Despite a nationwide effort to monitor and stop emissions, dangerous concentrations of the cancer-causing chemical benzene are still being detected in the air and near ground level between oil refineries and neighboring communities in the Gulf South and Midwest. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General, the federal watchdog for the EPA, released an alarming report…
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A U.S. military firefighter for 32 years, Kurt Rhodes trained and performed his duties with aqueous film forming foam, or AFFF — a highly effective fire suppressant that he never knew contained PFAS chemicals, now known to be harmful to human health. New federal research links testicular cancer in U.S. service members to the “forever chemicals,” adding to a growing body of evidence of the dangers…
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In part one of this three-part series, the Canary explored Taylor Wimpey’s plan to tear down over 40 protected trees. Crucially, the article identified Wimpey’s ecological consultant – Middlemarch – pushing to undermine the trees’ protected designation. In part two, we listed exactly why Taylor Wimpey cannot be trusted to work in nature’s interests.
For part three, the Canary found that the latest environment-wrecking whims of the housing developer have thrown up something notable – how leading conservation charity the Wildlife Trust is entangled with both Middlemarch and Taylor Wimpey itself.
Ecological consultant owned by the Wildlife Trusts
First up, Warwickshire Wildlife Trust (WKWT) – one of 46 federated members of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) – is Middlemarch’s ultimate owner.
If it seems a bit off-base for a consultancy to be owned by a leading conservation charity, it’s actually not. In fact, the Wildlife Trusts umbrella organisation actually operates the ‘Biodiversity Benchmark’ that Middlemarch developed in collaboration with multiple notable environment-wrecking corporations. The Wildlife Trusts boasted that it:
is the only standard that certifies management of your business landholdings for wildlife.
Moreover, the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts host a list of other big-name business partners. These include, for example: Aviva, Siemens, M&S, and (surprise, surprise) Severn Trent. The RSWT opined on how it’s proud to work with businesses, which can:
play a valued role in addressing the climate and nature crises across the UK
However, these sponsorships and partnerships could also provide environment-wrecking companies a convenient greenwashing screen to clean up their public image. The trusts’ working relationship with Taylor Wimpey is a case in point – showing that these connections might be a little too close for environmental and climate comfort.
Agreement with Wimpey
In the RSWT’s 2015 to 2016 annual accounts, the non-profit umbrella announced it had signed an agreement with Taylor Wimpey to:
to facilitate relationships between their local teams and local Wildlife Trusts to secure gains for wildlife around their new developments, from the planning process to community engagement.
So why exactly would the Wildlife Trusts sign an agreement to work with a notable environmental vandal? In short: to minimise the damage. Like other leading UK conservation groups, it labours under the idea that organisations have to work with ecologically harmful companies.
This is a misguided position which will bite conservation non-profits – and as a result, nature itself – in the arse. For example, working with housing developers like Taylor Wimpey to make miniscule wildlife-friendly adjustments to their projects has not stopped them lobbying the government to water down vital environmental regulations.
Wildlife Trusts weigh in
The Canary reached out to the Wildlife Trusts for comment. First, we asked if they recognised that their endorsement of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) principles – as used by Taylor Wimpey to justify chopping down over 40 protected trees – could open the door to environmental degradation by big polluters.
In response, a representative from Warwickshire Wildlife Trust (WKWT) stated that they believe:
there should be no conflict between development and achieving nature’s recovery. We work with developers who want to build and deliver to the highest sustainable standards in a way that protects and enhances nature. We provide advice on how this can be achieved. We support Biodiversity Net Gain as a mechanism for ensuring that development can demonstrably leave nature in a better state than it found it.
The Trust also argued against the suggestion that its ownership of Middlemarch Environmental was a conflict of interest. It stated that:
Middlemarch operates independently and its purpose is to ensure development activities are undertaken lawfully and protect and enhance our natural environment. Being a part of this conversation with organisations is key in ensuring the environment is protected. Middlemarch also adheres to strict ethical and environmental standards and assists Warwickshire Wildlife Trust in bringing wildlife back to the area and helping people to take positive action for nature.
Regarding its relationship to big businesses, the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust spokesperson said that:
Our view is that in order to tackle the climate and nature emergency we need to reach every stakeholder within society. Corporates and businesses are a key stakeholder with huge potential to make positive change, as well as being a conduit to millions of individuals who need to take action for nature and wildlife.
More specifically, the Trust representative argued that its corporate partnerships allow them to:
work to ensure compliance with legislation, promote best practice and also encourage corporates and business to go further than they are obliged to, with the aim of advancing conservation and environmental efforts.
Collaborating in environmental destruction
Guardian columnist George Monbiot has previously laid into leading conservation organisations for posturing to the profiteering whims of powerful businesses. Specifically, he named and shamed the RSPB, the Woodland Trust, and two local Wildlife Trusts. These groups collaborated on a rebranding exercise for a housing mega-project between Oxford and Cambridge.
Monbiot detailed how the non-profits had created promotional material for the government’s Oxford-Cambridge Arc. The project offers developers a house-building bonanza for the construction of over 2m new properties.
This is the crux of the matter: like the Wildlife Trusts, these national nature groups pander to the powers-that-be to instate minute mitigations. Yet in reality, they are collaborators in ecological destruction. When all is said and done, the proximity of the UK’s most prominent protectors of nature to the very businesses carrying out its destruction is a scandal.
The latest government backpedalling on EU river protections should be a firm warning. Conservation charities need to wake up, wise up, then rise up against the corporate harm they have enabled for too long.
Feature image via Albert Bridge/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910 by 1000, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
This post was originally published on Canary.
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In part one of this three-part series, the Canary explored how ecological consultant Middlemarch aided Taylor Wimpey in its application for a housing development in Southend-on-Sea. In particular, the firm helped the developer secure planning permission to destroy over 40 protected trees. The Canary now turns its attention to Taylor Wimpey itself – a company which is no stranger to environmental destruction.
There’s no shortage of reports on Taylor Wimpey ransacking green spaces and wildlife sites. For example, in Norfolk the firm cut down trees and hedgerows outside its planning permits. Similarly, in Hertfordshire, Wimpey damaged protected trees during early construction works.
What’s more, Greenpeace’s investigative unit, Unearthed, previously exposed the company’s anti-environmental lobbying. It found that the corporation had pushed the government in 2021 to weaken climate targets for new builds.
Naturally, the developer has also racked up a record of environmental safety violations. In 2021, the Environment Agency fined the company for unpermitted sewage discharge. Following this, in May 2023, the Welsh environment regulator fined Wimpey nearly half a million pounds for a serious river pollution incident.
Net gain for nature?
Where housing is concerned, the Wildlife Trusts have produced a briefing that sets out principles for developers to build:
homes in a way that avoids and minimises biodiversity loss and damage.
Crucially, the document advises developers to mitigate biodiversity loss where it is otherwise “unavoidable”.
For Southend-on-Sea, as local resident and campaigner Tim Fransen sardonically noted, this means “a cheap ‘wildlife area’” including:
‘man-made’ beehives, excavated ground holes (hibernacula), and stacks of logs with holes drilled in them (bug hotels) – presumably fashioned from the very trees slated for destruction
Moreover, Taylor Wimpey is proposing that the site in Shoeburyness will facilitate a net gain for biodiversity. As the Canary’s Tracy Keeling has previously explained, biodiversity net gain (BNG):
is the government’s controversial metric to facilitate continued development in nature-rich areas during the extinction crisis. It enables developers to secure a green light to destroy existing wildlife habitat. They can do so as long as their plans include promises to replace that biodiversity elsewhere and, in many cases, increase it overall.
In other words, this misleading metric will allow Taylor Wimpey to tear down mature protected trees, so long as it offsets the damage and increases biodiversity on the whole. At the site, Wimpey will cut down over 60 trees across the local greenspace. To address the biodiversity loss, it proposes to plant 105 new trees, mostly in private gardens.
Opening the door to nature degradation
This might sound like a win for nature, but in reality, the developer will replace well-established trees with tiny saplings in plastic tree-guards. As residents have pointed out, the new spruces will also take decades to reach maturity. Worse still, mortality rates for newly planted trees in urban areas are notoriously high. The most recent survey of street tree mortality suggested that:
30% of newly-planted street trees die within the first years of planting… with rates often reaching as high as 50%
What’s more, the dying, neglected trees at a separate Wimpey development in Wales should serve as a cautionary tale. In short, profit-driven housing developers simply cannot be trusted with nature. At the end of the day, they’ll readily sanction its destruction if it boosts the bottom line.
In part three, the Canary will talk about how, just as the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust is bound up in Middlemarch, the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts umbrella organisation is worryingly close to Taylor Wimpey itself.
Feature image via sludgegulper/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910 by 1000, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
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As housing developers watch their stocks rise due to plans to scrap river pollution rules, one community in Southend-on-Sea are finding out first hand how these profiteering companies run roughshod over nature. Moreover, the behaviour of major housing developer Taylor Wimpey’s ecological consultant has raised serious questions about the tight relationship between environmental experts and those destroying the natural world.
On a beloved patch of local greenspace in Shoeburyness, Southend-on-Sea, over 40 protected trees line a grassy embankment. Locals have described how, on snowy days in winter, children will go sledding down the bank. In the summer, they’ll play beneath the “dappled and shady” canopy, awash with wildflowers.
However, they won’t be around for much longer. In July, the local council granted mega-developer Taylor Wimpey planning permission to level the bank, and the trees along with it. In their place, Wimpey will build a block of flats as part of a new housing development.
This is part one in a three-part series on Taylor Wimpey’s housing project in Southend-on-Sea. This section will explore the actors involved in the destruction of a valued community green space. Part two will delve into Taylor Wimpey’s chequered environmental record. Then, in part three, the Canary will look into the connection between Wimpey and a leading UK conservation charity.
Independent consultants?
41 protected mature hawthorn and maple trees have become the focal point of a determined campaign against the developer. Taylor Wimpey will also tear down three further protected trees, alongside an additional 18 trees without protections.
When Wimpey first announced its plans for the site, residents launched efforts to secure protection for the trees and green space. Locals applied for Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) for the embankment boughs. TPOs would afford the trees extra consideration in the decision over the development, though notably their preservation would still not be a given.
In July 2022, the council confirmed the TPO. Of course, Taylor Wimpey disputed the designation. Its ecological consultant – Coventry-based Middlemarch Environmental – argued that one set of trees were in fact, a hedgerow. As a hedgerow, these trees would not qualify for a TPO.
However, the council’s arboricultural officer begged to differ. It refuted the ecological consultant’s assessment, concluding that:
This line of trees has individual structure and they meet or exceed the size requirements which would be covered by conservation area protection
In spite of the TPO, Middlemarch categorised the trees on the embankment as a hedgerow in its final impact assessment.
Given these actions, it’s not surprising that local residents have called into question the integrity of Wimpey’s ‘independent’ consultants. Tim Fransen has spearheaded the campaign against the development. He suggested to the Canary that the advice from the ecological consultant has been “biased and flawed”.
Greenlighting environmental destruction
Middlemarch consultancy claims to provide “innovative solutions” that:
help businesses to deliver high quality outcomes that protect nature and enhance biodiversity
Naturally then, it boasts a list of morally dubious and environmentally destructive clientele. For instance, it has provided services to prolific workers’ rights violator Balfour Beatty. Meanwhile, the firm formerly provided “ecological solutions” to disgraced and collapsed government outsourcing corporation Carillion.
