for the company to “set quantitative, time-bound goals for reducing its supply chain impacts on deforestation and related human rights, and report annually against key performance indicators and metrics that demonstrate progress against these goals.” It suggests that, by failing to adequately account for the problem of deforestation, Bunge is putting its stock value at risk. Bunge’s board recommends that shareholders vote no.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Usually, shareholder activism doesn’t overlap with environmental activism. Usually, activist shareholders launch campaigns when they think a <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/01/01/374332473/why-cutting-a-ceo-s-pay-can-be-very-difficult" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">CEO is skimming off too much money for his own compensation</a>, or when they think the corporation <a href="http://www.wsj.com/video/duponts-board-battles-activist-investor/CF04F56D-6717-45DA-A30E-E7D9D53FA308.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">would be more successful if it was split in two</a>. But environmental activists have also tried to influence corporations by participating in financial governance. In the early days, activists would just buy a couple shares to gain entrance to a shareholder meeting and urge the company to change from the inside. This tactic didn’t accomplish much: It was clear to everyone involved that the activists were focused on something other than shareholder value, so most other investors didn’t listen.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The activists wanted to stop companies from despoiling nature. The shareholders wanted the company to make money. If capitalism and environmentalism were irreconcilable, the whole story would have simply stopped there. But activists found they could often demonstrate that environmental destruction would, in the long term, undermine profitability. They stopped making moral arguments and started making financial arguments. When they did that, some shareholders started paying attention — especially long-term shareholders. If a business is just looking at the next three months, it makes rational sense for it adopt a smash-and-grab approach. But when a business is focused on the next 20 to 100 years, it has to take care of the place where it does business.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it turned out that were investors who wanted companies to stop chasing quarterly profits and instead provide the best return on investment over the long run. These investors frequently had power because they were managing massive pension funds. “There are a lot of large asset owners looking at long-term risks instead of just looking at quarter by quarter profits,” said Lucia von Reusner, a shareholder advocate for <a href="http://greencentury.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">Green Century Funds</a>, the firm that made the shareholder proposal for Bunge to act more aggressively on deforestation.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inquiries from shareholders about environmental risks helped spur Kellogg’s, ConAgra, Smuckers, Safeway, General Mills, and Target to set deforestation policies. Early this year, Green Century began working with Archer Daniels Midland, and that got the attention of the New York State comptroller’s office, which manages the third largest public pension fund in the nation. <a href="https://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/mar15/033115.htm" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">The New York State Common Retirement Fund</a> and Green Century filed a shareholder proposal with ADM. But, to the surprise of many (including, I hear, many at <del style="box-sizing: border-box;">ADM</del> Bunge), the company cut off any potential shareholder action at the pass <a href="http://grist.org/food/agribusiness-giant-tells-suppliers-to-stop-cutting-down-forests/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">by setting what is perhaps the most sweeping deforestation commitment on record</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bunge has responded in a different way. Its board <a href="http://www.bunge.com/2015proxy.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">said that it was already working on deforestation</a>: “The Board believes that the Company’s existing and planned efforts provide a more focused and effective path forward than that outlined in the proposal,” it wrote in a proxy statement. Bunge already has no-deforestation policies for palm oil, and for soy in the Brazilian Amazon. But what about soy outside the Brazilian Amazon? And what about every other crop besides palm oil and soy?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an email response to my questions, Stewart Lindsay, Bunge’s director of global corporate affairs, wrote:</font></p><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem; padding: 0.5625rem 1.25rem 0px 1.1875rem; border-left: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); line-height: 1.6; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We believe in the principle that deforestation should be reduced and ultimately eliminated from agricultural supply chains. Adopting a policy that goes beyond our commitment to zero deforestation in the Amazon and our zero deforestation palm oil policy is really a question of the how and when of implementation. These are challenging issues, but we’re tackling them actively and at the highest levels of the company, so stay tuned. In the meantime, we’re working to map our palm supply chain, with the help of third parties, so we can establish a realistic timeline for 100% implementation of our policy. We hope to have a clear picture on this soon.</font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lindsay is saying, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">look, </em><em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">we’re on board, we just need time to find a realistic path.</em>There is a real danger that these commitments will fall apart if companies don’t fully understand the difficulty in making good on their pledges. It’s important that companies make commitments that they can actually achieve. But this shouldn’t stop them from setting benchmarks. To get anything done in a large organization, you need to set a goal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Most companies set policy first, then devote resources to it,” von Reusner said. These things take money, along with teams of employees working full time. Companies are a lot more likely to devote real resources to sustainability after their leaders set a goal and a deadline.