Burkina Faso denies it paid Russian fighters with mine rights

Reuters | December 20, 2022 

Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso. Credit: Wikipedia

Burkina Faso’s mines minister on Tuesday denied an allegation by the president of Ghana that Burkina Faso had paid Russian mercenaries by giving them the rights to a mine.


Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo caused a controversy by stating last week that Burkina Faso had hired mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group to help it fight Islamist militants.

“I believe a mine in southern Burkina has been allocated to them as a form of payment for their services,” Akufo-Addo said, speaking to reporters alongside U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Burkina Faso’s government has not formally confirmed or denied the allegation that it has made an agreement with Wagner, but it summoned the Ghanaian ambassador for a meeting on Friday to explain the president’s remarks.

“We have not granted any permit to a Russian company in southern Burkina,” said mines minister Simon Pierre Boussim, speaking to reporters after a meeting with civil society groups that were concerned about the allegations.

“We made a list of all the exploitation or research permits for large industrial mines in the south, so they can see clearly that there is no hidden site,” he said.

The Burkinabe government did recently award a new exploration permit to Russian firm Nordgold for a gold mine in Yimiougou, in the centre-north region, Boussim said, but the company has been active in Burkina Faso for over a decade.

Burkina Faso’s neighbour Mali hired Wagner last year to help it fight insurgents. The prospect of the group expanding its presence in Africa has troubled Western powers such as France and the United States, who say it exploits mineral resources and commits human rights abuses in countries where it operates.

(By Thiam Ndiaga and Nellie Peyton; Editing by David Evans)

Researchers chart environmentally friendlier methods to produce nitrogen fertilizer

Staff Writer | December 21, 2022 |

Nitrogen fertilizer plant. (Reference image by Tseno Tanev, Wikimedia Commons.)

Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Carnegie Institution for Science have shown how nitrogen fertilizer could be produced more sustainably, thus reducing countries’ dependence on imported natural gas.


In a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the researchers explain that intensive agriculture is possible only if the soil is fertilized with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. However, while phosphorus and potassium can be mined as salts, nitrogen fertilizer has to be produced laboriously from nitrogen in the air and hydrogen. The production of hydrogen is energy-intensive, currently requiring large quantities of natural gas or—as in China—coal.

The way nitrogen fertilizer has been produced so far means that besides having a correspondingly large carbon footprint, its manufacturing process is vulnerable to price shocks in the fossil fuels markets. Thus, the scientists evaluated three alternative options that may be environmentally friendlier and economically safer.

The first option is producing the necessary hydrogen using fossil fuels as in the business-as-usual, only instead of emitting the greenhouse gas CO2 into the atmosphere, it is captured in the production plants and permanently stored underground. This requires not only infrastructure for capturing, transporting and storing the CO2 but also correspondingly more energy. Despite this, it is a comparatively efficient production method. However, it does nothing to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

The second option involves electrifying fertilizer production by using water electrolysis to produce hydrogen. This requires, on average, 25 times as much energy as today’s production method using natural gas, so it would take huge amounts of electricity from carbon-neutral sources. For countries with an abundance of solar or wind energy, this might be an appealing approach. However, given plans to electrify other sectors of the economy in the name of climate action, it might lead to competition for sustainable electricity.

The third option is synthesizing hydrogen for fertilizer production from biomass. Since this option requires a lot of arable land and water, ironically this production method competes with food production. But the study’s authors point out that it makes sense if the feedstock is waste biomass—for example, crop residues.

The scientists state that the key to success is likely to be a combination of all these approaches depending on the country and specific local conditions and available resources.

“In any case, it is imperative that agriculture makes more efficient use of nitrogen fertilizers,” Lorenzo Rosa, co-author of the paper, said in a media statement. “Addressing problems like over-fertilization and food waste is also a way to reduce the need for fertilizer.”

Countries at risk

In the study, the researchers also sought to identify the countries of the world in which food security is currently at risk owing to their dependence on imports of nitrogen or natural gas. India, Brazil, China, France, Turkey and Germany are among the countries that are particularly vulnerable to price shocks in the natural gas and nitrogen markets.

On the other side of the spectrum are Russia, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the largest nitrogen-exporting nations. China is also among this group, although due to its size, it also has to import natural gas.

“Decarbonizing fertilizer production would in many cases reduce this vulnerability and increase food security,” the scientists point out. “At the very least, electrification via renewables or the use of biomass would reduce the dependence on natural gas imports.”

But everything has to be put in perspective and in this case, the authors note that all carbon-neutral methods of producing nitrogen fertilizer are more energy intensive than the current method of using fossil fuels. In other words, they are still vulnerable to certain price shocks—not on natural gas markets directly, but perhaps on electricity markets.

The team believes that, in the future, the countries that are likely to benefit from decarbonization are those that generate a lot of solar and wind power and also have sufficient reserves of land and water, such as Canada and the United States

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Ivanhoe Mines confirms link to Congo aide in copper corruption case

Bloomberg News | December 21, 2022 | 

Vidiye Tshimanga. Credit: Wikipedia

Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. confirmed a business relationship with a presidential aide who was arrested in a corruption case in Democratic Republic of Congo, where the firm controls one of the world’s biggest copper deposits.


Ivanhoe struck a deal last year with Vidiye Tshimanga, a top aide to Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi, the firm said in a statement on Dec. 14. He was arrested in September after a series of secretly-taped videos appeared to show him offering political protection for an unnamed mining deal in exchange for a stake in the venture.


In the videos, Tshimanga alleged he’d made a similar deal with Ivanhoe. Tshimanga, who is currently on trial in Congo for passive corruption and influence peddling, told Bloomberg in a message on Dec. 15 he would respond to Ivanhoe’s statement but has yet to do so.

“In early 2021, Ivanhoe Mines entered a term sheet with a Congolese entity beneficially owned by Mr. Vidiye Tshimanga for a joint venture on certain exploration licenses,” Ivanhoe told Bloomberg in an email. The deal is currently in arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris after Tshimanga’s company “reneged on the commercial terms of this agreement,” Ivanhoe said.

Term sheets are usually non-binding agreements that outline the terms of a transaction.

Key producer

Congo has some of world’s richest mineral reserves, and the country could play a critical role in alleviating long-term shortages of metals like copper and cobalt, which will be crucial in the global energy transition. Development of the nation’s mining sector has long been stymied by concerns about corruption, but Ivanhoe has helped to spearhead a wave of new investment into the country in recent years.

Ivanhoe holds almost 40% of Kamoa-Kakula copper project in southeastern Congo, the same-size stake as China’s Zijin Mining Group. Ivanhoe says it will become the second-largest copper project in the world.

Chinese investment company Crystal River Global Ltd. holds 0.8% and Congo’s government controls the remaining 20%. Ivanhoe also has multiple exploration permits in Congo’s copperbelt and the Kipushi zinc mine.