Better yet, Middlemarch has – without a seeming shred of self-awareness – emblazoned its landing page with water company Severn Trent’s logo. It promotes the environmental offender under the bombastic slogan “standing up for nature”. It might almost be funny if the ecocidal corporation wasn’t pumping literal shit tonnes of raw sewage into UK waterways and laying waste to fragile river ecosystems.
Moreover, in 2004, Middlemarch developed a ‘Biodiversity Benchmark’ alongside an auspicious list of climate and environment-wrecking companies. These included Severn Trent, Heathrow, and British Airways. The benchmark’s webpage proclaims that:
Landowning businesses can be a positive force for nature’s recovery and we want to recognise and celebrate those businesses which have achieved excellence.
So landowning companies like Heathrow can plan environmentally ruinous runways and remain on the list of “businesses which have achieved excellence” for wildlife. Seems legit.
Incidentally, Middlemarch is also a member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA). Purporting to be a global sustainability membership body for businesses, the Canary previously dubbed the company:
a glorified public relations firm, badged with not-for-profit status and peddling in corporate greenwashing.
Middlemarch appears to have taken a leaf from IEMA’s greenwashing playbook.
Partnering in corporate ecocide
None of this is even to mention that the consultancy has form for assisting housing developers circumvent those pesky regulatory barriers. When another local authority rejected major housing developer Danescroft’s plan to build 180 houses, Middlemarch swooped in to save the bottom line.
It boasted about its success in a case study blog:
When developers appealed against a refused development near Eastbourne, East Sussex, Middlemarch helped them demonstrate that three internationally-important habitats would be unaffected by the proposal.
Only, government advisor Natural England took issue with Middlemarch’s assessment, concluding that:
we cannot agree with the approach taken to the Shadow Habitats Assessment, nor the conclusions reached therein
In particular, it pointed out a number of significant flaws in the consultant’s screening of the impacts on nearby protected sites. Disagreeing with and ignoring the findings of government environmental experts: sound familiar?
The firm appears to make a habit of aiding and abetting and environmentally destructive companies in ransacking nature for their profiteering business activities – the beloved green space and protected trees in Shoeburyness are simply the latest victim.
In part two, the Canary will dig into housing developer Taylor Wimpey’s record of ecological harm.
Feature image via Stephen Burton/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910 by 1000, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Enbridge’s marketing materials claim heating with gas is cheapest, though electric heat pumps would save a typical homeowner over $10,000 by comparison.
Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Huron-Wendat – Environmental Defence, along with Ontario Clean Air Alliance, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and a number of impacted residents have filed a complaint to the Competition Bureau over Enbridge Gas’ deceptive marketing encouraging homeowners to connect to its “natural” gas system. The organizations assert the company is falsely claiming that gas is the most cost-effective way to heat homes. In reality, a typical customer in a gas expansion area could spend over $10,000 more if they choose to use gas instead of installing a high-efficiency electric heat pump (over the lifetime of the equipment).
“Enbridge’s dishonest marketing is duping people into signing up for its gas service, falsely claiming it’s cheaper than heating with electricity which is just not true.” said Keith Brooks, program director at Environmental Defence. “Heat pumps have come a long way in recent years and they are now the most affordable way to heat a home, and are far superior from an environmental perspective. Enbridge needs to stop lying to people and pushing its fossil gas agenda on communities.”
The deceptive marketing is targeted at customers in communities that Enbridge has recently connected to its gas pipeline network and ones it plans to connect in the near future. The misrepresentations are being made in materials sent by mail, delivered at the doorstep, and posted at community events.
The organizations also take issue with Enbridge’s deceptive use of the terms “low carbon” and “clean energy” when describing natural gas. “Natural gas”, also known as methane gas or fracked fossil gas, is a potent greenhouse gas that pollutes the environment and causes climate change when it is burned and when it escapes into the atmosphere during extraction, production, and transportation. Currently, 19 per cent of Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to heating with gas.
“I am outraged by Enbridge’s campaign filled with misleading information about the cost and environmental impact of its polluting product. Its proposed new pipeline in Selwyn Township will deliver harmful fossil gas to our residents who will be locked in to higher prices for decades. If this pipeline is built, our community will find it harder to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions we committed to in our 2016 Climate Change Action Plan,” said Guy Hanchet, a resident of Selwyn, Ontario. “We deserve better from a company that claims to be leading the transition towards a net-zero future but whose actions are locking us into a planet that will be a disaster for our grandchildren.”
The longer Enbridge is allowed to advertise these false claims, the more homeowners will be stuck heating their homes with gas instead of selecting a more affordable option like an electric heat pump. As this continues, unnecessarily high energy costs and carbon pollution can be effectively locked in for a decade or more to the detriment of consumers and the climate.
“I cannot believe Enbridge has been allowed to lie for so long about the cost of its gas compared to heat pumps. We have a heat pump installed in our home and know it saves us money,” said Lesley Hastie, a resident of Huntsville, Ontario. “I feel especially sorry for renters who have no choice but to pay more for gas heating and cooling because their landlords chose to connect to gas. It’s unfair that Enbridge’s infrastructure expansion costs are being imposed on customers, and it’s unacceptable that the municipality is left with increased greenhouse gas emissions. Enbridge should be made to stop deliberately misleading the public.”
For a long time, fossil gas was the cheapest way to heat homes. However, electric heat pumps designed for cold climates are now much cheaper for consumers. This is true both for the initial upfront equipment costs and for the annual energy costs. Upfront equipment costs often beat gas as heat pumps provide both heating and cooling in one unit and the price tag can be further reduced using federal rebate programs. Annual energy costs are also lower as heat pumps are approximately three times more efficient than gas furnaces (or five times for ground-source heat pumps, also known as geothermal).
“Heat pumps are an amazing technology that allow people to get their homes off of fossil fuels, and save money while doing so,” said Jack Gibbons, chair of Ontario Clean Air Alliance. “People need to know that if they are about to install new heating and cooling equipment, they should go with a heat pump. But Enbridge is misleading these people, and trying to lock in more Ontarians to gas. It’s shameful and should be brought to a stop.”
ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.
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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:
Carolyn Townend, Environmental Defence, media@environmentaldefence.ca
The post Environmental Groups Seek Investigation Into Enbridge Gas for False Advertising appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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In an attempt to expand its “natural” gas infrastructure across Ontario, Enbridge Gas is telling residents that gas is the cheapest way to heat their homes. It’s not.
So we’re calling them out.
Today, we filed a complaint with the Competition Bureau over Enbridge Gas’ deceptive marketing.
As of January 10, 2024, the Competition Bureau has seen merit in our complaint and launched an investigation into Enbridge Gas’ marketing campaign
The company is falsely claiming that “natural” gas, better described as fossil gas, is the most cost-effective way for people to heat their homes, when in reality electric heat pumps are a significantly cheaper option. The deceptive marketing is directed to customers in communities that Enbridge has recently connected to its gas pipeline network or is planning to connect in the near future.
Natural Gas vs Electric
For a long time, fossil gas was the cheapest way to heat buildings. It’s the reason why so many homes are hooked up to the “natural” gas system. But now, electric heat pumps are a much cheaper option.
Due to their high efficiency – three to five times higher than gas – annual energy costs for heat pumps are much lower. Upfront equipment costs can also be lower because heat pumps provide both heating and cooling in one unit and they qualify for a number of government rebate programs.
Despite what Enbridge’s marketing materials are saying, a typical resident recently connected to Enbridge’s fossil gas system could save over $10,000 if they install an electric heat pump (over the lifetime of the equipment) rather than connecting to fossil gas.
What’s more, switching to heat pumps would reduce a home’s carbon emissions for space heating, cooling, and water heating significantly.
But Enbridge Gas does not want you to know that.
What is “Natural” gas, really?
Don’t let the oil and gas industry’s branding of fossil fuel as “natural” gas fool you into thinking it’s clean and green. Fossil gas is a potent greenhouse gas that pollutes the air and causes climate change.
Heating our homes and businesses with fossil gas is responsible for 19 per cent of Ontario’s greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s clear that we need to transition to electric heating if we are to have a chance at meeting our emissions reductions targets.
But Enbridge is making this very difficult.
What does Enbridge Gas have at stake?
Enbridge Gas owns nearly all of the fossil gas distribution pipelines in Ontario. And it serves over 99.7% of all gas customers in the province. So it has a lot to lose, and gain:
- As a for-profit company, it has a clear profit motive to encourage Ontarians to switch to gas and stay with gas for their homes and businesses.
- It has a strong financial interest in gaining and keeping customers because they are the ones that pay for its existing and new pipelines. Those gas distribution charges on your monthly bill? They pay for Enbridge pipelines!
- A big threat to Enbridge’s expansion plans is that customers using oil heating decide to switch to electric heat pumps instead of gas.
No wonder Enbridge is advertising so aggressively.
Enbridge Gas’ false advertising
Enbridge marketing materials state that customers will save money by switching to gas. Their advertising says “When compared to using electricity, propane or oil, switching to natural gas could save you up to 54%* per year on home and water heating costs.” But this is blatantly false. Switching to an electric heat pump would be significantly less expensive.
Enbridge’s marketing materials also use deceptive wording about the impact of fossil gas, describing it as “low carbon” and “clean energy.” They leave the general impression that switching to gas is environmentally conscious, which is not true. Switching from propane or oil to gas may result in lower carbon emissions. But switching from electricity to gas will result in higher carbon emissions. And heating with heat pumps results in the lowest carbon emissions.
What needs to happen
The Competition Bureau needs to stop Enbridge from its false advertising.
With each week that passes, more customers sign up to convert their heating to gas instead of purchasing a high-efficiency electric heat pump. Each time this happens, unnecessarily high energy costs and carbon pollution are effectively locked in for a decade or more to the detriment of consumers and the climate.
You can add your voice by sharing your anger on twitter.
And if you’re curious about how to make the switch to an electric heat pump, check out our website for more information on the various Federal rebates, loans, and programs that can help you.
For now, let’s make sure Enbridge is forced to stop lying to people.
The post Enbridge Gas Caught Lying About its Home Heating Costs and Impacts appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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Kenya is hosting the Africa Climate Summit between the 4 and 6 September in Nairobi. In advance of the summit, experts and activists decried the suite of “false solutions” overrunning the agenda.
On 23 August, Environmental Rights Action (ERA) and Friends of the Earth Africa (FoEA) organised a session in the lead up to the event. During the seminar, titled ‘How Just is the Transition in Africa?’ speakers from multiple African nations raised their concerns. In particular, participants called out solutions that financialised climate action to line the pockets of corporate profiteers.
As Voice of Nigeria reported, FoEA international climate justice advocate Tyler Booth argued against carbon markets, which she branded:
dangerous distractions and do not offer a financial solution that will reach grassroots communities already feeling the impacts.
Of course, the Global North interests participating at the summit are banking on these very solutions. In part one, the Canary explored the some of the private sector powerhouses and fronts co-opting the summit. Part two will now investigate the link between oil and gas interests and complicit non-profits shaping the market-based answers to the climate emergency.
Global North oil and gas interests shaped the summit
On August 9, a broad coalition of African non-profit organisations issued a letter to Kenya’s president, William Ruto. The alliance called on Ruto to drop Global North interests from the climate summit.