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the <a title="48 hours that changed the future of rainforests" href="http://grist.org/food/48-hours-that-changed-the-future-of-rainforests/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">last few years,</a> a slew of international agribusiness <a title="2 years ago, the bad guys pledged to go good on rainforests. How’d they do?" href="http://grist.org/business-technology/2-years-ago-the-bad-guys-pledged-to-go-good-on-rainforests-howd-they-do/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">corporations</a> <a title="Agribusiness giant tells suppliers to stop cutting down forests" href="http://grist.org/food/agribusiness-giant-tells-suppliers-to-stop-cutting-down-forests/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">have</a> <a title="Cargill promises to stop chopping down rainforests. This is huge." href="http://grist.org/food/cargill-promises-to-stop-chopping-down-rainforests-this-is-huge/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">made</a><a title="The last holdout among big palm oil businesses joins no-deforestation pledge" href="http://grist.org/food/the-last-holdout-among-big-palm-oil-producers-joins-no-deforestation-pledge/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; background: transparent;">commitments</a> that — if realized — would slam the brakes on humanity’s sprawl into wild lands. The new challenge is to ensure that companies live up to their promises.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.6; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shareholder activism is well positioned to do this because, instead of exacting concessions through battle, it’s a strategy of ongoing engagement. In this upcoming Bunge vote, for instance, Green Capital doesn’t have a partner like the New York Pension Fund pushing things forward. But von Reusner told me she has had conversations with several of Bunge’s large shareholders, and they are interested in seeing the company move forward quickly to stop deforestation. Regardless of which way the vote goes on May 20, if the sustainability push isn’t progressing as planned, the shareholders will be there to ask why.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="line-height: 23.0399990081787px;"><a href="http://grist.org/food/can-these-shareholders-curb-deforestation/">http://grist.org/food/can-these-shareholders-curb-deforestation/</a></span></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The rainforests that endangered orangutans call home are quickly disappearing, and McDonald's may be to blame.</span><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of the leading drivers of tropical deforestation is palm oil. </span><span style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the current rate of deforestation, the Sumatran rainforest will disappear within twenty years</span><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, taking the 7,000 remaining Sumatran orangutans with it. As tropical forests are clear-cut to make way for palm oil plantations, the habitat available for endangered orangutans shrinks.</span><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As a leader in the fast food industry, </span><span style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">McDonald's is one of the top ten largest users of palm oil in the world.</span><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> While palm oil can be produced in ways that protect orangutans and the rainforest, McDonald's has continued to use palm oil that could be wreaking havoc on our environment and orangutans' homes. </span><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a rel="nofollow" title="Take action!" target="blank" href="http://action.sierraclub.org/site/R?i=fmMN018Wp4AmCPmpkH8VMg" style="line-height: 1.2em; outline: none;">Send a letter now to Michele Banik-Rake, McDonald's Director of Sustainability, telling her to commit to sourcing palm oil that doesn't contribute to deforestation and loss of orangutan habitat.</a></span><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Just thirty years ago Sumatra and Borneo, the homes of the only two populations of orangutans, were filled with rainforests and wildlife. Now more than half of these great forests have been felled, and plans are already in place to convert 70% of what remains into plantations. </span><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><br style="line-height: 17.6px; outline: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><span style="line-height: 17.6px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">McDonald's palm oil policy commits the mega-corporation to 100% Verified as Supporting Sustainable Production palm oil by 2020. That sounds good, right? However, the use of so-called "sustainable" oil does not ensure that orangutans or their tropical forest homes are protected. </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">6. Cargill Promises to Stop Contributing to Deforestation</strong></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Probably the most concrete progress to come out of the September UN Climate Summit was the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/23/un-climate-summit-pledge-forests-new-york-declaration" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">New York Declaration on Forests</a>, a pledge by multinational companies such as Asia Pulp and Paper and Unilever to cut worldwide deforestation in half by 2020 and to eliminate it completely by 2030. One of the signatories was Cargill, the privately held agri-business giant. As CEO Dave MacLennan said at the UN: “We understand that this sort of commitment cannot be limited to just select commodities or supply chains. That’s why Cargill will take practical measures to protect forests across our agricultural supply chains around the world.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a word, this is HUGE. From the pantanal of Brazil—where forests are razed for soy plantations and cattle ranches—to the ancient peat forests of Borneo—where trees are cut down to make plant massive palm monocrops—agriculture is the biggest driver of deforestation worldwide. We are humans are, quite literally, eating up wild nature.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 25.2px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, it’s one thing to make a pledge; it’s another thing to keep it. Environmental groups and other public interest watchdogs will have to stay on top of national governments and mega-corporations to ensure they keep their promises. Here’s hoping they do.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><h1 class="title" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; letter-spacing: -1px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Canada Leads the World in Forest Decline, Study Says</font></h1><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div id="node-34383" class="node node-type-breaking_news clear-block" style="padding-bottom: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="meta" style="padding-bottom: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; background-image: url(" http="http" insideclimatenews.org="insideclimatenews.org" sites="sites" all="all" themes="themes" solve="solve" images="images" dot-bottom.png="dot-bottom.png" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x"><div id="authoredBy" style="width: 343.969px; float: left;"><div style="width: 185.203px; float: right; text-align: right;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sep 5, 2014</font></div><div style="clear: both;"><div class="pagecount"><div class="content"><div class="field field-type-text field-field-news-source"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(PostMedia News)</font></div></div></div><div class="field field-type-text field-field-news-body"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd"><p style="line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world's virgin forests are being lost at an increasing rate and the largest portion of the degradation is in Canada, according to a new report.