Congo is world’s third-largest producer of copper and the top source of key battery mineral cobalt.

“With Ivanhoe, Ivanhoe have 80, I have 20,” Tshimanga said in the videos, which were obtained and published Sept. 15 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. It wasn’t clear what he was referring to.

Tshimanga’s company, Congo Bantu Mining Sarl, or Cobamin, has three exploration permits that adjoin several concessions owned by Vancouver-based Ivanhoe in southeastern Congo, according to the country’s mining registry map.

On Tuesday, Ivanhoe said the term sheet “envisaged an earn-in” for Cobamin’s permits.

“These final agreements were never signed, considering that Cobamin kept on renegotiating the terms initially set out in the term sheet,” Ivanhoe told Bloomberg by email Tuesday. “No payment was made to Cobamin under this proposed agreement.”

Special treatment

On Dec. 15, Washington-based anti-corruption group The Sentry published a report alleging Ivanhoe had received special treatment by cutting politically connected individuals into deals in Congo.

Ivanhoe’s stock plunged as much as 12% on the same date, its biggest intraday decline since June, after the Globe and Mail reported Canadian police searched the company’s offices last year for information on bank transfers relating to its mining operations in Congo.

The company said the search had nothing to do with its mining operations and was about an electricity project not owned by Ivanhoe. It had previously disclosed the search of its Vancouver offices and it said in a separate statement Monday that no charges had been filed in the case.

The search warrant relates to Stucky Ltd., which is now part of Gruner AG, and Stucky Technologies, and Congo’s state-owned power company, SNEL, according to the Ivanhoe statement.

The Sentry report describes payments made to Stucky Technologies. It is not clear if Stucky Technologies is related to Stucky Ltd. or Basel-based Gruner, which did not respond to emailed questions from Bloomberg Monday.

An Ivanhoe spokesman told Bloomberg that the company had “disclosed as much as we have been advised to about that situation given the state of the ongoing investigation and parties involved.”

“Both the Sentry report and the Globe and Mail article are rife with misleading content that selectively discloses supposed facts,” Ivanhoe said. “This tactic has the effect of impugning Ivanhoe Mines’ reputation, adversely impacting its business and negatively impacting public Canadian corporations operating internationally.”

Ivanhoe conducts its business in line with Congolese and international laws, it said.

Ivanhoe’s arbitration with Cobamin is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2023, it said Tuesday. The company will need to decide whether to confirm its request for implementation of the term sheet, convert it into a request for damages, or drop the arbitration, Ivanhoe said.

(By Michael J. Kavanagh, with assistance from Mark Burton and Thomas Biesheuvel)

Related: Ivanhoe Mines hits back at Sentry, Globe and Mail reports on police search of Vancouver office

Terrafame to start mining uranium in Finland by mid-2024

Cecilia Jamasmie | December 21, 2022 

Terrafame’s production process enables the low concentration of natural uranium found in the ore to be used as a by-product. (Image courtesy of Terrafame.)

Finland’s Terrafame will start recovering natural uranium as a byproduct of zinc and nickel production at its Sotkamo mine, in the home country, by mid 2024.


The miner, in which the Finnish state has a 67.1% stake and commodities trader Trafigura holds a 31.1% interest, is aiming to produce 200 tonnes per year by 2026, it said on Wednesday.

Terrafame, formerly known as Talvivaara, intends to refine the uranium into yellowcake, used as fuel for nuclear power plants. The commodity has so far been waste from processing the metals extracted at Sotkamo. These include nickel and cobalt sulphates for electric vehicle (EV) batteries as well as other minerals.

“As the recovery begins, Terrafame will become a Finnish uranium producer, and thus will also play a role in building Europe’s energy self-sufficiency,” chief executive officer Joni Lukkaroinen said in the statement.

“The utilization of Terrafame’s natural uranium in energy production helps in achieving climate goals since nuclear power does not result in carbon dioxide emissions in the production process. As an energy source, it is stable,” Lukkaroinen said.
Europe’s only uranium recovery operation

The company has a ready-built uranium recovery plant on site, which it says it will be Europe’s only uranium recovery operation. It will increase its net sales by about 25 million euros ($27m) per year, from 378 million euros ($401m) in 2021, it said.

Terrafame, one of Europe’s largest nickel miners, churned out last year about 28,600 tonnes of nickel and 54,400 tonnes of zinc. It also began producing battery chemicals from its own minerals at its northeastern Finland mine.

The Finnish government authorized uranium production in 2020, but environmental organizations took the decision to the courts as they feared the effects it would have in the environment.

Before uranium recovery at Sotkamo can be commissioned, the country’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority will have to verify that the company’s operations are in line with the Nuclear Energy Act’s principles.

UEC wins $17.8m award from Department of Energy to supply uranium concentrates

Staff Writer | December 21, 2022 

Uranium Energy’s Palangana ISR uranium mine in south Texas. Credit: Uranium Energy

Uranium Energy Corp. (NYSE American: UEC) has been awarded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) – National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to supply 300,000 pounds of uranium concentrates at $59.50/lb. for a total of $17.85 million. The award is in response to the NNSA’s request for proposals to establish its strategic national Uranium Reserve program.


The Uranium Reserve was originally designed as a 10-year, $1.5 billion, plan to help revitalize the US uranium and conversion industry. The award under the RFP is part of the initial $75 million authorized by Congress in 2020 to advance the US government’s goal of supporting America’s nuclear fuel supply chain and capabilities.

The delivery will be made by book transfer to NNSA in the first quarter of 2023, with US origin uranium currently held in the accounts of UEC.

“We are honoured and delighted to be selected as a domestic producer for this purchase of uranium concentrates by the NNSA and look forward to the further expansion of the Uranium Reserve program in the coming years,” UEC CEO Amir Adnani said in a news release.

He noted that the US nuclear reactor fleet, which provides about 20% of America’s electricity production and over half of its clean energy, imports nearly 60% of its current uranium requirements from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

“The US overdependence on these imports creates untenable energy and national security risks that need immediate high-priority attention from industry and the federal government,” Adnani said.

“The Uranium Reserve is an important step to help rebuild America’s nuclear fuel capabilities, not only as a backup to mitigate potential supply disruptions, but also to revitalize US capability to fuel the existing reactor fleet as well as new advanced reactors. We are looking forward to the continued improvement in the nuclear fuel markets and further expanding UEC’s production capabilities to help supply America’s uranium needs,” Spencer Abraham, UEC chairman and former US Energy Secretary, added.

UEC is currently the largest diversified uranium company in North America, with in-situ recovery (ISR) mining uranium projects in the US and high-grade conventional projects in Canada. It has two production-ready ISR hub-and-spoke platforms in southern Texas and Wyoming, both anchored by fully operational central processing plants and served by seven ISR uranium projects.