In particular, the groups railed against US oil and gas consultancy McKinsey & Company’s central role in the summit. Notably, the company was a prominent technical partner, involved in planning for the climate conference.
The New York Times has previously highlighted that McKinsey & Company has advised at least 43 of the world’s 100 biggest corporate polluters.
Owing to intense scrutiny and pressure from the groups, McKinsey were reportedly forced to withdraw as partners. The company no longer sits on the summit website’s list. However, the non-profit coalition that critiqued how the Global North had “hijacked” the summit, argued that this wasn’t enough, since McKinsey had:
already shaped the agenda and narrative of the Summit and that their removal at this stage does not affect the structure and outcome of the Summit that they have heavily influenced
As African Arguments has detailed, McKinsey was a core architect of the summit’s theme on “climate finance & unlocking investment flows”. It noted that the event’s draft planning document designed this as a theme where:
carbon markets will be flaunted as a tool to leverage private finance
As the Canary has consistently documented, the carbon market is a convenient ruse for big polluters to claim action on tackling the climate crisis. In reality, emissions savings via offsets are frequently bogus. What’s more, multiple communities have reported the detrimental impacts the projects have subjected them to.
In effect, a consultancy that has maximised the profits of its climate criminal clientele is, unsurprisingly, manufacturing new means to maintain the flow of fossil fuel riches.
Conservation orgs represent the financial sector
However, McKinsey wasn’t the only tell-tale mascot for market-based solutions at the event. It’s almost a given that the big polluters’ favoured non-profit partners in carbon market crime also grace the attendee list.
Notable mention goes to conservation mega-houses The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
New research by online news outlet Africa Arguments has revealed the close connections between these conservation non-profits and the financial sector. The analysis found that over half of the trustees that sit on the boards of four of the largest conservation organisations hail from the finance industry.
CEOs and directors of finance mega-firms such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Blackstone Group sit the boards of The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Conservation International (CI), the World Wildlife Fund-US (WWF-US), and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
Of course, the corporate capture of Western conservation non-profits is not new. For example, in 2012, author Wilfried Huisman laid bare the financial connections between WWF International and multi-nationals such as Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Cargill, HSBC, BP, and Shell. The long-standing relationship between these colonial conservation organisations and global corporate giants has been comprehensively documented.
Non-profit partners in crime at the climate summit
However, as African Arguments remarked:
the ascendancy of the finance world is newer and comes at a crucial juncture for action on the climate and biodiversity crises.
Crucially, the outlet noted that:
the domination of financiers on the boards of the big conservation NGOs seems to have coincided with a rising emphasis on market-based solutions to climate change and the exponential growth of carbon markets.
In other words, the convergence between the finance sector and the conservation non-profits that are setting the agenda on climate action exposes the capitalist motivations at the heart of key ‘solutions’. None perhaps epitomise this more than the carbon offsetting market. Of course, both the WWF and TNC are advocates for this market-based climate solution.
It’s also fitting, then, that the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity (VCMI) initiative is a partner to the African climate event. Another private sector non-profit lapdog, the VCMI describes its remit as enabling:
high-integrity voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) that deliver real and additional benefits to the atmosphere, help protect nature, and accelerate the transition to ambitious, economy-wide climate policies and regulation.
Colonial climate solutions
You only have to look at the conservation majors’ records to know that their climate vision will screw over communities across the continent. TNC and WWF have championed a model of conservation in Africa that has maintained and renewed systems of colonial power and land dispossession. As the Canary previously identified, the WWF has financed and supported the implementation of protected areas in the Congo Basin. There, in 2016 the Rainforest Foundation UK found that the protected sites had resulted in:
the partial or full displacement of indigenous and local land-based communities
In short, so long as Global North voices dominate the conversation on climate, neo-colonial and capitalist solutions will flourish. As ever, its the Global South communities who will continue to lose out, while big polluters cash in on a crisis of their own design.
Feature image via African Union/Youtube screengrab.
This post was originally published on Canary.
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The ultrawealthy family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is looking to reopen a shuttered industrial plant that for decades emitted chemicals that have harmed historically Black neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama. But the family faces a series of new regulatory and financial hurdles — including a push by local regulators to throw the governor’s son in jail over thousands of dollars in unpaid…
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A new study found trace amounts of nuclear waste in sea turtles in the Marshall Islands and five locations in the continental United States, underscoring the enduring legacy of nuclear testing and weapons development. The analysis, published in the journal PNAS Nexus, looked at turtle and tortoise shells at locations tied to nuclear testing including Southwestern Utah, the Oak Ridge Reservation in…
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On 29 August, the Tory government tabled an amendment in the House of Lords that would strip back EU-era water pollution restrictions. Housing secretary Michael Gove proposed the change, stressing its necessity in order to boost housebuilding.
However, given that private water companies are already heavily polluting our waterways, such proposals show a willful disregard for our embattled environment. Naturally, the move angered green campaigners.
Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, asked:
Who would look at our sickly, sewage-infested rivers and conclude that what they need is weaker pollution rules? No one, and that should include our government.
What’s more, the taxpayer is – of course – set to foot the bill for the environmental damage.
Nutrient neutrality
The ‘nutrient neutrality’ rules bar new developments from adding harmful nutrients to nearby waters. Under these laws, developers have to prove that their housing wouldn’t release nitrates or phosphates – often from sewage – into our rivers. The areas protected include Somerset, Norfolk, Teesside, Kent, Wiltshire, and the Solent.
Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, stated that:
The government has made repeated pledges that they won’t weaken environmental standards and committed just eight months ago to halve nutrient pollution by the end of the decade…
This is another broken promise and makes clear that the prime minister would rather look after the interests of developers than the environment – money talks.
A government spokesperson said:
Over 100,000 homes held up due to defective EU laws will be unblocked between now and 2030, delivering an estimated £18 billion boost to the economy.
They added that nutrients entering rivers “are a real problem”, but the contribution made by new homes is “very small”.
Private profit, public problem
However, that “very small” contribution is belied by the cost to fix it. The UK will have to double investment in its nutrient mitigation scheme to £280 million “to offset the very small amount of additional nutrient discharge” from the new homes.
Government ministers have already conceded that this cost would fall at the public’s feet. As such, the Tories are essentially removing regulations which protect the environment, enriching private companies and leaving the taxpayer to pick up the pieces.
If all of this sounds a little familiar, it should. Back in April, environment secretary Thérèse Coffey likewise announced that public money would also be used to fix the sewage-dumping mess caused by privatised water companies.
The proposed changes to housing regulations come at a time of of increasing demand for houses but declining supply. The Home Builders Federation claimed earlier this year that housebuilding in the UK could fall to its lowest level since World War II. However, simply building new houses is far from a holistic solution.
Housing in crisis
Campaign group Action on Empty Homes reported that, earlier this year, over a million UK homes were standing empty. This figure included the 250,000 buildings that the government has declared empty for over 6 months.
However, it also factored in 200,000 homes that the government didn’t count due to council tax exemptions. Add in 257,000 ‘furnished empty’ second homes, and 70,000 ‘second homes paying business rates as short-term lets, and the empties quickly pile up.
The choice to enrich house-building firms – and the landlords who buy from them – also has an environmental cost in itself. As the Big Issue reported:
building a new home has a carbon footprint of 80 tonnes of CO2 – equivalent to building five brand-new cars. But refurbishing an old house carried much less of a carbon footprint, equating to just eight tonnes in comparison.
Building new homes is already a dicey prospect for the environment, even without removing pollution safeguards. The new proposals will create just 100,000 new homes, whilst endangering our waterways in the process. Considering that fact in the light of the hundreds of thousands of UK homes just standing empty quickly exposes the bogus nature of the government’s stated reasoning.
However, the push to build new houses at ever-greater costs to the environment is perfectly in line with the motivations of a landlord class of politicians hellbent on private profit. And, as ever, the public will have to pick up the tab for the this pollution nightmare.
Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Philafrenzy, resized to 770*403, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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Young people have been leading the way in the fight against climate breakdown – and now, a United Nations committee has recognised their unique rights in the face of the climate crisis and environmental degradation.
On Monday 28 August, a key UN rights committee determined that all children are entitled to a clean and healthy environment. Crucially, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said that this means countries are obliged to combat things like pollution and the climate crisis. Its fresh guidance bolsters young people’s arguments for suing authorities over the ravages of climate breakdown.
The UN committee monitors the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. During the meeting, the panel’s 18 independent experts provided a new interpretation of the treaty, which counts nearly all the world’s countries as parties:
States must ensure a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in order to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights
Moreover, it concluded that:
Environmental degradation, including the consequences of the climate crisis, adversely affects the enjoyment of these rights.
Childrens’ voices must be brought to the table
To reach its conclusions, the panel said it had consulted with governments, civil society, and especially children. More than 16,000 children of all ages across 121 countries provided comments to the committee. In their submissions, they described the negative effects of environmental degradation and the climate crisis on their lives and communities.
17-year old Kartik, a committee advisor and child rights activist from India, said that:
Children are architects, leaders, thinkers and changemakers of today’s world. Our voices matter, and they deserve to be listened to.
Kartik argued that the new committee guidance will:
help us understand and exercise our rights in the face of the environmental and climate crisis
The 1989 convention does not explicitly spell out the rights of children to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. However, the committee argued the right was implicit. It linked these rights to a long line of guaranteed rights, including the right to life, survival, and development. The committee’s general comment stated that:
The extent and magnitude of the triple planetary crisis, comprising the climate emergency, the collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution, is an urgent and systemic threat to children’s rights globally
The committee’s findings are therefore far-reaching. In particular, the new guidance determined that the convention prohibits states from causing environmental harms that violate children’s rights.
The chair of the committee, Ann Skelton, said that:
States must ensure that children’s voices are brought to the table when big decisions are being made
In addition, she added that countries also needed to “make sure that businesses are toeing the line”.
Young people leading the way
Chair Ann Skelton said the committee had been inspired by children stepping up and:
taking on the obligation to protect the environment, for themselves, but also for future generations.
In 2019, Greta Thunberg and 15 other young climate activists also brought a case to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child itself. The 16 plaintiffs – aged between 8 and 17 – joined together from multiple nations. This included Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Marshall Islands, Nigeria, Palau, South Africa, Sweden, Tunisia, and the United States. The petitioners alleged that their member states had failed to tackle the climate crisis, and that this was a violation of their rights as children.
In 2021, the committee decided that it was unable to rule on the case. Specifically, it determined that the child plaintiffs should have brought their case to national courts first. However, it did crucially resolve that countries bear cross-border responsibility for the harmful impact of climate change.
Skelton said that the new analysis could provide a new and powerful tool for young people seeking to bring such cases against their governments:
Children themselves can use this instrument to encourage states to do the right thing, and ultimately to help to hold them accountable
As a result, she argued that the new guidance “is of great and far-reaching legal significance”.
Youth climate litigation
Youth climate activists have been increasingly turning to climate litigation. In July, the UN and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law released a climate litigation report. It found that globally, the cumulative number of climate cases is two-and-a-half-times higher than in 2017.
Significantly, it identified that by 31 December 2022, youth plaintiffs – or those acting on their behalf – had brought 34 climate cases concerning their human rights.
Notably, the UN committee’s fresh analysis comes just weeks after a landmark court ruling in Montana. As the Canary previously reported, the Montanan court ruled in favour of a group of youths who accused the western US state of breaching their rights to a clean environment.
