Wetter storms, deforestation: Manila faces worsening floods

by Mikhail FLORES

In Manila, low-lying areas are often inundated with water when storms lash the Sierra Madre mountain range.

From her house in a Manila suburb, Rowena Jimenez can't see the bare mountains around the built-up city. But she feels the impact of deforestation every time her living room floods.

Slash-and-burn farming, illegal logging, open-pit mining and development fueled by population growth have stripped the once-densely forested Philippines of much of its trees.

In Manila, where more than 13 million people live, low-lying areas are often inundated when storms lash the Sierra Madre mountain range, which lies east of the city and acts as a barrier to severe weather.

But without enough trees to help absorb the rain, huge volumes of water run off the slopes and into waterways that flow into the metropolis, turning neighbourhoods into disease-infested swamps.

Jimenez, 49, has lost count of the number of times the Marikina river has broken its banks and flooded the ground floor of her family's two-bedroom concrete house, a few blocks from the water's edge.

"There is always fear that it will happen again," said Jimenez, who lives with her husband, youngest daughter, sister, nephew and mother.

"Your heart sinks because you realise the things you worked so hard to buy will be destroyed again."

Jimenez blames environmental "abuses" upstream in the nearby Upper Marikina River Basin—a catchment spanning roughly 26,000 hectares (64,500 acres) in the southern foothills of the Sierra Madre.

Rowena Jimenez has lost count of the number of times the Marikina river has broken its banks and flooded her family's house.

Only 2.1 percent of the watershed was covered by dense "closed forest" in 2015, according to a World Bank report.

Runoff from the mountains drains into the basin, which is critical for regulating water flow into Manila.

It was declared a "protected landscape" in 2011 by then-president Benigno Aquino, under a law aimed at ensuring "biological diversity and sustainable development".

That was two years after Typhoon Ketsana, known in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Ondoy, had submerged 80 percent of the city and killed hundreds of people.

But by then, many of the trees in the catchment had been cleared to make way for public roads, parking lots, private resorts, and residential subdivisions.

Jimenez still shudders at the memory of the water reaching 23 feet (seven metres) high and forcing her family to huddle together on the roof of their house.

"We didn't salvage anything but ourselves," she said.

Rowena Jimenez shows the height of the flooding inside her home.


Wetter storms

The combination of development in the catchment and wetter storms caused by climate change have exacerbated flooding in Manila, said Rex Cruz, a watershed management expert at the University of the Philippines.

"The surface of the Marikina watershed has been modified into something that is not able to absorb a lot of rainwater," he said. This also leads to water shortages in the dry season.

Cruz said the situation will worsen if "business as usual prevails" in the country, which is ranked among the most vulnerable nations to the impacts of climate change.

Official data show "closed forest" cover in the archipelago—which has a total land area of 30 million hectares—declined from 2.56 million hectares in 2003 to 1.93 million in 2010.

It rose to 2.22 million hectares in 2020.

Protecting existing forests and replanting others are made difficult by corruption and sometimes violent conflict over land ownership and usage.

Watchdog Global Witness ranks the Philippines as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmentalists, with 19 killed in 2021 and 270 slain in the decade preceding it.

The Masungi Georeserve Foundation has spent years trying to reforest about 3,000 hectares in the upper Marikina basin.

The Masungi Georeserve Foundation has spent years trying to reforest about 3,000 hectares in the upper Marikina basin, which is less than 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Manila.

But there are disputes over whether the land should be conserved or developed.

Some people want to use it for quarrying, burning wood for charcoal, building resorts, or growing crops.

The Bureau of Corrections wants to put its headquarters there.

Masungi forest ranger Kuhkan Maas, 32, has been abused and even shot for trying to protect the land, where he has planted thousands of trees in the past decade.

He refuses to be intimidated.

"My dream is to see all the trees we planted flourish and to see the land that used to be barren become a lush forest," said Maas, still bearing the scar from where a bullet punctured his neck in 2021.

Masungi forest ranger Kuhkan Maas has been abused and even shot for trying to protect the land, where he has planted thousands of trees in the past decade.