The company is closing in on initial production at its Texas platform following approval last month of an amended radioactive material licence (RML) for the Hobson central processing plant, which would see its capacity rise by four-fold to 4 million pounds of U3O8 (uranium oxide) annually, distinguishing the Hobson plant as having the largest licensed capacity in Texas and the second largest in the country.

Shares of UEC rose 5.4% on the NYSE by 11:20 a.m. ET Wednesday, giving the company a market capitalization of $1.35 billion.

Panama orders First Quantum to halt copper mine operations

Reuters | December 19, 2022 | 

The mill at the Cobre Panama operation. Credit: First Quantum Minerals.

First Quantum Minerals must make a plan to halt work at its copper mine in Panama then go ahead with the scheme within two days of approval, the Central American country said after it and the Canadian company had failed to agree on boosting taxes from the project.


The company has 10 days to present the plan for the Cobre Panama mine, which the government has said accounts for 3.5% of gross domestic product, according to a resolution of the Commerce and Industry Ministry published in Panama’s official gazette.

First Quantum can appeal against the ministry’s order within five days, however.

IN DEPTH: Panama to shut down First Quantum’s giant copper mine

A spokesperson for First Quantum did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ministry’s order.

Panamanian authorities reached the decision after both parties missed a deadline last week to finalize a deal that would have increased annual payments to the government to at least $375 million.

First Quantum says the mine is the largest private investment in Panama.

(By Valentine Hilaire; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Bradley Perrett)

Transparency International denounces lack of clarity in Cobre Panamá’s negotiations

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | December 18, 2022 |

Cobre Panamá operation. (Image by First Quantum Minerals).

The Panamanian chapter of Transparency International (TI) issued a communiqué denouncing what the organization deems as a lack of clarity in the negotiations between the government of President Laurentino Cortizo and Minera Panamá, the local subsidiary of First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM).


Back on Friday, the Panamanian government ordered the Canadian miner to halt operations at its Cobre Panamá copper mine after it failed to agree on the terms of a new contract.

The move came after First Quantum missed a Wednesday night deadline to ink a new royalty deal that has been in the works since September 2021.

“The case of Minera Panamá is a clear example of the lack of transparency displayed by several administrations, including the current one,” TI’s media statement reads.

“Since the Executive announced, back in January 2022, that it had reached an agreement with the company, guaranteeing a minimum payment of $375 million per year and an increase in royalties, little to no information had been disclosed until yesterday when the suspension measures of Minera Panamá’s commercial activities were announced.”

In the view of the NGO, the lack of open information hinders the ability of the Panamanian population to assess whether the government is defending people’s best interests or whether there are conflicts of interest or undue influences at play in the negotiations.

The brief compares the dealings with Minera Panamá to those related to the renewal of a contract with Panamá Ports a year ago. According to TI, such negotiations were done in a shady way and resulted in the government accepting insufficient remuneration for the use of the Panama Canal and allowing a company to monopolize it for the next 25 years.

“The legal obligation of being transparent and allowing access to public information has regressed alarmingly in this administration, both being replaced by unprecedented silence, illegal refusals, and impunity,” the communiqué reads.

“Democracy, which these days is threatened in many parts of the world, requires citizens to actively and permanently defend it, demanding accountability from institutions, officials and politicians.

Panama leaves door open to eleventh-hour deal for giant mine

Bloomberg News | December 17, 2022 | 

Cobre Panamá mine. (Image by First Quantum Minerals).

A shock announcement by Panama to intervene in a privately run copper mine may not be as definitive as first thought.


First Quantum Minerals Ltd. continues to mine the massive Cobre Panama open-pit despite a government order to close commercial operations after talks for a new tax arrangement collapsed, people with knowledge of the situation said.

In addition, the administration of President Laurentino Cortizo hasn’t closed the door to a resumption of talks, they said, asking not to be named discussing private information.

That’s a less black and white picture than earlier in the week when Cortizo declared negotiations over and instructed the Commerce Ministry to put the mine on care and maintenance. The government was also said to be seeking another operator to replace Vancouver-based First Quantum.

The wiggle room appears to be in the fact that halting the mine requires a resolution to rescind contracts, potentially giving the two sides a window of time to reach a deal.

The collapse in talks caught investors by surprise given how much is at stake for both sides if the operation is seized.

The mine, which cost at least $10 billion to build, is by far First Quantum’s biggest asset as well as an economic engine for the country. Ripping up contracts would be a hammer blow to the company and to Panama’s investor-friendly reputation, as well as potentially setting off a massive legal case.

Earlier Friday, the company signaled it hadn’t given up hope after coming “very close to an agreement” before the government pulled the plug. On the same day, Cortizo said that while everything had been suspended, “we can’t discard anything for obvious reasons.”

(By James Attwood and Yvonne Yue Li, with assistance from Michael McDonald)

Shutting huge copper project shows why miners worry about starting them
Bloomberg News | December 16, 2022 

Cobre Panama mine at night. Image by First Quantum Minerals.

Panama’s decision to close a giant copper mine couldn’t come at a worse time for the market, and highlights the risk of investing big in some projects.


Just when the world faces a looming shortage of copper — a metal essential for the green revolution — Panama on Thursday said it will halt commercial operations at the Cobre Panamá operated by Canada’s First Quantum Minerals Ltd. It followed the breakdown of tax talks and is a rare move among Latin American countries.


The mine, which is one of the world’s newest and can produce about 300,000 tons a year of copper, cost at least $10 billion to build.

The industry has long feared resource nationalism, where assets can be stripped from them in extreme cases. Investing can be a huge risk when billions of dollars must often be spent up to a decade before a mine turns a profit. The fear of losing assets or having to renegotiate terms with governments has led the sector to shy away from what are often perceived as the riskiest jurisdictions.

For example, mining heavyweight BHP Group for years only invested in what it saw as safe countries, while rich deposits remained undeveloped in the riskiest places.

In the short term, halting output at Cobre Panama will add to already tight supplies. In recent weeks both Glencore Plc and Anglo American Plc have lowered copper production goals for the coming years. But the impact on companies’ willingness to build more mines could be more significant, according to BMO Capital Markets.

“Perhaps more important however is the precedent this might set for government action, which would naturally make companies more cautious to invest (particularly in non-mining jurisdictions),” BMO analyst Colin Hamilton said.

Warnings that the world needs more copper keep coming. Glencore Chief Executive Officer Gary Nagle earlier this month said there’s a cumulative gap between projected demand and supply of 50 million tons between 2022 and 2030. That compares with current world copper demand of about 25 million tons a year.

Copper miners and analysts have forecast growing deficits starting in the mid-2020s, driven by rising demand for the metal in wind and solar farms, high voltage cables and electric vehicles.