In particular, the ruling found that a fossil fuel-friendly state law had violated those rights. Specifically, the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Limitation prevents the state from considering greenhouse gas impacts when issuing fossil fuel development permits.
The Montana case followed several other recent high-profile lawsuits. For example, a group of young people won a case in 2018 against the Colombian government over deforestation. Meanwhile, a German constitutional court found against the government for failing to protect the youth plaintiffs’ “natural foundations of life”.
From the over-1-million-strong global school climate strikes to the youth climate activists taking legal action, young people are spearheading the charge against the climate crisis. The UN’s new guidance sends a clear message to world governments: in failing to meet international climate obligations, these states are violating the rights of their young citizens. As a result, young people will now have an even stronger grounding to fight back.
Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse.
Feature image via Derek Read/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910 by 1000, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
By The Canary
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A mandatory evacuation was ordered for thousands of people living within a two-mile radius of a Marathon Petroleum refinery in Louisiana’s so-called “Cancer Alley” after a chemical leak and massive fire broke out at a storage tank there on Friday. The temporary evacuation order, which Marathon Petroleum called “precautionary,” followed a leak of naphtha — a hazardous and highly flammable liquid…
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Emperor penguin chicks are dying en masse in Antarctica – and, of course, corporate climate criminals will only make matters worse.
On 24 August, researchers released a new study on the impacts of vanishing ice on the iconic emperor penguin. It showed that, in 2022, extensive regional Antarctic ice loss caused “catastrophic” breeding failures in four major emperor penguin colonies. This is the first time on record a study has documented such widespread colony breeding collapse. The new research was published in the Nature journal Communications Earth & Environment.
In addition, the study also highlighted that sea ice loss could drive 90% of emperor penguin colonies to extinction by the end of the century. Specifically, this devastating decline will occur if current levels of global warming continue.
‘Catastrophic’ breeding failures: a taste of what’s to come?
The study focused on the Bellingshausen Sea region, west of the Antarctic Peninsula. The area is home to five emperor colonies. Notably, some colony sites experienced a 100% loss of sea ice, and four of these colonies suffered complete breeding failure.
The authors explained that emperor chicks do not develop waterproof feathers until they fledge at around 5 months. As a result, this means that sea ice has to be stable in order for the chicks to survive. If they’re exposed to the harsh conditions of the water too soon, the chicks may freeze to death or drown.
A separate study from 2019 found that between 2016 and 2019, the second largest breeding colony of emperor penguins also experienced a “catastrophic” breeding failure. Located in the Weddell Sea, the colony was once home to between 14,000 to 25,000 breeding pairs a year. This equated to approximately 5-9% of the global emperor penguin population.
For three consecutive years, strong winds and stormy weather caused the sea ice where the chicks gathered to break up. By 2018, just a few hundred adult breeding pairs were left, and almost no chicks survived.
However, before 2022, scientists had not recorded widespread catastrophic breeding failure across multiple fledgling sites. The new study therefore suggested an unprecedented loss in the emperor chick population.
The Nature researchers noted that emperor penguins will relocate short distances to new colonies when sea ice loss affects breeding. However, this might not be possible in future if breeding grounds become uninhabitable on a larger, regional scale.
Climate crisis-fueled sea loss?
In February, sea ice levels in Antarctica reached their lowest extent in 45 years of record keeping. On top of this, the Communications Earth & Environment study noted that:
Since 2016, Antarctica has experienced the four lowest sea ice extents observed in the 45 year satellite record, with the two lowest years in 2021/22 and 2022/23
Consequently, it acknowledged that:
Although it is difficult to link specific extreme seasons to climate change, a longer-term decline in sea ice extent is expected from the current generation of climate models
Moreover, the study stated that its findings showed a “clear link” between the sea ice loss and the breeding failures of emperor penguins. As a result, it suggested that the emperor penguin chick deaths:
may represent a snapshot of a future, warming Antarctica where such events become more frequent and widespread, with grave consequences for emperor penguin population viability.
Billionaires steering the climate crisis and penguin catastrophe
Given the role of the climate crisis in the further loss of Antarctic ice – and thus decimation of penguin chick populations – it’s clear who will be to blame. If the thought of even more tiny penguin chicks perishing in the pernicious warming Antarctic wilderness makes you rage, then turn your ire to the big polluters.
Fossil fuel companies and their billionaire profiteers are steering the world to climate ruin. A 2017 study pinned over 70% of global greenhouse (GHG) emissions between 1988 and 2015 to just 100 companies. Chief among them were fossil fuel majors like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP. These companies generated enormous shares of total global emissions.
On top of this, another recent study in Nature Climate Change identified that fossil fuel companies are set to produce coal, oil and gas levels that will push the world past 1.5°c. What’s more, the super-rich that hold investments in these polluting industries also generate staggeringly outsized GHG emissions.
The threat of plastic pollution
What’s more, these corporations are also endangering penguin populations through other profiteering and ecologically destructive pursuits. Oil and gas majors have been ploughing record investment into expanding their plastic production. Consequently, penguins are facing the dual pressures of a warming Antarctic, and a region awash with deadly microplastics.
In 2018, Greenpeace conducted sampling during an Antarctic survey. It found that microplastics and hazardous chemicals contaminated the snow and water of the region. Moreover, a 2022 expedition detected plastic fibres in the air, and right down into the depths of the Antarctic seabed.
A study from 10 August highlighted the devastating cost of this prolific plastic pollution on Antarctic penguins. Analysing the gastrointestinal systems of dead gentoo penguins, researchers recovered significant levels of microplastics. Notably, the research identified much higher levels of contamination than previous studies have shown.
What does the future hold for emperor penguins?
Antarctica’s most iconic species is under threat. Without urgent definitive action, we will see the irreversible decline of the emperor penguin. The effects of the climate crisis, which will inevitably lead to more catastrophic breeding failures like the one we are seeing, are set to become even more extreme. We must hold the corporate climate criminals to account for their actions, before it is too late.
Article written in tandem with Hannah Sharland.
Feature image via Dafna Ben nun/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910 by 1000, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
By Hannah Green
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By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist
Japan’s release of more than one million tonnes of treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the Pacific is officially underway.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings has confirmed that the disposal started at 1pm local time today.
“This is a big step and punctuating moment in the process of decommissioning,” TEPCO spokesperson Junichi Matsumoto told news media.
- READ MORE: Countdown starts as Japan poised to release first batch of treated nuclear wastewater
- Other Fukushima reports
“We will have 30 years or so [to release the water], we will ensure safety and quality.
“We will accomplish this discharge, we have to buckle down ourselves and we have to do it with an intense attitude,” he said.
TEPCO said it was an important step towards decommissioning the destroyed Fukushima power plant after it was hit by a tsunami 12 years ago.
“Per day 460 tonnes is the amount of discharge. So if there are no troubles in about 17 days, 7800 cubic metres of water will be successfully discharged,” Matsumoto said.
Assurances given
Assurances were given in TEPCO’s latest media briefing that if unsafe levels of tritium were detected, the operation would stop until the water has been re-treated through its ALPS processing system and was safe.Daily monitoring has begun and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also independently monitoring the process on site.
“So, after a sea water pump is operated regarding the vertical shaft, the monitoring will become in service,” Junichi Matsumoto said.
The treated water is being discharged “continuously”, he added.
Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna . . . “We’ve done our best to get Japan not to commence the discharge.” Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone Holding Japan ‘fully accountable’
Pacific leaders are committed to holding Japan accountable should anything go wrong, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna said.“We’ve done our best to get Japan not to commence the discharge, until there is full agreement that it’s verifiably safe to do so. But Japan has taken a sovereign decision.
“And you know that point is now past. What we need to focus on now is to hold Japan to account,” he said.
SHAME JAPAN!
NO FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR WASTE WATER IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN!
YOU CREATED THE PROBLEM, SOLVE IT PROPERLY ON YOUR OWN TERRITORY.
THIS REGION IS NOT YOUR DUMPING GROUND. pic.twitter.com/MK4WOeDU4c
— Pacific Feminist Community of Practice (@pacfemcop) August 15, 2023
Puna said Japan had made a guarantee that it would comply with international standards and the Pacific would be watching keenly to make sure it stayed that way.
“Since the announcement of the discharge in April 2021, our leaders have been busy engaging with Japan,” Puna said.
“The statements are very clear. Their collective statements expressing our concerns given our nuclear legacy issues and that position has never changed.”
Pacific leaders are to discuss the issue face-to-face in Rarotonga in November at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist
A Japanese government spokesperson says it is “not wilfully trying to divide the Pacific” over the Fukushima treated nuclear wastewater release.
Japan is set to start discharging more than one million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean tomorrow (local time).
This comes 12 years after a tsunami slammed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant resulting in what has been labelled as the largest civil nuclear energy disaster since Chernobyl.
- READ MORE: NZ women’s peace group protests over imminent Fukushima nuclear wastewater release
- Other Fukushima reports
Palau, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia have publicly backed the plan or at least placed their faith in Japan’s word that it will be safe.
The release is forecast to take 30 to 40 years to complete.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi (left) delivers a report on Japan’s ALPS-treated wastewater plans to the Pacific Islands Forum chair, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, in Rarotonga. Image: IAEA/RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is the most recent Pacific leader to speak out in defence of Japan.
He said he is satisfied their plan is safe after reading the UN nuclear agency’s report.
Rabuka’s voice is important because he is in the Pacific Islands Forum leadership team — known as the Troika — as the past chair of the Forum. The other two are current chair Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown and future chair, the Tongan Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni.
Since making that statement Rabuka has apologised for speaking ahead of the recent Troika meeting, but he has not backtracked on his view.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . “Comparisons between the nuclear legacy in the Pacific and Japan’s nuclear wastewater release is fear-mongering.” Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone ‘Discharged’ into Japan’s own backyard
Rabuka has taken to social media in response to criticism of his statement of support.“Comparisons between the nuclear legacy in the Pacific and Japan’s nuclear wastewater release is fear-mongering,” he wrote.
He also said the wastewater was not being dumped but discharged into Japan’s “own backyard”, over 7000km from Fiji.
1/3 One of my critics at the weekend appeared to be somehow connecting the wastewater discharge with the cataclysmic power of the nuclear bombs dropped in the Pacific as part of weapons testing.
— Sitiveni Rabuka (@slrabuka) August 22, 2023
That in itself has been the centre of debate with nuclear activists continuing to call it a dump.
One nuclear expert appointed by the Pacific Islands Forum said there was an argument that it was a dump over a release.
Pacific leaders meet with IAEA in July 2023 following release of the agency’s comprehensive report on Japan’s plans. Image: IAEA/RNZ Pacific But the International Atomic Energy Agency has gone to great lengths — even travelling to New Zealand and Rarotonga — to explain why this is not a dump.
Director-General Rafael Grossi told RNZ Pacific earlier this year that he condemned dumping which he said had happened in the past and was not the case for Japan’s plan.
Against and on the fence
Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister has drafted a declaration urging Japan to stop the discharge.He wants the leaders of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) meeting in Port Vila today to support the declaration.
Tuvalu has also spoken out, expressing opposition to Rabuka’s stance.
Tuvalu’s Minister for Finance, Seve Paeniu told FBC News that if Japan was genuinely confident, why did it not consider disposing of it within its own lakes and waters.