'Wicked problem'

Without a land use policy and integrated environment laws to govern the competing uses of resources, it has been difficult to develop sustainably, said lawyer Tony La Vina, describing it as a "wicked problem".

Manila resident Jimenez said her family's house never flooded in the 1980s when she recalls the Marikina river being "pristine" and surrounded by farms, trees and a handful of families.

But as more and more land was developed for the growing population, their house began to flood in the following decade.

Since then, Jimenez said the family home is inundated once or twice a year, sometimes more.

The slightest drizzle sends her mother, who has Alzheimer's disease, into a panic.

"She'll pack things, put them in a plastic bag and nag us to start packing," said Jimenez.

"It's sad to know that the only memory she has left is the rain and flooding."

© 2023 AFP


Explore furtherSix people killed in Philippine typhoon

Thai farmers tap into sustainable rubber industry

Alexis HONTANG
Tue, February 21, 2023 

By the light of a head torch, Wanida Hityim deftly strips bark from a rubber tree, collecting the milky latex as she explains why she's among a small number of Thai farmers trying to work more sustainably.

As the world's largest producer of natural rubber -- supplying more than a third of global stocks in 2021 -- Thailand's policies have stimulated massive deforestation, plummeting biodiversity and soaring soil erosion.

The vast majority of the kingdom's plantations are still worked conventionally, but a few farmers like Wanida are abandoning pesticides to try and lessen their impact on the environment.

And while money is her bottom line, Wanida also sees the small-scale benefits of turning to greener methods.

"This place even has worms in the soil," she said of her 1.5-hectare (3.7-acre) plot in the southern province of Surat Thani, home to about 500 trees.

"Plantations that use pesticides wouldn't have nature like this because the chemicals they use would just ruin the soil," the 41-year-old told AFP.

Wanida is one of a few Thai farmers to have received the international non-profit Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certificate, which encourages the sustainable use of forests.

FSC is not without its critics. Grant Rosoman, a senior advisor to Greenpeace International, warned it is vulnerable to industry pressure and manipulation.

"All certification schemes have problems with auditors which are paid by clients, the companies," Rosoman told AFP.

"There is a financial conflict of interest between who is paying and the auditor."

- 'Right time, right message' -

Adopting more sustainable methods has enabled Wanida to sell her rubber at a higher price, earning her around $650 a month instead of $550.

Thailand exported nearly $6 billion of rubber in 2021, the vast majority of it produced by small-scale farmers who sell to middlemen -- so financial incentives are key to changing methods.

"When I talk about sustainable development for the first time, people look at me with a smile and a big question mark on their face," said Maiprae Loyen, co-founder of Agriac, a rubber intermediary set up in 2019 to promote good practices among farmers in southern Thailand.

The firm works with roughly 1,000 small farmers -- 60 percent of them women -- many of whom previously thought environmentally friendly methods were a "burden", said Maiprae.

But they were convinced by both the financial returns -- Agriac offers a three baht ($0.09) bonus per FSC-approved kilogram (2.2 pounds) sold -- and also the ecological benefits, she said.

Later she pointed to the cracked soil of another rubber plantation in Surat Thani, the result of unsustainable "chemical products".

"It's time that people start to understand that the value of things is not defined by price tag," she said.

"It's the right time, the right message."

- China drag -

But Agriac farmers are just a few leaves in the forest of Thailand's rubber industry: only two percent of the nation's roughly 3.2 million hectares of plantations are worked under FSC guidelines.

In December the European Union agreed to ban the import of rubber deemed to contribute to deforestation, a move hailed as a milestone by green groups.

But the impact of this change on Thailand will be limited, said Krungsri Bank analyst Chaiwat Sowcharoensuk, because China -- which accounts for almost half of the kingdom's market -- does not prioritise sustainability.

While medium and large firms do cater to Western consumers, he said, the shift was yet to trickle down to smallholders.

"But if one day China announces a plan about sustainable rubber, then local farmers would pay attention," he said.

"If they can't sell their rubber, then they would take action."

Rosoman of Greenpeace said that with question marks hanging over certification schemes such as FSC, tougher regulation like that imposed by the EU will be key to sustainability.