(By Thomas Biesheuvel)

California congressman perfectly sums up what is wrong with US mining policy

Frik Els | December 21, 2022 | 

California congressman Tom McClintock speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2011. Image credit: Gage Skidmore.

With ample reserves, the US has a number of uncommitted mining projects that would support COPxx climate change targets and the Biden administration’s lofty green energy transition and electric vehicle ambitions under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).


A top contender is the Resolution project in Arizona, near the town of Superior in the area known as the Copper Triangle, where mining activity dates back to the 1870s.


The deposit was discovered in 1995 and contained copper tops 10 million tonnes worth nearly $90 billion at today’s prices. The sixth-largest measured copper orebody in the world, it’s a deep underground, high-grade mine using block cave technology that shrinks its environmental footprint.

The world’s number one and two mining companies, BHP and majority shareholder in the project Rio Tinto, have already spent $2 billion on it, including reclamation of a historical mine.

Resolution Copper has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past and in 2014 former president Obama signed into law a Pentagon bill that included a clause inserted by then Arizona Senator John McCain allowing for a land swap so that the project can advance.

Trump, five days before leaving office, published a pivotal report – the Final Environmental Impact Statement – on the project, clearing the last major hurdle for construction to begin, which would take another decade to the start of commercial production.

The thousands of jobs and billions in state and federal revenue the mine will create over its 40+ year life makes Resolution the perfect candidate for fast tracking and government support under the IRA.

Right?

Wrong.

Biden rescinded the FEIS two months after its publication and Democrats also added specific wording to the infrastructure bill that would block the project.

And so 28 years after discovery, Resolution remains stuck in development hell.

Last month Resolution came before the House Natural Resources committee.

Under discussion was resolution 1378, which is so modest in its ambition, that it’s hard to imagine that the meeting went on for nearly an hour-and-a-half:

“Of inquiry requesting the President and directing the Secretary of Agriculture to transmit, respectively, certain documents to the House of Representatives relating to Resolution Copper mine.”

So in short, in the interest of transparency and oversight, show us the documents you used to throw out a 6-volume, nearly 3,000 page study.

The narrow ambit of the resolution did not stop committee members from airing their views on January 6, the Ukraine war, the “Gestapo tactics” of the Biden administration and at one point the Chair even accused another member of calling him a “copper thief”.

Among the submissions at the meeting was that of Congressman Tom McClintock representing the 4th District of California. Around the 17:00 min mark McClintock perfectly sums up what’s wrong with US mining policy:

“Mr Chairman I simply want to implore you and your democratic colleagues to reconsider the policies you have been pursuing.

“On the one hand you want to mandate not only electric cars but industrial scale backup batteries for wind and solar farms all in the name of saving the planet.

“Yet on the other hand you want to radically restrict mining; also in the name of saving the planet.

“Well you can’t do both.”

The resolution, which again, does nothing but request documents, was adopted by a 22 to 21 vote.

Its worth watching McClintock’s full comments which includes choice phrases like “childish fantasies” and “absurdities” in this clip. Or gluttons for punishment can watch the entire proceeding here.

Lockdown, bad breeds or just poor training? Why are dog bites on the rise in Britain?

In a normal year there are around three fatalities from dog attacks; this year there have been nine. What has happened – and can anything be done?

There is mixed evidence on whether some breeds attack more than others.

 Photograph: Jack Sullivan/Alamy

Emine Saner
@eminesaner

THE GUARDIAN

Mon 12 Dec 2022 

On a normal morning on a normal walk to school in Ramsgate, east Kent, Sophie and her three children saw their neighbour and his dog on the street and stopped to chat. “The kids pet the dog, everything’s normally fine,” she says. “And it all seemed fine the day it happened – there were no warning signs. I said: ‘Right, come on, we’ve got to get to school because we’re going to end up being late.’” Her seven-year-old son, Louis, gave the dog – a St Bernard and Japanese akita cross – one last stroke on its back, then the dog turned around, sank its jaws into his face and pinned him to the floor.

She and the owner grabbed the dog. Her other two children ran off in panic, a man came running out of a nearby business with a first-aid kit thinking there had been a car accident because of all the screaming, and Sophie held her son’s face to her chest to try to stop the bleeding. A paramedic car arrived and took Louis to a nearby park, from where he was airlifted to hospital, and into surgery. The dog, says Sophie, “had punctured straight through his top lip, and through his gums. It went through one side of his nostril.” On the other side, Louis had a 5cm laceration along his jaw. “The surgeon said if the dog had got him a little lower, we would have lost him. It was right next to his jugular.” Louis’s skin was pieced back together, and has healed well, says Sophie, although there is scarring. “It’s a constant reminder whenever you look at him.”

The number of injuries from dog bites has been increasing. Between 1998 and 2018, hospital admissions for dog-related injuries doubled in England, with about 8,000 people admitted each year. At Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool, the number of children attending A&E for dog bites tripled during the first Covid lockdown.

More alarmingly, this year will be the worst for dog-related deaths. There are believed to have been nine people killed by dogs this year in England and Wales. In January, John William Jones, 68, died after being bitten by dogs at a house in Ceredigion, west Wales. Two months later, Kyra King, a three-month-old baby, died from her injuries following an attack by her family’s husky in Lincolnshire; her parents appeared in court last month. Just over two weeks later, 17-month-old Bella-Rae Birch died after being attacked at home in Merseyside by a dog that had just joined their family. A week after that, a two-year-old boy, Lawson Bond, died after an attack in Worcestershire by three dogs. After Joanne Robinson, 43, was killed by her dog at home in Rotherham in July, her mother reported that she had warned Robinson to get rid of him because he had started fighting with her other dog.

Between 2001 and 2021, the average was 3.3 dog-related deaths a year. It is still too early to tell whether this year marks something new or is a terrible anomaly (as well as a tragedy for the families involved), says John Tulloch, a vet and epidemiologist at the University of Liverpool, who researches dog-related injuries and deaths. What is clear, though, is that this isn’t because there are more dogs now.

Dog ownership soared during the pandemic, by about 10% to an estimated more than 10m, but dog-related injuries were rising even before that, when ownership was relatively stable. “There are relatively more bites per dog than there used to be, so it can’t solely be to do with the fact that we’ve got more dogs in the country,” says Tulloch. Dogs are biting more, and nobody knows why.

Tulloch says he was “quite surprised by the extent of it, for it to have gone up as much as it did, but also in the demographics”. Among those bitten by dogs, children have always been at higher levels, but this hasn’t really changed over the 20-year period Tulloch looked at. “The main growth in dog bites was to adults – that was something that we were not expecting, and we still don’t really know why that’s occurred.”