TEPCO assures the Pacific
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) spokesperson Junichi Matsumoto told the first media briefing today that his team was “moving quickly” to prepare the release which would depend on the conditions.“The final decision will be made on the morning of the [August] 24 based on the climate conditions or weather conditions,” he said.
“A very small amount will be carefully discharged using a two-step process.”
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) spokesperson Junichi Matsumoto briefs media online today. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis RNZ asked TEPCO about the nuclear legacy in the Pacific.
“To the members of the PIF, we have been providing explanations on the discharge into the sea,” Matsumoto said.
“So we would like to continue to provide the explanation on our initiative.
“And in terms of assurance, it may be a bit different in terms of nuance, but the result of sea area monitoring will be communicated.
Matsumoto said anyone wishing to could check the results of the sea area monitoring on the TEPCO website.
When questioned about when Pacific nations would see the effects of the release, he said that according to dispersion models particles would arrive on the shores of Papua New Guinea and Fiji in “a few years’ time or a few decades”.
“It will be impossible to distinguish that [discharged] tritium [in the Pacific Ocean] from that already existing in nature,” Matsumoto said.
A Japan government spokesperson said Tokyo was not wilfully trying to divide the Pacific and no compensation would be given to Pacific nations for potential reputational damage.
“The Japanese government has been taking opportunities at international conferences and at bilateral meetings to thoroughly and meticulously explain and disseminate information to the world through its website, as well as through social network media including X [formerly Twitter],” the spokesperson said.
The Cook Islands Prime Minister and incoming Forum chair Mark Brown in Japan with PIF Secretary-General Henry Puna to meet Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Image: PIF/RNZ Pacific This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) Aotearoa, the longest running women’s peace group in New Zealand, has called on the Japanese government to change its plan to release treated nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the Pacific Ocean.
The protest comes as Pacific leaders remain undecided over the controversial — and widely condemned — Japanese move as reports suggest the start of the wastewater release could begin in the next few days.
“Releasing more radioactive materials is a wilful act of harm that will spread further radioactive contamination into the global environment,”said WILPF in its protest letter sent to Japanese Ambassador Ito Koichi last weekend.
- READ MORE: Uncertainty remains in Pacific as Japan due to make Fukushima decision
- Other Fukushima reports
“The treated water contains tritium, which cannot be removed. Tritium will be dumped into the ocean for several decades.
“There has been no assessment of future biological impacts. Nor has there been a review of less expensive and safer alternatives.”
An RNZ Pacific report said today that the past, present and future Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) chairs — known as “the Troika” — had not decided if they were for or against the imminent discharge.
The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) meeting in Port Vila, Vanuatu, this week has been urged to call on Japan to drop plans for the wastewater release.
Accident reminder
WILPF reminded the Japanese government in its protest letter that after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami which caused the accident at the power station, the radioactive contaminated water was treated by a multi-nuclide removal system (ALPS) and stored in more than 1000 tanks on the power plant site.It also reminded Tokyo of its pledge about Fukushima at the time.
The Japanese government and the operating company, TEPCO, stated that this water would not be disposed of in any way without the understanding of the concerned parties and would be stored on land.
The London Convention, which Japan ratified in 1980, strictly regulates the dumping of radioactive waste into the ocean.
“Therefore,” said the protest letter, “the release of treated water is a violation of international law.
“Such an action would also damage the trust between Japan and its neighbours and the Pacific Islands.”
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A new study has once again proven that billionaires are causing the climate crisis. It offers us more proof, if we needed it, that the super-rich are generating a shocking proportion of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG).
On 17 August, PLOS Climate published new research which quantified the carbon footprints of US households. The paper tracked the GHG emissions of households according to their income. Specifically, the authors assessed this across the 29-year period between 1990 and 2019.
Significantly, the study found that the US super-rich 1% have been responsible for more GHG emissions than the poorest 50% of American households.
US responsibility for historic emissions
Previous studies have shown that the US is the largest historical emitter of GHG. For example, a 2020 paper by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel found that the US was responsible for 40% of excess global carbon emissions between 1850 and 2015.
Similarly Carbon Brief has also shown that the US ranks first for its historic emissions. It identified that the US had emitted 509Gt CO² between 1850 and 2021. As a result, the country is to blame for a fifth of all CO² emissions during that period.
Moreover, in 2021 the US was the second highest emitter, after China. Nearing 5,000m tonnes of CO², the US alone accounted for over 10% of global emissions.
Given the US’s outsized role in pushing the world down the path to climate breakdown, the new study’s findings are crucial. In no uncertain terms, the research exposes the key culprits: the super rich.
Of course, this should comes as little surprise when some of the richest oil-made magnates in the US have had the ear of its government. Fossil fuel tycoons and climate deniers-in-chief the Koch brothers have exerted their nefarious influence over US politics for decades.
Particularly notable was Charles Koch’s powerful part in a key 2022 US Supreme Court decision. The ruling restricted the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon emissions. Naturally, this was a gift to big polluters.
Emissions soar for the US super-rich
The PLOS Climate study spotlighted the vast disparity in GHG emissions between the colossally rich and poor households across the US.
The study authors assessed not only the income that a household derived through direct employment, but also through its investments. Importantly, it distinguished between emissions households generated from both direct and indirect investments. This meant that the authors could attribute the full scope of the downstream emissions in the supply chains of a household’s holdings.
The new research also highlighted that while the top 10% of households had seen their emissions soar, the rest had been declining across the study period. Crucially, emissions had dropped an average of 38% for the bottom 50% of households.
Conversely, the top 1% had increased their GHG output. The top 0.9% of household earners had burgeoned their emissions by 43%. Worse still, the top 0.1% ballooned their emissions by a staggering 83% between 1990 and 2019.
‘Super emitters’
The study identified an elite carbon club of “super emitters”. These were primarily households in the top 0.1%, who were belching out over 3,000 tonnes of CO² equivalent throughout the most recent study year, 2019. For comparison, the bottom 10% of households produced 1.6 tonnes of CO² equivalent on average in 2019. This means that these “super emitters” were responsible for 1,875 times the amount of emissions of the bottom 10%.
Approximately 43,200 US households, equating to 34% of the top 0.1% of earners, hit “super emitter” status. On average, these heavy polluters had incomes of over $10.6m.
The majority of these were making their millions in finance, real estate, insurance, manufacturing, mining, and quarrying. However, the authors noted that:
income-based emissions are the result of both income and the GHG intensity of that income
In other words, investments in some highly polluting industries would make households more likely to meet the threshold of “super emitter”. For example, the study explained that a household making its fortune on hospitals would need to reap $18m to create 3,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions. By contrast, it would require just $2.7m from the coal industry to do the same.
Glaring racial disparity
Of course, the gap between billionaires and the working class also brought the US’s blatant institutional racism into sharp relief.
The average white non-Hispanic household caused over two times the greenhouse gas emissions of the average Black household.
Partly, the study authors put this down to the fact that white non-Hispanic households were more likely to receive their income through employment and investments in highly polluting industries.
Yet, while Black households might not generally receive income from these climate-wrecking sectors, they sit at the frontlines of its toxic impact.
For instance, Louisiana hosts the US’s most egregious example of environmental racism. Over 150 petrochemical plants pump putrid gases into the air along an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi’s notorious “Cancer Alley” – so named due to the high risks of cancer in the area.
Naturally, Black households are heavily overrepresented in the poor communities living there. In fact, a May 2023 report identified that companies had situated the majority of Louisiana’s petrochemical plants in areas where Black people made up anywhere between 40 to 60% of the population. This is despite Black people making up around just 14% of US citizens nationally.
Least responsible with the most at stake
Ultimately, however, the authors attributed the marked difference in GHG output to:
the extreme racial inequity of the underlying income distribution.
Critically, it pointed to the fact that Black households make up a disproportionate share of the poorest households. Moreover, Black households account for just 3% of the top 1% of earners. Meanwhile white non-Hispanic people take up the lion’s share at 76%. White Hispanic households account for the remaining 8%.
To make matters worse, just as how the least responsible in the Global South have faced the brunt of the climate crisis, so too do these oppressed communities in the US suffer the unequal burden of its impacts.
For example, a 2022 report on New York found that Black residents were over two times more likely to die from heat stress than white inhabitants. Partly, this is due to US’s long history of racist ‘redlining’. This is the discriminatory devaluing of houses in majority Black neighbourhoods. This has exposed these communities to the disproportionate risks from urban heat, e.g., from a lack of shade-providing trees and greenery in poorer areas.
Meanwhile, during Hurricane Katrina – one of the US’s most deadly and destructive storms – flooding hit African American neighbourhoods most extensively. Moreover, the EPA has warned that the impacts of the climate crisis will continue to climb for racialised groups in the US.
Billionaire destroyers of the Earth
Ultimately, the super rich are destroying the planet. Their polluting profits push the world ever closer to a future of rampant and irreparable climate hell. Of course, their stinking riches have come at the expense of the most marginalised in society – which their destructive industries directly exploit and harm. As ever, the least responsible – Black working-class communities – will bear the brunt of their super-emitting greed.
Feature image via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Wikimedia, cropped and resized to 1910×1000, image in the public domain.
This post was originally published on Canary.
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By Sera Sefeti in Suva
International environmental campaign group Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior is currently sailing across the Pacific, calling at ports and collecting evidence to present to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — the World Court — during a historic hearing in The Hague next year.
Rainbow Warrior staff and crew will be joined by Pasifika activists sailing across the blue waters of the Pacific, campaigning to take climate change to the globe’s highest court.
Their latest six-week campaign voyage started in Cairns, Australia, on July 31 and will call on Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and Fiji. Currently, they are on a port call in Suva.
- READ MORE: ‘Frustrated’ USP law students were catalyst for landmark UN climate vote
- The Rainbow Warrior affair – a human rights transition from nuclear to climate change refugees — David Robie
- Other Pacific climate crisis reports
Greenpeace Australia’s Pacific general council member Katrina Bullock told IDN: “Part of what we really wanted to do during the ship tour was to bring together climate leaders from different parts of the world to talk and share their experiences because climate impacts might look different in different parts of the world.”
Staff and volunteers at Greenpeace’s iconic campaign vessel have been welcoming local people here, especially youth, to speak to their campaign staff about what they do and why climate justice campaigns are important to save the pristine environment in the region that is facing a multitude of problems due to climate crisis.
“Everybody is sharing the same struggles, so we had Uncle Pabai and Uncle Paul (indigenous Torres Straits Islanders from Australia) who came with us to Vanuatu, where they joined up with some terrific activists from the Philippines who are also looking at holding their government accountable,” Bullock said.
“If we become climate refugees, we will lose everything — our homes, community, culture, stories, and identity,” says Uncle Paul whose ancestors have lived on the land for 65,000 years.
‘Our country will disappear’
“We can keep our stories and tell our stories, but we won’t be connected to country because country will disappear”.
Pacific climate voyage . . . A South African crew member on the bridge of the Rainbow Warrior briefing Fiji visitors on board. Image: Kalinga Seneviratne/IDN That is why he is taking the government to court, “because I want to protect my community and all Australians before it’s too late.”
The two indigenous First Nations leaders from the Guda Maluyligal in the Torres Strait are plaintiffs in the Australian Climate Case suing the Australian government for failing to protect their island homes from climate change.
They are training other Pacific islanders on activism to hold their governments to account.