The future of natural rubber should be "very bright" he said, as the alternative -- synthetic rubber produced from oil -- is highly polluting.

For Wanida, out tapping her trees at 3:00 am with her faithful dogs yapping at her heels, rubber is in her blood.

Passed down from her grandfather to her father, the plantation might be taking a new direction under her care.

But, she says, "I'm still a rubber farmer through and through".

Canadians fearing nuclear apocalypse flock to visit Cold War bunker

22-02- 2023 

OTTAWA: A shed on a hillside on the outskirts of Canada's capital hides a Cold War bunker that has been fielding a surge of queries since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, asking if it is operational.

It's now a museum, so the answer of course is no.

Inside, past displays of atomic bombs, a blast tunnel opens up to decontamination showers. There's also a medical clinic, a vault for gold bullion, a radio studio, and a sparse chamber for the prime minister.

Gravel packed around the structure was meant to mitigate shocks from a nuclear strike, while everything inside is secured, including toilets mounted on rubber.

Tour guide Graham Wheatley, 67, vividly recalls fearing nuclear annihilation in his youth.

“There was always a lot of nuclear saber-rattling back in the 60s with (Nikita) Khrushchev and his shoe banging at the UN and ‘We will bury you’ speech, and then the Cuban Missile Crisis,“ he says.

“There was a general anxiety,“ adds visitor Janet Fisher.

That dread has returned, as Moscow steps up its nuclear threats.

“When Russia invaded Ukraine, we had a lot of public inquiries about whether this museum still functions as a fallout shelter,“ Christine McGuire, its executive director, told AFP.

And the daily barrage of calls has persisted, she said. “That fear is still very real. Anxieties are coming back. We’re seeing remnants of the Cold War with the global tensions.”

In light of war in Ukraine’s impacts -- as well as the growing climate crisis -- the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in late January moved their symbolic “Doomsday Clock” to just 90 seconds to midnight -- its closest approach ever to humanity’s “self-annihilation.”

And on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his country would suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty with the United States -- though Moscow's foreign ministry later said it still planned to abide by its regulations.

Surviving an apocalypse

The 100,000-square-foot (9,300-square-meter) underground bunker was built between 1959 and 1961 to house more than 500 key civilian, military and government officials to run Canada following a nuclear attack.

After 30 days, when radiation was expected to drop to safer levels, “some lucky person would be chosen to go above ground to see what our post-apocalyptic world looked like and how we were going to rebuild the country,“ McGuire said.

The top secret outpost, commissioned by then-prime minister John Diefenbaker, was officially called the Central Emergency Government Headquarters or CEGHQ Carp, after the town in which it's located.

Decommissioned in 1991 at the end of the Cold War, it reopened as a museum in 1998 and welcomes close to 70,000 visitors a year.

Speaking in what was the war cabinet room deep inside the four-level facility, McGuire said it remains “an important reminder of how close we all came to global annihilation during the Cold War.”

Fallout from US

Some 2,000 government and private bunkers in back yards or basements were built across Canada at the onset of the Cold War, far fewer than in the United States or Europe, estimates Andrew Burtch, a Cold War historian at the Canadian War Museum.

“The Cold War brought with it the spectre of nuclear annihilation. And so governments around the world had to think about the best ways in which to prepare for a nuclear attack and how to coordinate the response to it after the fact,“ he recounted.

“The solution that many countries came to,“ he said, “was some form of underground (facility) to protect against the main effects of the nuclear bomb, be it the blast, radiation or heat.”

Canada planned to deal with radioactive fallout, but was less concerned about threats of direct strikes on its cities.

“The idea was that the Russians would not waste their bombs or missiles on Canada but rather target them at the United States,“ Burtch explained.

There were several scares between 1947 and 1991. “Nuclear weapons were everywhere during the Cold War, and the threat to use those weapons was periodic and tended to come during periods of high tension,“ he said.