There are several theories to the overall rise. “It could be to do with how we’re sourcing dogs,” says Tulloch. “We know that with young puppies, if they’re not socialised in the right way, and they don’t come from a good background, then there’s the potential that they could have behavioural issues when they’re older.” With online advertising, it is easy to get a dog, and high prices may have led to unscrupulous breeders. “It could be that more people are buying puppies of unknown backgrounds that haven’t been socialised or looked after very well when they’re little.”

Before the pandemic, it was becoming clear that many owners weren’t looking after their dogs correctly – not something that is likely to have improved now that many new dog owners are expected to be back in the office. “Over half of UK dogs weren’t meeting their daily exercise requirements and around about a quarter were spending more than five hours alone at home every day,” says Tulloch. “That could lead to dogs getting frustrated.”

Another theory, he says, is that people are not good at “reading” dogs, and that social media has encouraged people to view them as happy when dog experts would read the animal’s body language as the opposite. “I do think the way you see people interacting with dogs on social media is very different to what was occurring, say, 20 or 30 years ago,” says Tulloch, although he acknowledges that social media may simply have made it more visible. A video showing a dog “smiling” might get rewarded with a lot of likes and shares. “But that dog isn’t smiling – it’s showing its teeth, and that’s a sign that it’s stressed and uncomfortable, so the potential that that dog could then go on to bite is greater.” He has seen shared videos of very small children or babies with dogs, “and in a lot of those videos, the dog is almost frozen in that scenario – that’s another classic sign that the dog is uncomfortable”.

A ‘smiling’ dog could actually be angry.

 Photograph: Julius Jimm Bangyao/Getty Images/EyeEm

Carri Westgarth, senior lecturer in human-animal interaction at the University of Liverpool and author of The Happy Dog Owner, says there are early signs that might tell us a dog is feeling overwhelmed or threatened before it gets to biting point. These include, she says, “excessive licking, excessive yawning, turning their head away, raising a paw, showing the whites of their eyes, and rolling over and showing their belly”. A dog will usually try to get away from a situation rather than bite, she says. “The problem is, these signals get ignored and the dog may be chased or trapped when trying to move away. Therefore they escalate to freezing, growling, snapping or biting.” Another issue is when a dog has learned that these early signs get ignored by their human, “and then just go for the snap, out of the blue. Bites also often occur whilst playing or frustrated, so make sure not to wind dogs up too much.” She advises reading books and watching videos on YouTube on dogs’ body language.

We also probably expect more from our dogs than ever before, she says. “It’s a busy, stressful world even for us, and we expect our dogs to come everywhere with us, and cope with all the places and people. Unless dogs have been bred from parents with nice and confident temperaments, and are well-socialised and trained when they are young, they may struggle to cope when they are older. This is why there are concerns about ‘pandemic puppies’ who could not be socialised at the time and, due to demand, many likely came from poor breeding environments.” The familiar saying “there’s no such thing as a bad dog, just a bad owner” isn’t helpful or true, says Westgarth. “As an owner we can try to do all the ‘right’ things”, but the dog’s genetics and early experiences are beyond our control.

If a dog does bite, Westgarth says “some sort of shock can startle them enough to let go, such as shouting, a loud noise or pouring a lot of water on them suddenly. Then try to put a barrier between you and the dog.” If a dog is attached, try not to pull yourself away – easier said than done in the moment, she acknowledges – “but stay still so that it is less likely to tear the flesh. However, most bites are quick and last a second, if that. A dog consistently attacking or not letting go is less likely, depending on the breed and the reason for attack. Then secure the dog in a safe place as soon as you can.”

The bite to her hand that Deborah received this summer was so fast, she didn’t realise the dog had bitten her. She was passing a young woman and a lurcher on the pavement in a village in Derbyshire. “I don’t actually recall the dog jumping at me; I just suddenly felt this pain in my hand, and all this blood coming out.” The owner, she says, “seemed more upset than I was. I think I was in shock.” She remembers the dog sitting very obediently by its owner, but it was shaking. Deborah went to A&E and now has a three-inch scar across her hand. “I’ve got very little feeling in my right thumb, and the back of the hand where the scar is, there’s no feeling there. The skin is very tight.”

The police came to see her a couple of weeks later and told her that the dog would be muzzled and the owner and dog would be going for training. “I didn’t want it put to sleep,” says Deborah. “Unless it’s got previous [history of biting], I wouldn’t want a healthy animal put to sleep. A lot of people said to me: ‘You need to get the dog put down’, because where my hand was is the height of a child’s face. If it had been a child, it would have been a completely different story.” The experience, she says, “has shaken my confidence. If I see a dog coming, I do try and avoid it if I possibly can. Not to the extent of crossing the road, but certainly moving out of the way, and not trying to make any sort of move.”

Most bites – more than 80% – occur at home, by a dog known to the victim. “That’s one of the difficulties – a lot of what’s going on is happening behind closed doors, so to try and understand exactly what was preceding the bite is difficult,” says Tulloch. It also means the true figure for dog bites is likely to be far higher than the hospital admissions we know about. “Below that, you’ve got A&E and minor injury unit attendance, and we don’t know that figure. And then there’s going to be a whole bunch of other people that have been bitten by dogs that will treat themselves.”

An American XL bully. Photograph: Tierfotoagentur/Alamy

A general lack of data – about true figures for injuries, and about demographics of owners or breeds – means it is impossible to get a good picture, or to know what to do about it. Of the nine deaths this year, six involved a breed known as an American XL bully, a large muscular breed originating in the American pit bull terrier, but Tulloch says we don’t have the evidence to say it’s a dangerous breed. (In the UK, only four breeds are banned under the Dangerous Dogs Act, including pit bull terriers, though the idea of banning breeds in itself is controversial.) “With the hospital records, we don’t have any [breed] information. On top of that, we don’t know what the makeup of the dog population is in the UK so, with XL bullies, we’ve got no idea how many there are in the country. If we look at other countries where work has been done on that, no country has found that one breed of dog is more likely to cause bites than others.” A bigger breed can potentially do more damage, he says, “but fundamentally, any dog can bite”.

There are things that could help, such as educating owners about dog body language, as would “simple steps, like getting the message across to never leave a child alone with the dog because children are a lot more vulnerable to severe injury”. He would like to see more control over how and where people can purchase dogs, and have a central microchip database (all dogs have to be microchipped by the age of eight weeks, but private microchip companies keep their records). “Even just having an understanding of the dog population, so that we can say: ‘This area has a high number of dogs; does it have a high number of bites? Or is there something else going on there that we don’t know about yet?’” An earlier study found hospital admissions from dog bites were three times as likely in deprived areas of the country. In Merseyside, which has the highest number of dog attacks, the Merseyside Dog Safety Partnership has been formed, bringing together the University of Liverpool researchers with others, including the police, NHS and dog charities to research behaviour and prevent injuries.