</font></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No longer is Brazil the main villain in the struggle to stop forest destruction.</font></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Canada is the number one in the world for the total area of the loss of intact forest landscapes since 2000," Peter Lee, of Forest Watch Canada, said in an interview.</font></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He said the main drivers are fires, logging and energy and industrial development.</font></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There is no political will at federal or provincial levels for conserving primary forests," he said. "Most logging done in Canada is still to this day done in virgin forests."</font></p></div></div></div><div class="field field-type-link field-field-news-source-url"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item odd" style="width: 529.1875px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: right;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/world/Canada+leads+world+forest+decline+report+says/10174609/story.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none;">Read original story</a></font></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style=""><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/covering-ground/20140513/new-amazon-forest-law-will-it-stick">http://insideclimatenews.org/covering-ground/20140513/new-amazon-forest-law-will-it-stick</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same could be said for Brazil's vaunted "Codigo Florestal," or Forest Code. Enacted in 1965, this is the law that limited the amount of forest that could be cleared in any given area—up to 20 percent of the total area for large properties in the Amazon, more for smaller properties and in other regions. It also prescribed how much forest must be retained along riverbanks and set standards that protect slopes. From an ecological perspective, it was hard to beat.</font></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the Forest Code, like the carefully planned architecture of Brasilia, has been utterly overwhelmed by reality.</font></p><p style="line-height: 1.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There's a saying here that some laws stick, some don't. The old Forest Code simply didn't stick. Enforcing the regulations on the poor and generally lawless frontier was impossible. For land barons clearing massive tracts for cattle or smallholders cutting some trees to make by, protecting forests seemed like a luxury. new 2012 law....</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> =</font></p></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 17.0240001678467px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A contract signed in Jakarta on Tuesday by the owners of Asia Pulp and Paper, which is based in Indonesia, has received the qualified endorsement of its tormentor, Greenpeace after it agreed to log solely plantation timber.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 17.0240001678467px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The man who brokered the deal, Australian Scott Poynton, from the Forest Trust, said this ‘‘could be a real turning point in the fight against deforestation’’.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 17.0240001678467px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘‘APP has got such a complex political, environmental and economic context, if they can do it, there’s no excuse for any other company to have deforestation in their supply chain,’’ he said.</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 17.0240001678467px;">
Read more: <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/a-turning-point-for-deforestation-20130205-2dwps.html#ixzz31hvmz8ju" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px none; font-weight: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">http://www.smh.com.au/environment/a-turning-point-for-deforestation-20130205-2dwps.html#ixzz31hvmz8ju</a></span></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div>
<p style="outline-style: none; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 18px; margin: 12px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 6px; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bruce Wrobel, the chief executive of Herakles Farms, claims his company’s efforts to flatten a chunk of Cameroon’s dense rainforest to develop a palm oil plantation are borne of a desire to address a "dire humanitarian need".</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet this week Herakles has had to suspend its activities in Cameroon following a forestry ministry order for the company to halt clearing work at their Talangaye nursery in the southwest region of the country.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/answer-from-herakles-farms-cameroon/blog/44009/" target="_blank" style="outline-style: none; text-decoration: underline; margin: 0px;">Greenpeace has long been among those calling out Wrobel and his company over their failure to tell the real truth over their project.</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The suspension of work is merely the latest evidence that the proposed plantation is a mess, despite the company’s ever-present PR machine....</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/herakles-cameroon-palm-oil-project-starts-to-/blog/45259/">http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/herakles-cameroon-palm-oil-project-starts-to-/blog/45259/</a></font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see heraklex exposed oakland inst</font></p>
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</i></font><div class="field-item even"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><i><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-06-05T00:00:00+00:00">Wednesday, June 5, 2013</span></i></font></div>
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<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Jettie Word</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style=" line-height: 1.538em;">Bruce Wrobel, the CEO of Herakles Farms and founder of the nonprofit organization All for Africa, is a self-proclaimed “environmentalist and activist for the poor.”[1] Upon first glance, his initiatives in Africa seem to support these claims--but scratch the surface and the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. A new report by the Oakland Institute and Greenpeace,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/herakles-exposed" style="">Herakles Exposed</a>, reveals the company’s<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/herakles-farms-documentation" style="">internal documents</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that highlight the discrepancy between the image Bruce Wrobel hopes to cultivate and his company’s actual practices. As shown in the report, Herakles Farms not only sidesteps sustainable practices, but also appears to be caught in an unstable financial situation in spite of its attempts to bypass responsible social and ecological practices.</span></font></p>
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<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Herakles Farms says it is “committed to addressing the complex issues of food s...</font></p>