The UN General Assembly on 29 March 2023 adopted by consensus a resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ on the obligations of states in respect of climate change.
This opinion aims to clarify the legal obligations of states in addressing climate change and its consequences, particularly regarding the rights and interests of vulnerable nations — and people.
It is the first time the General Assembly has requested an advisory opinion from the ICJ with unanimous state support.
Resolution youth-driven
The resolution was youth-driven, and it originated with a law school students’ project at the University of the South Pacific’s Vanuatu campus and ultimately led to the Vanuatu government tabling it at the UN.This Pacific-led resolution has been hailed as a “turning point in climate justice” and a victory for the Pacific youth who spearheaded the campaign.
The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, entrusted with settling legal disputes between states. It entertains only two types of cases: contentious cases and requests for advisory opinions.
“We have been collecting evidence from across the Pacific of climate impacts to take to the world’s highest court as part of the ICJ initiative,” Bullock said.
“We have also had the opportunity to mobilise communities and bring the leaders from all parts of the world together to share their experiences and do some community training.”
The Rainbow Warrior has a long history of daring activism and fearless campaigning and has been sailing the world’s oceans since 1978, fighting various environment destroyers and polluters.
Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira . . . killed by French secret agents in New Zealand’s Auckland Harbour in July 1985. Image: ©David Robie/Café Pacific Media In 1985, the first Rainbow Warrior ship was sunk by a terrorist bombing at New Zealand’s Auckland port by French security agents with the death of a Greenpeace photographer, Fernando Pereira, on board because the ship and its crew were fearlessly campaigning against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
The ship’s crew also evacuated the people of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands who were irradiated by US nuclear testing and moved them to a safer atoll.
Modern sailing ship
Today’s Rainbow Warrior is a sophisticated modern sailing ship with a multinational crew that includes Indians, Chileans, South Africans, Australians, Fijians, and many other nationalities.Last week they were sharing their stories of environmental destruction with local youth and children to take the fight further with the help of stories collected from people in the Pacific.
According to Bullock, the shared stories were filled with trauma and loss as they went from island to island.
“We were in Vanuatu, and some of the women shared their experiences of what it was like after a cyclone to lose lots of herbal medicine and the plants that you rely on as a community, and what that means to them and why Western pharmacies aren’t a substitute.”
The Rainbow Warrior activists were shown the loss of land and gravesites and collected many stories they believe will make an impact. While they are berthed in Fiji, students and community members were given guided tours on the boat and informed on their work – including how they navigate the high seas.
One such group was the students and teachers from a local primary school, Vashistmuni Primary School in Navua, who were excited and fascinated to learn about the work the Rainbow Warrior does.
Their teacher said that while it is part of their curriculum to learn about climate change and global warming, “it was good to bring the kids out and witness firsthand what a climate warrior looks like and its importance.
‘Hopefully, they take action’
“Hopefully, they go back and take action in their local communities.”For Ani Tuisausau, Fijian activist and core focal point of the climate justice working group in Fiji, her choice to take this up was personal.
“I am someone who is constantly going to my dad’s island, so compared to how it was then to how it is now, it is different,” she told IDN.
“There are some places where I used to swim. They are polluted, and then, of course, the sea level rises. I don’t want my kids growing up and missing out on the beauty of our beaches and what I experienced when I was younger.
“For that to happen, there needs to be a change in mindsets,” argues Tuisausau, “and this is the best opportunity on board the Rainbow Warrior — they get to hear the stories of what is happening in the Pacific and compare and relate to what is happening in our backyard.”
The Rainbow Warrior’s stories include intense stories and dignified climate migration but also the loss of culture and land. The team is confident that collecting these stories will give them a fighting chance at the ICJ.
Bullock says that when she started with the Rainbow Warrior five years ago, she thought facts and figures were a way to change mindsets.
“But now I realise that while facts and figures are important, stories are crucial because they touch hearts and move people to action”.
Rainbow Warrior leaves Suva tomorrow and heads back to Australia via Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Sera Sefeti is a Wansolwara journalist at the University of the South Pacific. This article was produced as a part of the joint media project between the non-profit International Press Syndicate Group and Soka Gakkai International in consultation with ECOSOC on 13 August 2023. IDN is the flagship agency of IPS and the article is republished by Asia Pacific Report as part of a collaboration.
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On Wednesday 9 August, campaigners from Climate Camp Scotland, This is Rigged, and Scot.E3 demonstrated outside the headquarters of Ironside Farrar in Edinburgh. Campaigners held the peaceful demonstration in solidarity with residents of Torry, Aberdeen. Torry is to be the site of a large-scale industrial development that threatens a precious local park and wetland.
The project developer has commissioned Ironside Farrar to produce a master plan for the site. The coalition of climate groups and energy workers were protesting the advancing implementation of Scotland’s so-called Energy Transition Zone (ETZ).
However, as this deprived community in Aberdeen is finding out first hand, the supposed shift to a green energy future to tackle the climate crisis is far from just.
The Energy Transition Zone
If you’re wondering what the hell an ETZ is, the PR jargon from its proponents won’t provide a clearer picture.
In its 2020 ‘feasibility study’, oil and gas consultancy firm Barton Willmore acknowledged that ETZ “isn’t a universal term”. The company then proceeded to explain that the term:
is a vehicle to promote a particular City to end users who specialise in this market and to prepare the necessary sites and infrastructure required to support that development.
Of course, this is insipid industry-speak for industrial expansion. In this instance, companies are purportedly developing the site to draw in ‘green’ manufacturing. Specifically, this will be for wind power and the nascent green hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.
Conversely, a community campaign group fighting the project has offered a different definition. Friends of St Fittick’s Park argued that:
An “energy transition zone” is, in short, a marketing ploy, a bit of rhetoric dreamed up by a lobbying/consultancy firm to make a dishonest land-grab in a poor area sound more palatable, by selling it as an essential initiative to mitigate man-made climate change.
Their scathing view reflects a soon-to-be lived reality: the new zone will gobble up a local neighbourhood’s final green space. Moreover, it will invite new polluting projects into a community overburdened with harmful industries.
In other words, the council and opportunistic corporations see this deprived and already heavily-polluted area as ripe for the industrial land grab.
Sacrifice zone
The new industrial development will occupy close to a third of St Fittick’s Community Park. Crucially, this is the last remaining greenspace in Torry. As a result, local residents have vociferously fought the project.
Torry is among the 500 most deprived areas in Scotland. Moreover, according to Scotland’s Index of Multiple Deprivation in 2020, Torry held three out of ten of the most deprived neighbourhoods in Aberdeen City.
In 2021, 22 medical professionals from across Northeast Scotland issued an open letter against the project. In it, they highlighted that the life expectancy of residents in Balnagask – the area of Torry closest to the park – was already 13 years shorter than in another neighbourhood in Aberdeen, which happened to have a mature woodland on its doorstep.
Worse still, Torry residents’ healthy life expectancy – the period of time a person stays in good health – was 20 years lower.
What’s more, residents in Torry face an eight-fold greater risk of admission to hospital due to chronic lung disease than the longer-lived neighbourhood. This is unsurprising given the high presence of polluting infrastructure in the area. For example, this includes a sewage works, a regional waste centre, and an industrial business estate.
Separately, local retired paediatrician Mike Down said that the addition of the ETZ would:
further sicken and impoverish the people who live in Torry.
This is a story familiar to the marginalised communities from the industrial hellscapes of the US’s ‘Cancer Alley’, through to the poor, Black, Brown, chronically ill, and disabled residents breathing in the toxic fumes of waste incinerators across the UK.
In short, the council has designated the area a sacrifice zone, and the people living there as disposable.
‘Just transition’ for workers?
Trade unionists representing offshore workers were among the campaigners protesting outside Iron Farrar’s offices. Trade unionists and climate campaigners founded Scot.E3 to call for climate action in their workplaces, and a just transition.
Separately, in March, a coalition of nonprofits collaborated on a report to call for a just transition for North Sea oil and gas workers.
Ironside Farrar’s draft master plan details how the ETZ will help to facilitate a just transition for workers in Scotland. In particular, it is creating a “Skills Campus” to provide education and the upskilling of the local workforce.
However, the project will generate just 2,500 full-time-equivalent jobs by 2030. Comparatively, the offshore oil and gas sector in Scotland currently hosts over 70,000 jobs. The ETZ will therefore offer just over 3.5% of the required transition employment.
Moreover, there’s currently no indication of exactly how many of these jobs will go to local North Sea workers. The draft master plan touts an accompanying jobs and skills plan to support “inclusive job creation”. The jobs and skills plan promotes the meek commitment that investors will be “encouraged to adhere” to “creating local employment and business opportunities”.
What’s more, one ETZ project already throws cold water at the idea that the zone will provide a just transition for local workers. The gas-fired Peterhead Power Station CCS development will create limited jobs for Aberdeenshire’s workforce. The project boasts that it will create 776 jobs during the construction phase. However, it anticipates that it will source up to 75% of employees from outside the area. Moreover, during operation, it will create just 45 direct jobs for people in the local authority.
If the new industrial zone can even claim to be bringing forward an energy transition for workers and communities in Aberdeen, it’s already abundantly apparent that it won’t be just.
Feature image via Climate Camp Scotland, This is Rigged, and Scot.E3
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Air pollution could be helping drive a rise in drug-resistant infections, which pose a dangerous threat to global public health, according to a new study. The paper, published Monday in Lancet Planetary Health, concludes that particulate air pollution (PM2.5), which comes from burning fossil fuels for energy, industrial processes, and transportation, may be one of the largest contributors to the…
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By Aralai Vosayaco in Suva
The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is disappointed with the Fiji government and Pacific Islands Forum’s endorsement of the Japanese government’s plans to dump 1.3 million tonnes of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean at the end of this month.
Nuclear justice campaigner Epeli Lesuma of PANG said this was a “blatant disregard” of the expert opinion of a panel of scientists commissioned by the Forum.
“It’s disappointing because Pacific leaders appointed this panel of experts so ideally our trust should be with them and the recommendations they have provided to us,” Lesuma said.
- READ MORE: PNG prime minister urged to oppose nuke wastewater release into the Pacific Ocean
- Other Fukushima reports
“These are not just random scientists. These are esteemed and respected professionals engaged to provide us with this advice.”
Last week, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he was satisfied with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) report that stated Japan’s plans to release treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean had met relevant international standards.
“I have made it my business as a Pacific Island leader to carefully study the information and data on the matter…I am satisfied that Japan has demonstrated commitment to satisfy the wishes of the Pacific Island states, as conveyed to Japan by the Pacific Island Forum chair,” Rabuka said in a video on the Fiji government’s official Facebook page.
“I am satisfied that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report is reassuring enough to dispel any fears of any untoward degradation of the ocean environment that would adversely affect lives and ecosystems in our precious blue Pacific,” he said.
‘Convinced’ of IAEA’s seriousness
“I am convinced of the seriousness of the IAEA to continuously monitor this process in Japan.”The controversial plan by Japan continues to spark anger and concern across many communities, environmental activists, non-government and civil society organisations.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s statement. Video: Fiji govtSharing Rabuka’s sentiments was the PIF chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister, Mark Brown, who said the IAEA was the world’s foremost authority on nuclear safety.
“We have received the comments, and the report from our scientific panel and the IAEA and [we are] taking a measured response.