The UK used to have a dog licence, abandoned in 1987, and Tulloch isn’t necessarily keen on a return. “If it’s just paying an amount of money to say you have the dog and nothing else happens, I’m not sure what difference that is going to make.” Angus Nurse, head of criminology and criminal justice at Nottingham Trent University agrees. “Licences don’t necessarily, by themselves, solve the problem. They don’t necessarily do anything about the behavioural issues.”

Nurse, previously at Middlesex University, led a study published in December 2021 into measures that might reduce dog attacks and promote responsible dog ownership. It was commissioned by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which has established a working group to look at the recommendations; conclusions are expected next year. “We looked at a whole load of literature around dog attacks, held some focus groups, spoke to veterinary professionals, police officers, enforcers in local authorities, and animal behaviour specialists,” says Nurse. “The main thing that came back was that most of the attacks are probably preventable.”

Among the recommendations are the need for more and better data on dog attacks, to understand more about the dog and the context in which the incident happened, and more consistent dog-control enforcement. New requirements for owners could include having a “clean” dog-owning record (with no dog-related complaints against them) and proof they have a level of knowledge about care. Where there are control problems, or a dog has been involved in an attack, owners should go on training courses. “We spoke to colleagues in Holland, where this is already the case,” says Nurse. “The comparison that’s often made is with speed awareness courses we run for drivers who get caught speeding. If you have a dog, and the dog is out of control, it’s not just down to the dog – it’s down to how you relate to the dog.”

The research didn’t look at breeds, or the merits of the Dangerous Dogs Act. “Certainly in the literature, you’ll see some argue that breed is a factor, some that argue that breed is not a factor,” says Nurse. “Some pieces of research will argue that breed-specific legislation is not necessarily effective, because it doesn’t address the wider issue of dog problems.”

After Louis was bitten on the way to school, the owners of the dog decided to put it down. “It wasn’t necessarily the dog’s fault or the owner’s fault, and it certainly wasn’t my son’s fault – even before the attack he’d always ask an owner if he could stroke a dog. It’s just a crazy situation that you’re in at the time,” says Sophie. She says she covered every mirror in the house for six months. “He wouldn’t look at himself; he caught sight of himself the morning after the surgery and said: ‘Mummy, I look ugly. I don’t like it – take it all away.’” Louis and his siblings have had nightmares and have received counselling at school. All are wary of dogs, especially bigger ones, but the family have their own dog – a labrador and jack russell cross – and that has helped. “When he came home from hospital, our dog knew instantly that something was wrong and he was with my son the whole time. He didn’t move from his side.”

AUSTRALIA

Violet Coco is not alone: the climate activists facing jail

As protesters use more provocative tactics, state governments are responding with heavy-handed laws to stop them

Lee Coaldrake and Dianne Tucker have been charged with ‘disturbing the legislature’, a charge not used in Queensland for three decades. 

Photograph: David Kelly

Joe Hinchliffe, Sean Ruse and Michael McGowan

The Guardian

Fri 9 Dec 2022 

Lee Coaldrake was 18 when she joined protests in Brisbane against South Africa’s rugby tour of Australia in 1971.

She later became an anaesthetist, got married, had two daughters and then seven grandchildren – and didn’t participate in another demonstration for nearly 50 years.

But, this week, Coaldrake was one of six women and three men – aged between 53 and 81 – to be the first people charged for disrupting Queensland parliament for more than 30 years, harking back to an era when the sunshine state was led by the notoriously repressive premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.


04:53Extracts from documentary calling out new laws to curb demonstrations – video

“It was really difficult telling my family,” the 69-year-old says from her home in the well-heeled suburb of Teneriffe on Thursday, moments before taking herself to the police station to be fingerprinted and photographed.

“My eldest daughter only found out yesterday that, in fact, I was facing criminal charges. I haven’t told my youngest daughter yet. My family gets anxious … it’s a very foreign area for us to be in.”

The Queensland arrests mark the latest flashpoint in a string of high-profile crackdowns on climate protesters across Australia.

‘It was really difficult telling my family’: Lee Coaldrake (right) with fellow climate protester Dianne Tucker. 

Photograph: David Kelly/The Guardian

As activists use increasingly provocative – and divisive – tactics in a bid to highlight the urgency of the climate crisis, state governments are beginning to respond with a suite of heavy-handed new laws aimed at curtailing the demonstrations.

In New South Wales, 32-year-old Deanna “Violet” Coco was last week handed a 15-month jail sentence after she blocked a lane of traffic on Sydney’s Harbour Bridge in April.

Coco was the first person to be jailed under controversial laws passed earlier this year that introduced a possible two-year prison sentence for people who block major roads, bridges or ports.

The laws have been widely condemned by a coalition of environmental groups, unions, civil liberties organisations and legal groups, but enjoy the support of both the Coalition government and Labor opposition.

This week the premier, Dominic Perrottet, said the sentence was “pleasing to see” while the Labor leader, Chris Minns, said he did not regret helping the government to pass the laws, pointing to the disruption caused by the demonstrations.

But Josh Pallas, the president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, says the sentence is “outrageous”.

“Peaceful protest should never result in jail time,” he says.

“It’s outrageous that the state wastes its resources seeking jail time and housing peaceful protesters in custody at the expense of taxpayers. Peaceful protest sometimes involves inconvenience to the public. But inconvenience is not a sufficient reason to prohibit it. It’s immoral and unjust.”

‘Could I really handle that?’

Following the introduction of the new laws, dozens of people were arrested in Sydney following high-profile demonstrations blocking roads in Sydney’s CBD in June.

Among those was 74-year-old retiree and grandmother Elizabeth Hartrick, who came to Sydney as part of the protest.

Hartrick tells the Guardian she had stayed back from the more dramatic actions during the protest, but was tracked down by police the next day.

“I hadn’t been told to leave the road, I wasn’t in that situation,” she says.

Violet Coco was handed a 15-month jail sentence over a climate protest 

on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

After her arrest she was held in custody for 30 hours, and then subjected to strict bail conditions – including non-association orders with other members of Extinction Rebellion – before her next court hearing in March.

“It feels very unsettling, I run through different scenarios. Would they take into account the fact that I’m a pensioner, that I’m elderly?” she says.

“How would I look after my flat? How do I look after my personal affairs, do I have to give someone power of attorney of bank accounts? I think, what the hell would I do? And then if I did go to prison, I think, ‘geez, could I really handle that?’ It’s just a really horrible kind of demoralising feeling.”

The arrests followed the establishment by NSW police of Strike Force Guard, which in June raided a property in Colo to “prevent, investigate and disrupt unauthorised protests”. It led to the arrests of seven people, including 27-year-old Tim Neville.

Neville was accused of being a leader of the group, and spent nearly four weeks in prison after being refused bail.