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<p class="pageTitle" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 20px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aug 2013</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bruce Wrobel is fired from SITHE GLOBAL (SG). It is not clear from the release whether his sacking is connected to his management style and malpractices in the now famous Herakles Debacle in Cameroon. No mention is made in the release about SG activities in Cameroon.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The agro-industrial component of SG is known as Herakles Farms alias Sithe Global - Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SG-SOC).</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even though the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) has lifted its ban on the company in Cameroon, HF is witnessing serious financial problems as financial institutions are not so ready to back such a liability.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Order of the Sith Lords</b>, also known as<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Bane's Sith Order</b>, the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Banite Sith</b>, or simply<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Sith</b>, was an ancient<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratocracy" title="Kratocracy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">kratocratic organization</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and primary recurring<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antagonist" title="Antagonist" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">antagonists</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars" title="Star Wars" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Star Wars</a></i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_universe" title="Fictional universe" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">universe</a>. Its members were dedicated to Sith philosophy and to mastering the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_side(Star_Wars)" title="Dark side (Star Wars)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">dark side</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force(Star_Wars)" title="Force (Star Wars)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Force</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-sw-en_1-0" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sith#cite_note-sw-en-1" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a></sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The Sith members, known as<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Sith Lords</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>or<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Dark Lords of the Sith</b>, traditionally use the title<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>Darth</b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>before their Sith name. The Sith are the archenemies of the quasi-religious<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi" title="Jedi" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Jedi</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and, like them, their main weapon is the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightsaber" title="Lightsaber" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">lightsaber</a>. By the events of both trilogies, there exist only two at a time: a master and an apprentice, and are the main antagonists in the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Star Wars</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>film series as well as in many other<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Expanded_Universe" title="Star Wars Expanded Universe" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Expanded Universe</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>works.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first use of the word "Sith" was in the novelization of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:Episode_IV-A_New_Hope" title="Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope</a></i>, as a title for<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader" title="Darth Vader" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Darth Vader</a>, the "Dark Lord of the Sith". The Sith were not formally introduced or mentioned on-screen until the release of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:Episode_I-The_Phantom_Menace" title="Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace</a></i>, in 1999, though they had been named in some Expanded Universe works before that time.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Kratocracy</b>, (from the Greek κρατερός<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>krateros</i>, meaning "strong"), is according to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pepperell_Montague" title="William Pepperell Montague" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Montague</a>,<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference" style=" line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratocracy#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a></sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>government by those who are strong enough to seize power through force or cunning.</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The term was also used by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kropotkin" title="Kropotkin" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Kropotkin</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution" title="Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution</a></i>, but is now rarely seen.</font></p>
<h1 class="pageTitle" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 20px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></h1>
<h1 class="pageTitle" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 20px; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; line-height: 28px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Journalist Exposes How Private Investigation Firm Hired by Chevron Tried to Recruit Her as a Spy to Undermine $27B Suit in Ecuadorian Amazon</font></h1>
<div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/journalist_exposes_how_private_investigation_firm">http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/16/journalist_exposes_how_private_investigation_firm</a></font></div>
<div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="line-height: 21px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">An exposé in </span><i style="line-height: 21px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Atlantic</i><span style="line-height: 21px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> magazine reveals how one of the world’s largest private investigation firms, Kroll, hired by oil giant Chevron, tried to recruit an American journalist to undermine a massive $27 billion lawsuit against Chevron brought by the residents of the Ecuadorian Amazon. We speak with the journalist, Mary Cuddehe, and with Han Shan, the coordinator for Amazon Watch’s Clean Up Ecuador campaign. [includes rush transcript]</span></font></div>
<p style=""><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman">73
Mary Cuddehe,
“A Spy
in
the
Jungle.”
The
Atlantic,
August
2,
2010.</font></p>
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