“I’d have to say that as the IAEA is responsible for assessment and for anything to do with the safety of reactors around the world, their findings and credibility need to be upheld.”
Nuclear justice campaigner Epeli Lesuma expresses disappointment over Fiji PM Rabuka’s endorsement of Japan’s controversial plan to release 1.3 million tonnes of nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean at the end of this month. Image: Aralai Vosayaco/Wansolwara For Lesuma and other concerned members of Pacific communities, the fight was more than just the Pacific being used as a dumping ground.
He maintains that the two Pacific Island leaders’ support for the IAEA report discredited the PIF-commissioned panel’s decision and credibility.
“They are contradicting themselves because they have appointed this group of experts to advise them. Yet they do not believe their recommendations.
‘Now we are backtracking’
“It’s disappointing that this panel was appointed during Fiji’s term as Forum chair. Here we were as head of this regional body but now we are backtracking and saying we don’t believe you.”Lesuma said civil society groups would continue to back the opinions and recommendations of PIF’s independent panel of scientific experts.
“Their opinions were formulated by science and with the Pacific people and the care of the ocean at its centre,” he said.
PIF’s independent panel of experts remains adamant that there is insufficient data to deem the discharge of nuclear waste safe for release into the Pacific Ocean.
In a June statement this year, PIF General Secretary Henry Puna said the Forum remained committed to addressing strong concerns for the significance of the potential threat of nuclear contamination to the health and security of the Blue Pacific, its people, and prospects.
“Even before Japan announced its decision in April 2021, Pacific states, meeting for the first time in December 2020 as States Parties to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga), recalled concerns about the environmental impact of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Reactor accident in 2011 and urged Japan to take all steps necessary to address any potential harm to the Pacific,” he said.
“They ‘called on states to take all appropriate measures within their territory, jurisdiction or control to prevent significant transboundary harm to the territory of another state, as required under international law’.
International legal rules
“These important statements stem from key international legal rules and principles, including the unique obligation placed by the Rarotonga Treaty on Pacific states to ‘Prevent Dumping’ (Article 7), in view of our nuclear testing legacy and its permanent impacts on our peoples’ health, environment and human rights.”Puna said Pacific states therefore had a legal obligation “to prevent the dumping of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter by anyone” and “not to take any action to assist or encourage the dumping by anyone of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter at sea anywhere within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone”.
Specific concerns by the Forum on nuclear contamination issues were not new, Puna added, and that for many years, the Forum had to deal with attempts by other states to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific.
“Leaders have urged Japan and other shipping states to store or dump their nuclear waste in their home countries rather than storing or dumping them in the Pacific.
“In 1985, the Forum welcomed the Japan PM’s statement that ‘Japan had no intention of dumping radioactive waste in the Pacific Ocean in disregard of the concern expressed by the communities of the region’.”
Against this regional context, he said the Forum’s engagement on the present unprecedented issue signify that for the Blue Pacific, this was not merely a nuclear safety issue.
“It is rather a nuclear legacy issue, an ocean, fisheries, environment, biodiversity, climate change, and health issue with the future of our children and future generations at stake.
Pacific people ‘have nothing to gain’
“Our people do not have anything to gain from Japan’s plan but have much at risk for generations to come,” Puna had said.The Pacific Ocean contains the greatest biomass of organisms of ecological, economic, and cultural value, including 70 percent of the world’s fisheries. It is the largest continuous body of water on the planet.
The health of all the world’s ocean ecosystems is in documented decline due to a variety of stressors, including climate change, over-exploitation of resources, and pollution, a Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) report highlighted.
The PINA news report cited a paper by the US National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML), an organisation of more than 100 member laboratories, that stated the proposed release of the contaminated water was a transboundary and transgenerational issue of concern for the health of marine ecosystems and those whose lives and livelihoods depend on them.
Japan aims to gradually release 1.3 million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater from the defunct Fukushima power plant over a period of 30-40 years.
Aralai Vosayaco is a final-year student journalist at The University of the South Pacific. She is also the 2023 news editor (national) of Wansolwara, USP Journalism’s student training newspaper and online publication. Asia Pacific Report and Wansolwara collaborate.
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Japan plans to start releasing treated nuclear wastewater from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean as soon as later this month, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily is reporting, citing government sources.
The newspaper said the release was likely to come shortly after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meets US President Joe Biden and the South Korean President, Yoon Suk-yeol, next week in the US, where Kishida planned to explain the safety of the wastewater.
Japan’s nuclear regulator last month granted approval for plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) to start releasing the water, which Japan and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) say is safe but nearby countries fear may contaminate food.
- READ MORE: Anti-nuclear group condemns Fiji PM Rabuka’s Fukushima wastewater stance
- Other Fukushima reports
Bottom-trawling fishing was scheduled to start off Fukushima, north-east of Tokyo, in September, and the government aimed to start the water discharge before the fishing season got under way, the newspaper said.
In July the UN’s nuclear watchdog approved plans by Japan to release the water, despite objections from local fishing communities and other countries in the region.
About 1.3m tonnes of water stored in huge tanks on the site has been filtered through TEPCO’s advanced liquid processing system (ALPS) to remove most radioactive elements except for tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is difficult to separate from water.
500 Olympic pool sized
The treated water will be diluted with seawater so that the concentration of tritium is well below internationally approved levels before being released into the ocean 1km from the shoreline via an undersea tunnel.The water — enough to fill 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools — became contaminated when it was used to cool fuel rods that melted after the power plant was hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Discharging the water is expected to take 30 to 40 years to complete.
Attempts by Japanese government officials to win regional support for the plan have had limited success.
China denounced the plan as “extremely irresponsible” when it was announced in 2021. Hong Kong has threatened to ban food imports from 10 Japanese prefectures if the water release goes ahead as planned.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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By Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific lead digital and social media journalist
Pacific anti-nuclear advocacy groups and campaigners have condemned the Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s backing of Japan’s plans to release over one million tonnes of treated nuclear wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean.
On Thursday, Rabuka announced he was “satisfied” with Japan’s efforts to demonstrate that the release will be safe.
He said he had read the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report which “works for us” and that he “trusts their expert judgment and monitoring process”.
He also encouraged others to read the report.
“It is my job as a leader to treasure and reassure myself and to reassure you that I am paying close attention to this,” he said.
“With Japanese friends and other partners including the IAEA, I will personally be ensuring the highest possible standards of safety and protection for our vast liquid continent and under my leadership, Fiji will continue to defend our precious Pacific home.”
The IAEA has said Japan has checked off all boxes to ensure the imminent release of the treated nuclear waste would be consistent with international standards.
AFG Fiji ‘deeply concerned’
However, the Alliance for Future Generation Fiji said it was “deeply concerned” and “condemned” Rabuka’s stance.The group is urging Rabuka to reconsider “and take a stronger position” on the issue.
AFG Fiji said releasing treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean would have “far-reaching consequences for the entire Pacific region and beyond”.
“This action has the potential to inflict lasting damage to marine ecosystems, threatening the livelihoods of countless communities that depend on the ocean for sustenance and economic well-being. Our concerns regarding this matter are deeply rooted in the Pacific Ocean as a source of identity for all Pacific communities,” AFG Fiji said.
“We urge the Fiji Prime Minister and by extension, his government, to reconsider its stance and take a stronger position in advocating for the implementation of alternative, safe, and sustainable solutions for the Fukushima nuclear wastewater.
“We also urge Pacific leaders to trust the independent panel of scientific experts, appointed by the Pacific Islands Forum to review the data and information provided by Japan. As members of the global community, it is our collective responsibility to uphold principles of environmental stewardship and to prioritise the health and safety of our oceans and the lives they sustain,” the NGO said.
The campaigners are also calling on the international community to show solidarity and “demand that Japan seeks alternative solutions to handle its nuclear waste responsibly”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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Statement from Keith Brooks, Programs Director
Eighty per cent of Ontarians believe the province should be powered by clean energy, while 74 per cent believe the province should ramp up clean electricity investments
#MyGreenFlag campaign educates the public about accessible green energy solutions and helps identify unsustainable #RedFlags that harm the environment
Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Huron-Wendat – A new Abacus poll, released today, shows that Ontario residents want clean energy advancements, believe it offers competitive economic advantages, and want it adopted immediately, but when it comes to their own homes energy needs, there is low awareness of eco-friendly technologies.
To increase awareness in Ontario about eco-friendly solutions like heat pumps, electric stoves, solar panels and more, Environmental Defence is launching #MyGreenFlags. Using cheeky and inviting language, the campaign leans into the popular social media trend where people share what they want in a relationship (#GreenFlags) and what they don’t want (#RedFlags). Like a long-term relationship, home energy retrofits take commitment and spotting those green and red flags before taking the plunge is crucial to maximizing efficiency and cost-savings while minimizing environmental impact. The website GreenFlags.ca links Ontario residents to information about government programs that offer financial incentives for residential retrofits.
Different levels of government, including municipalities like the City of Toronto and the City of Ottawa as well as the federal government, offer grants and loans to encourage residents to purchase eco-friendly solutions like heat pumps or EV chargers. Despite being readily available, the poll found 50 per cent of Ontarians are unaware of federal programs that offer financial incentives for retrofits.
Similarly, awareness of eco-friendly options is also low. Just 34 per cent of Ontarians have heard about electric heat pumps and know what they do. Heat pumps, a simple but effective technology, use electricity to remove heat from inside your home to cool it in the summer and pull heat in from outside to heat your home in the winter. Far more energy efficient than a gas furnace, using a heat pump can provide significant energy bill savings, while offering protection from volatile gas prices, which can fluctuate wildly depending on global markets. And, kicking gas out of your home is good for your health and the climate. Gas is made mostly of methane – a climate-damaging fossil fuel that is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
According to the International Energy Agency, heat pump sales growth nearly doubled in Europe in 2022, largely driven by rising gas prices. Last year, three million heat pumps were sold in Europe, bringing the region’s total to 20 million, with Europe aiming to double that to over 45 million by 2030.
In Canada, heat pump adoption has been relatively slow by comparison. Between 2005–2019, heat pump use increased by just one per cent, from four to five per cent of Canadian homes. Stats Canada’s most recent statistics report that just six per cent of Canadian homes relied on heat pumps in 2021. Still, research shows heat pump adoption must increase to 10 per cent for Canada to reach its 2030 climate goal.
The Abacus poll also found just two per cent of Ontarians report owning a heat pump. With Ontario’s population of 14.53 million, that works out to under 300,000 Ontarians.
While sustainable technologies like heat pumps can save residents money and reduce a home’s carbon footprint, system-wide changes like cleaning up Canada’s gas-powered electricity grid, are essential for Canada to meet its goals of 2030 emissions reduction targets and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
The federal government has promised to deliver 100 per cent clean power across Canada by 2050. A strong majority of Ontario residents, 80 per cent, believe that’s the right thing to do.
But, after cancelling 750 renewable energy contracts, Ontario is now attempting to take advantage of a loophole in the draft regulations that permits new gas plants to be built before 2025 and operate beyond 2035.
“The federal government must stop Ontario and other provinces from building new gas infrastructure. The science is clear that we need to stop building new fossil fuel projects. With Ontarians already suffering from climate impacts including record-breaking heat waves and wildfires, Ontario should be ramping up renewable energy projects, not polluting ‘natural’ gas power plants,” says Keith Brooks, Environmental Defence’s Programs Director.