“I was charged with the crime of aiding and abetting the commission of a future crime,” he said at a protest following his arrest.

“In other words, I was charged with thinking about protesting, I was thinking about taking direct action.”

How does the 15-month jail term for environmental protester Violet Coco compare to other sentences?

NSW is not alone in cracking down on climate activists.

In Victoria, forestry activists will soon face up to $21,000 in fines and 12 months in prison for protesting near logging areas. Laws passed in Queensland in 2018 mean even those found possessing devices used in disruptive protests face two years in jail.

Dr Robyn Gulliver, an expert in protest movements at the University of Queensland, has been studying the causes and consequences of climate activism in Australia for the past decade. She says the laws have “a psychological effect”.

“We know this from other countries where authoritarian regimes, for example, have cracked down really heavily on protesters,” she says.

“And part of the rationale for that is that it makes everybody else scared. It sends a message to everybody else. It’s far too punitive.”

‘To be confronted with a criminal charge is a very stressful thing’: Dianne Tucker (right) and Lee Coaldrake. Photograph: David Kelly/The Guardian

On Wednesday a small group of people sitting in the public gallery in the Queensland parliament suddenly unfurled banners with slogans such as “end fossil fuels now” and chanted repeatedly “stop coal, stop gas” for a period of about three minutes. It was livestreamed to Facebook, before security stopped the protest.

Nine people have since been charged, and are accused of disturbing the legislature.

The following day, the premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, told parliament that the protest left some of her colleagues feeling “very unsafe”, while the speaker, Curtis Pitt, flagged his intention to press charges, alleging the cameras used in the protest were smuggled in “by accomplices using disabled access facilities for a wheelchair” in what he described as a “particularly despicable act”.
I’ve led a life that’s been very conformist and been very careful not to break the law

A spokesperson for Pitt confirms it was the speaker who requested police lay charges, the first time anyone has faced prosecution for disturbing the legislative assembly in three decades.

Dianne Tucker was the first of the group to receive a call from a detective of the criminal investigation bureau.

“I’ve led a life that’s been very conformist and been very careful not to break the law,” says the 68-year-old grandmother, who is a semi-retired psychologist.

“So to be confronted with a criminal charge is a very stressful thing to go through.”

While her journey from law-abiding professional to radical activist has been a relatively sudden one, Tucker says she has long been troubled by the unfolding climate crisis – and is willing to act on those concerns.

“As the situation with the climate breakdown has become increasingly obvious, it’s created more and more of a sense of urgency for me,” Tucker says.

While the tactics used by climate activists divide opinions – even within the environmental movement – Chris Salisbury, a political historian at the University of Queensland, says the demonstrations are part of a long history of direct action born out of frustration.

“With climate change and climate action really pressing, and obviously on the forefront of mind for many people, I don’t think I would be going out on a limb to say, yes, I expect that yes, we could see more people call back upon that tradition,” he says.

Crabs have evolved five separate times—why do the same forms keep appearing in nature?

by Matthew Wills, The Conversation

Full size blue crab.

Charles Darwin believed evolution created "endless forms most beautiful." It's a nice sentiment but it doesn't explain why evolution keeps making crabs.

Scientists have long wondered whether there are limits to what evolution can do or if Darwin had the right idea. The truth may lie somewhere between the two.

While there doesn't seem to be a ceiling on the number of species that might evolve, there may be restraints on how many fundamental forms those species can evolve into. The evolution of crab-like creatures may be one of the best examples of this, since they have evolved not just once but at least five times.

Crabs belong to a group of crustaceans called decapods—literally "ten footed", since they have five pairs of walking legs. Some decapods, like lobsters and shrimp, have a thick, muscular abdomen, which is the bulk of the animal that we eat. With a quick flick of their abdomen lobsters can shoot off backwards and escape predators.

Crabs, by contrast, have a compressed abdomen, tucked away under a flattened but widened thorax and shell. This allows them to scuttle into rock crevices for protection. Evolution repeatedly hit upon this solution because it works well under similar sets of circumstances.

Five groups of "crabs"

The largest crab group are the Brachyura (true crabs) including the edible crab and Atlantic blue crab. They had an ancestor that was also crab shaped. Some species have evolved "backwards" and straightened out their abdomens again. The other large group are the Anomura (false crabs), with an ancestor that looked more like a lobster.

However, at least four groups of Anomura—sponge crabs, porcelain crabs, king crabs and the Australian hairy stone crab—have independently evolved into a crab-like form in much the same way as the true crabs. Like the true crabs, their compact bodies are more defensive, and can move sideways faster.

This means "crabs" aren't a real biological group. They are a collection of branches in the decapod tree that evolved to look the same.

But crabs aren't the exception.

Something similar happened in the evolution of birds from feathered dinosaurs. Feathers may have first evolved for insulation, to attract mates, for protecting eggs and possibly also as "nets" for catching prey. Millions of years later, feathers elongated and streamlined for flying.

Paleontologists disagree about the details, but all modern birds (Neoaves) evolved from ground-dwelling ancestors just after the mass extinction that wiped out the other dinosaurs. However, feathered wings and flight also evolved earlier in other groups of dinosaurs, including troodontids and dromaeosaurs. Some of these, like Microraptor, had four wings.

Re-running the tape of life

Unfortunately we can't run evolutionary experiments to see if the same things keep happening because that would take hundreds of millions of years. But the history of life has already done something similar to that for us, when closely related lineages evolve and diversify on different continents. In many cases, these ancestral lines repeatedly came up with the same or almost identical solutions to problems.

One of the best examples is our own group, the mammals.

There are two major groups of living mammals. The placentals (including us) and the marsupials (pouched mammals who give birth to tiny young). Both groups evolved from the same common ancestor over 100 million years ago, the marsupials largely in Australasia and the Americas and the placentals elsewhere.

This isolation led to two almost independent runs of the "experiment" to see what could be done with the mammal bodyplan. There are marsupial and placental versions of moles, mice, anteaters, gliders, and cats. There was even a marsupial wolf (the thylacine, extinct in 1936), whose skull and teeth match those of the placental wolf in astonishing detail.

It's not only body forms that evolve independently, but also organs and other structures. Humans have complex camera eyes with a lens, iris and retina. Squid, and octopuses, which are molluscs and more closely related to snails and clams, also evolved camera eyes with the same components.

Eyes more generally may have evolved independently up to 40 times in different groups of animals. Even box jellyfish, which don't have a brain, have eyes with lenses at the bases of their four tentacles.

The more we look, the more we find. Structures such as jaws, teeth, ears, fins, legs and wings all keep evolving independently across the animal tree of life.

More recently, scientists discovered convergence also happens at the molecular level. The opsin molecules in eyes that convert photons of light into chemical energy and enable humans to see have a tight resemblance to those in box jellyfish, and evolved that way in parallel. Even more bizarrely, animals as different as whales and bats have striking convergence in the genes that enable them to echolocate.

Are humans really unique?

Many of the things we like to think make humans special have been reinvented by evolution elsewhere. Corvids like crows and ravens have problem-solving intelligence and, along with owls, can use simple tools.

Whales and dolphins have complex social structures, and their big brains allowed them to develop language. Dolphins use tools like sponges to cover their noses while they forage across stony sea bottoms. Octopuses also use tools and learn from watching what happens to other octopuses.

If things keep evolving in similar ways here on Earth, there's a possibility they might also follow a related course if life has evolved elsewhere in the universe. It might mean extra-terrestrial beings look less alien and more familiar than we expect.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How does a crustacean become a crab?

Kyoto protocol

Japan’s climate policy ‘failed to build on the legacy of Kyoto’

More than two decades on from the protocol, country shows enthusiasm for nuclear restarts over renewables

Onagawa nuclear power plant is set to begin generating electricity in 2024 for the first time in more than a decade. Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian


Justin McCurry in Kyoto and Fiona Harvey

THE GUARDIAN

Sat 10 Dec 2022 

Apart from the distant buzz of a gardener’s strimmer, all is quiet at the Kyoto International Conference Center, its grey concrete walls matched by the sky on an afternoon in early December. Autumn leaves still cling to branches in the nearby forest, where groups of hikers plot their course in light trousers and T-shirts, as if to remind passersby of why Japan’s ancient capital became synonymous with the climate crisis.

The venue – best known for its appearance in the 1974 Robert Mitchum film The Yakuza – is deserted. Its doors are locked and signs dotting its lawns warn non-authorised personnel to keep out.

It is a far cry from the frantic activity of 25 years ago, when hundreds of journalists and campaigners, fuelled by coffee and takeaway bento boxes, awaited news of a breakthrough at Cop3 – the world’s first serious attempt to wean itself off fossil fuels.

On 11 December 1997, after negotiations that ran through the night, the Kyoto protocol was born, committing 160 parties – later 192 – to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% between 2008 and 2012.

The summit’s Japanese hosts hailed the agreement as a major breakthrough – the first time developed and developing countries had signed up to legally binding CO2 reduction targets.

“Cop3 was a good start, because it showed that the world had to change,” said Kenro Taura, executive director of Kiko Network, a Kyoto-based NGO. “Until then, most countries were determined to pursue economic growth based around the use of fossil fuels, but Kyoto convinced them that was not the right approach.”

The protocol was also an important step towards the Paris climate agreement. Derided by some as a failure because of the US refusal to ratify it, the agreement had some notable successes. It set out a global system of carbon trading, and in establishing many of the technical aspects of carbon accounting that are still in use, in modified forms, today.

The “top-down” system of setting countries’ emissions-cutting targets has since been abandoned in favour of “bottom-up” commitments known as nationally determined contributions, but the understanding that rich countries must take responsibility for their historic role in the climate crisis endures, and was one of the flashpoints at last month’s Cop27 UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

“The Kyoto protocol is regarded as an important milestone in climate action, as it was the first opportunity for countries to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Japan’s environment ministry said.

“In response to the Kyoto protocol, Japan will drive emission reductions not only in Japan but also in developing countries where emissions have increased significantly, thus contributing to the global emission reductions.”

The anniversary of the protocol, which came into force in 2005 – minus the US – passed almost unnoticed in its host city this week. Yet the absence of fanfare is misleading. In the quarter of a century since the summit, Kyoto city has positioned itself at the forefront of efforts to address climate change, even if Japan’s government has been found wanting.

In 2019, Kyoto became the first Japanese city to announce a net zero target by 2050, and, in March 2021, the first to join the Powering Past Coal Alliance, an international campaign to move away from coal-fired power generation.

In the two decades after Cop3, Kyoto halved the amount of waste it generated and cut energy consumption by 31%, according to Sayoko Matsumoto, manager of the city’s Do You Kyoto?project – named in honour of former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who used those words during a visit to the city in 2007 as a way of asking people if they were taking action to save the planet.

Kyoto was one of four Japanese cities to be named to CDP’s A-List for 2022 in recognition of its “bold action” on climate change. On the 16th of every month, – the date in February 2005 when the protocol went into effect – outdoor lighting is dimmed or turned off, commuters are encouraged to swap their cars for public transport and diners eat in restaurants lit by candles and lamps.

“The city feels a responsibility to lead on climate change, and that’s part of the legacy of Cop3,” Matsumoto said. “A lot of people in Kyoto may be too young to remember the actual summit, but they are aware of the climate crisis and the need to cooperate to help Kyoto achieve its net zero target.”

Japan’s government, by contrast, has struggled to build on the Cop3 legacy. As of last year, renewables accounted for just over 20% of Japan’s energy generation – significantly lower than Germany (49% in the first half of 2022) and Britain (39%). Nuclear accounts for just under 7%, with coal, oil and liquefied natural gas dominating Japan’s energy generation with a 74% share.

Its role in financing major oil, gas and coal projects earned Japan – the world’s fifth-biggest emitter of greenhouses gases – a “fossil award” from the Climate Action Network at the Cop27 summit.

More than a decade after the Fukushima crisis forced Japan to close reactors and increase fossil fuel imports, the government is again turning to nuclear to help it achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, to the dismay of environmental campaigners who believe the focus should be on renewables.

“The Japanese government is using the ‘we will do it with nuclear’ mantra as a way of delaying real work on climate change,” said Aileen Smith, executive director of Green Action.

“Nuclear power is expensive,” Smith said, citing plans by Kansai Electric Power, which serves the region where Kyoto is located, to spend over ¥1tn (£5.9bn) over the next five years on climate change, with 70% of that investment earmarked for the nuclear sector. “It means money will be spent on a less effective, more expensive way of reducing CO2 emissions. And it won’t be that long-lasting, since the nuclear plants are old.”

There was little evidence of any desire to burnish Kyoto’s legacy among the Japanese delegation at Cop27. Japan played a low-key role during the two-week conference, supporting moves to reaffirm the global target of limiting greenhouse gas emissions to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, but without taking a significant public stance on the issue.

The country’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, did not attend the summit, putting him out of step with more than 100 world leaders who did.

Taura said Japan’s enthusiasm for nuclear restarts and cautious embrace of renewables showed that Japan had “learned nothing” from the Kyoto protocol or the triple meltdown in Fukushima.

“I think Europe has done more to take action that matches the spirit of the Kyoto protocol,” he said. “But Japan has consistently made the wrong choices. The decision to put increased nuclear power generation at the centre of its climate change policy is another setback to energy conservation and the promotion of renewable energy. Unfortunately, Japan has failed to build on the legacy of Kyoto.”