Ontario residents clearly want more clean electricity, and quickly. Eighty-one per cent of Ontarians believe clean electricity offers a competitive advantage for the economy, while 73 per cent believe Canada must invest in clean electricity or risk falling behind the United States. And 74 per cent of Ontarians believe the province can’t move fast enough to ramp up clean electricity – which positions the province’s plan completely opposite to public opinion and interest.
Yet, Ontario’s electricity operator recently announced contracts for two new gas plants in Windsor and St. Clair Township as well as capacity expansions and contract extensions for plants in Toronto, Brampton, Halton Hills, Thorold, St. Clair, and King. The electricity operator’s numbers show that ramping up gas generation will increase harmful emissions by over 400 per cent by 2023, and by almost 800 per cent by 2040.
“Phasing out gas generation in Ontario is completely feasible if the province were to choose clean solutions like solar and wind, paired with battery storage, which allows the energy to be used when needed. A recent report found that 64 wind farms on the Great Lakes alone could produce enough electricity to meet all of Ontario’s needs, which would be substantially better for consumers’ budgets and our climate,” Brooks says.
Visit GreenFlags.ca for information on government incentives and eco-friendly solutions for your home.
ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.
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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:
Carolyn Townend, Environmental Defence, media@environmentaldefence.ca
The post New Study Finds Low Awareness Among Ontarians About Eco-friendly Technologies that can Cut Energy Bills appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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With the Tokyo Electric Power Company planning to begin a release of 1.3 million tonnes of treated wastewater from the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan next month, reports of radioactive fish in the area have raised alarm in recent years — and new reporting on Sunday revealed that the problem is far from mitigated, prompting questions about how dangerous the company’s plan…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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When they were invented in the ’90s, renewable energy certificates were meant to stimulate the green energy market. Back then, building wind and solar farms was way more expensive than it is today. The idea was that renewable energy producers could sell certificates that represented the “greenness” of the energy they made. Anyone buying those certificates, or RECs, could claim that green power and also claim they were helping the environment.
For years, corporations have bought RECs as a low-commitment way to claim they’re “going green” – all while using the same old fossil fuel-powered electricity.
So how exactly do RECs help the climate crisis? This week, Reveal investigates RECs and finds that the federal government uses them to pad its environmental stats.Reveal’s Will Evans starts with Auden Schendler, the man in charge of sustainability at Aspen Skiing Co. Schendler initially convinced his company to buy RECs to go green, then realized he made a mistake. But even after he spoke out and evidence piled up showing that RECs were ineffective, other companies kept buying them – and the federal government did, too. Evans and Reveal’s Melissa Lewis determined that since 2010, more than half of what the government has claimed as renewable energy was just cheap RECs.
Next, Reveal’s Najib Aminy takes us to Palm Beach County, Florida, to find out where some RECs are made: in a trash incinerator. Amid all the sounds and smells of burning garbage, Aminy looks into whether buying RECs actually helps the environment and where the money goes. He meets Andrew Byrd, who lives nearby and worries about the fumes. It turns out that federal agencies bought RECs from this incinerator in order to meet renewable energy mandates.
Finally, we explore another place where the government buys RECs: two biomass plants in Georgia, where residents complained of toxic pollution. Evans looks into where the government’s modest environmental goals come from and why federal agencies buy RECs in the first place. He also talks to a REC industry veteran and examines how a plan from the Biden administration could change things.
Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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By Eleisha Foon, RNZ journalist
A new report has found practical solutions to address climate change in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), including raising roads and using mangrove forests.
Decision-makers have been urged to prepare for major changes.
These include heatwaves, stronger typhoons, a declining ecosystem, threatened food security and increased health issues.
The research is part of a series of reports by the Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment, with support of several government, NGO, and research entities.
Climate variability and extreme events have brought unprecedented challenges to remote atoll communities of Micronesia, especially in the state of Yap.
The report highlighted key issues for health, food security, agriculture, agroforestry, marine and disaster management sectors.
It also looked at the importance of using local knowledge and pairing this with new technology and science to help Micronesia adapt to climate change.
Hope for action
Coordinating lead author Zena Grecni hopes the findings will help policy-makers take action.“We could see a 20-50 percent decrease in coral reef fish by 2050,” Grecni warned.
Climate proofing
Coordinating lead author Zena Grecni . . . “We could see a 20-50 percent decrease in coral reef fish by 2050.” Image: RNZ Pacific The findings pushed for change at a “grass roots level,” and for state agencies to recognise the need for traditional knowledge and cultural resources in coastal adaptation measures.
About 89 percent of the FSM’s population lives within one kilometre of the coast, and buildings and infrastructure are vulnerable to coastal climate impacts.
The report looked at “climate proofing” interventions such as raising roads and using natural barriers like mangrove forests.
Mangroves have been shown to mitigate the effects of rising sea levels and are more effective long-term for sea level rise, instead of hard structures.
Another key priority was strengthening infrastructure like schools and medical centres.
Climate change in curricula
The report suggested climate change be included in school curricula to help inform future generations.It highlighted the importance of learning from local knowledge and historical experiences to inform the future of local food supply.
Indigenous practices such as stone-lined enclosures, taro plantings raised above coastal groundwater, and replanted mangroves, were set to respond to sea level rise.
In the past, these reports have been used by other Pacific Islands “as a tool for negotiation,” Grecni said.
The report authors hoped it would help Micronesia in the same way.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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More than half of the world’s population could be affected by surface water pollution by 2100, a new study said.
A team of international researchers found that poor surface water quality could affect 5.5 billion people by 2100, and people living in developing countries would be disproportionately affected, said the study published in the Nature Water journal on Tuesday.
Surface water pollution refers to the contamination of water bodies, such as rivers, lakes, and oceans, by harmful substances and pollutants from human activities or natural sources.
Climate change and socio-economic development (changes in population, land use, economic growth) are expected to affect water in the coming decades, said the study, which looked into their impacts on water temperature and salinity, organic and pathogen pollution.
The researchers found that Sub-Saharan Africa is likely to become a global hotspot of surface water pollution by the end of the century, irrespective of future climate and socio-economic scenarios.
“This occurs due to a combination of surface water quality deterioration and demographic changes (e.g., population growth),” the main co-author of the study, Edward Jones from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told RFA.
According to the study, the number of people exposed to pollutant concentrations could more than double under the most optimistic future scenario and rise up to five times under pessimistic assumptions.
Indian fishermen row past their boat as polythene bags and garbage litter the banks of the river Brahmaputra on a winter morning in Gauhati, India, Jan. 3, 2020. Credit: AP Jones said the East Asia and the Pacific region has historically been the dominant hotspot for surface water pollution.
“Our model results for the future (e.g., 2081-2100) suggest substantial improvements to surface water quality in the East Asia & Pacific region under all three scenarios,” he added.
Such scenarios range from a world characterized by sustainability and equality to resurging nationalism and widening inequality to strong but fossil-fueled economic development.
In the scenario of resurging nationalism and widening inequality, the influence of climate change and social development on surface water quality in the Asia-Pacific region has a greater impact on specific observed changes, with strong degradation seen in the Philippines, parts of Indonesia and Vietnam.
Jones said Southern Asia, like India, could see strong water quality deterioration under such specific climate change and socio-economic impact scenarios.
Change in biological oxygen demand concentration under resurging nationalism and widening inequality in 2081-2100 compared to 2005-2020. Credit: Edward Jones. The study is based on high-resolution global modeling of surface water quality to simulate water temperature, indicators of salinity, and organic and pathogen pollution between 2005 and 2100.
It said the proportion of the world’s population exposed to salinity, organic and pathogen pollution by the end of the century ranges between 17-27%, 20-37% and 22-44%, respectively.
According to the United Nations, the world population is projected to reach 10.4 billion by 2100.
Currently, more than a quarter of the world’s population relies on unsafe drinking water, according to UNESCO, with around 80% of people living under water stress in Asia; in particular, northeast China, as well as India and Pakistan.
UNICEF says more than 800,000 people die from diseases directly attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene practices.
According to Tuesday’s research, water quality can be influenced by pollutants from various water use sectors, including domestic, manufacturing, livestock, and irrigation activities. However, there is a lack of global consistency in the management practices necessary to mitigate these effects.
The findings highlight the need for measures to protect surface water resources and safeguard the well-being of communities, the researchers said.
They added that waterborne illnesses resulting from water contaminated with pathogens can present a considerable threat to human populations.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Subel Rai Bhandari for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Statement from Lana Goldberg, Ontario Climate Program Manager
Toronto | Traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Huron-Wendat – It is generous to call this document a plan – it doesn’t include forecasts for how Ontario will meet rising electricity demand, doesn’t specify what the planned supply mix might look like, and doesn’t provide emissions projections or cost estimations. This document is little more than a belated attempt to rationalize the government’s recent announcements for new nuclear and gas facilities.
It is certainly not a plan for clean energy generation – it’s a plan to keep critics at bay while the province keeps polluting and using antiquated and dangerous technologies. No matter how many wind and solar options are promised for some point in the distant future, building new polluting gas plants and new nuclear facilities now is unacceptable.
Numerous studies have shown that Ontario can meet its growing electricity demand with wind and solar, which can easily be combined with storage technologies to deliver power when needed. They are also cheaper and quicker to build, and offer lower electricity rates for the end consumer. There really is no reason to build new gas plants or nuclear power projects when we have cleaner, cheaper, and safer alternatives.
Despite language around Ontario having a clean energy advantage, this government is making the electricity grid dirtier. It just contracted two new gas plants in Windsor and St.Clair Township and is hoping to contract more in the coming year, likely next to existing facilities across Southern Ontario. Residents and council members should be on alert.
Background information:
- On May 16, 2023, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) announced contracts for gas-fired electricity generation projects including two new facilities in Windsor and St. Clair Township as well as expansion of facilities and extension of contracts in Toronto, Brampton, Halton Hills, and Thorold.
- On June 27th, 2023, the IESO announced capacity expansions and contract extensions for gas plants in St.Clair Township and King Township.
- The IESO plans to offer additional contracts for new gas plants (900 megawatt goal) as part of its long-term RFP procurement process, with announcements expected in the first or second quarter of 2024.
- The IESO projects greenhouse gas emissions from Ontario’s gas plants will increase by over 400 per cent by 2030 and almost 800 per cent by 2040 (compared to the 2017 level).
- On December 23, 2022, the Minister of Energy sent a letter to the IESO requiring new gas projects receive municipal resolutions in support.
- 34 Ontario municipalities have passed motions opposing the expansion of gas-fired electricity in Ontario.
- Wind and solar are now the cheapest form of new electricity generation and offer cheaper electricity rates than fossil gas and nuclear.
- A recent study from Clean Energy Canada shows that electricity from wind and solar is already cost-competitive with fossil gas generation in Ontario. When the current carbon price is taken into account, wind and solar are much cheaper than fossil gas.
Find out more about Ontario’s gas problem at NoMoreGasPlants.ca
ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy organization that works with government, industry and individuals to defend clean water, a safe climate and healthy communities.
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For more information or to request an interview, please contact:
Carolyn Townend, Environmental Defence, media@environmentaldefence.ca
The post Statement on the Powering Ontario’s Growth plan appeared first on Environmental Defence.
This post was originally published on Environmental Defence.
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