“Now we find ourself back in the position where we were,“ he lamented. “So it’s quite a disconcerting time.” - AFP

F FOR FAKE

Art fraudster jailed for trying to sell 15 forgeries at Madrid auction house


Sam Jones in Madrid
Tue, 21 February 2023

Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

A Spanish court has sentenced an art collector and fraudster to four years in prison for trying to sell 15 fake works, including a forged Edvard Munch print and a copy of Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam! diptych, at a Madrid auction house.

The provincial court in Madrid heard that the defendant, named as Guillermo CT, signed a contract with the Setdart auction house in the capital in January 2018 to sell 16 works, including seven by the late Spanish sculptor and engraver Eduardo Chillida, a Munch lithograph, two Lichtensteins, four lithographs by José Guerrero and one lithograph by Saul Steinberg.

But it later transpired that 15 of the 16 pieces were forgeries made by the defendant or by a third party working on his behalf, “with the aim of obtaining unlawful economic benefit and without the permission of the holders of the intellectual property rights”.

The alarm was raised after a buyer who had unwittingly acquired two forged Chillida prints offered by the defendant at earlier auctions in Madrid and Munich alerted police to the possibility that two more fake Chillidas were being offered for sale at Setdart.

Police eventually recovered all the 16 works that the defendant had deposited at the auction house, including the sole genuine work, by David Hockney.

Francisco Baena, the director of the José Guerrero centre in Granada, told the trial that the paper and materials in the works attributed to the artists were wrong. What is more, he added: “Guerrero was always firm and sure, but the painter of the works the police showed me was hesitant – as if he knew what he was making was a forgery.”

In the sentence, the judges noted that a key point was whether the defendant knew the works he had deposited for sale were fakes. They concluded that he had on the basis that this was not “an isolated or fortuitous case” and that the defendant had previously been investigated for trying to sell other works attributed to Chillida.

The case against him was further bolstered by the fact that the Guerrero works he eventually sold through Setdart had already been withdrawn from sale by a different auction house after the Guerrero centre raised doubts as to their authenticity.

“Nevertheless, despite the defendant knowing that the works were very probably forgeries, that did not stop him then depositing them for sale at Setdart.”

The judges sentenced him to a total of four years’ imprisonment for violating intellectual property rights and for fraud.

He was also ordered to compensate the buyers of the forged works, and to pay damages of €48,000 (£42,300) to the heirs of José Guerrero and €39,700 to the company that manages the Chillida estate.

F For Fake, by Orson Welles (TRAILER)

 

 F for Fake [1973] Orson Welles [Elmyr De Hory - Would you like a nice Matisse?]

 

F for Fake: A Retrospective by Peter Bogdanovich

OUTLAW GREYHOUND RACING

AUSTRALIA

Greyhound racing injuries and deaths surge despite NSW government’s $30m safety pledge

Tamsin Rose

Guardian Australia
Tue, 21 February 2023

Photograph: EPA

The number of greyhounds injured or dying on New South Wales racetracks has surged, with a new report from the state’s industry regulator finding that last winter was the worst on record for the sport since 2018.

Data released by the Greyhound Welfare and Integrity Commission (GWIC) revealed 67 dogs suffered “catastrophic and major” injuries from July to September 2022. Of those, 19 died.

Overall, there were 939 injuries across all categories, representing injuries to 21% of the dogs that raced over the three months.

Related: NSW won’t review decision to allow ‘inhumane’ greyhound breeding technique

Injuries include breaks, muscle tears, cuts, strains, scratches and catastrophic traumas causing death, as well as euthanasia. For every 1,000 starts, there were 38 injuries reported.

The figures represent an overall increase on every third-quarter period since 2017, and are the highest since 2018, when comparable records began.

Advocates for greater regulation of the industry have questioned how the figures could be so high after the government pledged $30m for track improvements between 2017 and 2022 in response to the extensive Greyhound Industry Reform Panel report.

The commission will explore whether heavy rain caused by La Niña could be blamed for the uptick in injuries.

“GWIC will explore potential reasons for the observed increase in injury in this quarter, including the very high rainfall across much of the state,” the report read.

Data is compared between quarters, the commission explained, to reduce the influence of seasons and provide a more accurate picture of long-term trends. The commission noted that injury rates were usually higher over the hotter months covered by quarters one and four.

The Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds’ NSW director, Kylie Field, said the industry had not improved safety for dogs and if wet weather was causing problems then dogs should not race in those conditions.

“This industry continually talks about safety standards for the dogs and it’s just a load of nonsense,” she said.

“They were racing even being aware the tracks would be slippery, and there might be a greater risk that dogs would be killed.”

Field said the government needed to explain where the money pledged to improve safety in the industry was going and how it would act on the back of the most recent report.

“We still don’t have full transparency from the government on where that money’s gone,” she said.

Longer-term trends based on annual running averages also indicated an overall increase in injuries over the past 12 months, as well as increases in three categories. One category remained stable and overall deaths were declining since 2017.

The commission and the minister responsible for greyhound racing, Kevin Anderson, have been contacted for comment.

UK
Frankie Boyle urges Rishi Sunak to ditch Rosebank oil field plans

21st February
By Steph Brawn@BrawnJourno

Multimedia Political Journalist

COMEDIAN Frankie Boyle and climate campaigner Vanessa Nakate have urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to throw out plans to develop a new oil and gas field in the North Sea.

On Tuesday, activists and organisations, which included the Women’s Institute and RSPB, wrote to Sunak to urge him to reject plans for the Rosebank field, which is planned to be built 80 miles off the coast of Shetland.

Energy minister Grant Shapps is expected to make a decision on whether or not to approve the project imminently, with the field scheduled to start production in 2026.

But Boyle said “approving Rosebank makes no sense” and “we’re in a climate emergency, renewable energy is so much cheaper, and anyway this is oil for export”.

“The only winners would be the oil and gas companies that own these reserves off the Shetland coast,” he said.

“Why we’re subsidising its development to the tune of half a billion pounds, when they clearly don’t need the cash and there are plenty more worthy causes, is a mystery.”

Rosebank contains up to 350 million barrels of oil, and is one of the largest untapped discoveries in UK waters.

It could produce 69,000 barrels of oil per day – about 8% of the UK’s projected daily output between 2026 and 2030 – and could also produce 44 million cubic feet of gas every day, Equinor, the Norwegian firm behind the project, said.

Campaigners against Rosebank have said it would have a devastating impact on the climate, if approved, and taxpayers would effectively subsidise 90% of the development cost.

In a YouGovDirect poll, more than two thirds of the 2193 people asked said they were against taxpayers subsidising oil and gas firms to develop new fields in the North Sea

They were asked between February 1-2 as part of a poll commissioned by the group Uplift, which advocates fossil-free fuels and helps co-ordinate the Stop Rosebank and Stop Cambo campaigns.

The open letter to the Prime Minister on Tuesday also said the development would “not help energy security” with supplies “most likely to be exported and will not lower energy costs in the UK”.

Nakate said the UK needed to “care about people around the world who are already living with the climate crisis, and protect young people and generations to come who will have to face the consequences of these decisions”.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has been approached for comment.

US giant leads £36m investment team backing Newcastle hydrogen pioneers

Mike Hughes
Tue, 21 February 2023 

GeoPura plans to deploy a fleet of over 3,600 HPUs by 2033 (Image: Press release)

Newcastle-based green hydrogen pioneer GeoPura has received £36m investment from a team of industry leaders led by GM Ventures, the investment arm of General Motors.

The round was co-led by Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital with participation from SWEN CP and Siemens Energy Ventures and allows GeoPura to scale its green hydrogen business, which is replacing diesel-fuelled generators.

GeoPura currently provides hydrogen power from Newcastle to Balfour Beatty, HS2, National Grid and the BBC among other sustainability-driven customers, replacing traditional diesel generators with its Hydrogen Power Unit (HPU) technology.

The HPUs are used for temporary, supplementary, off grid and backup power. GeoPura plans to grow the use of hydrogen into other hard-to-decarbonise areas of the energy system, such as EV charging and supplementary grid power, as economies continue to electrify.

With hubs in Nottingham and Newcastle, the £36m investment will enable GeoPura to mass manufacture HPUs alongside partner Siemens Energy, increase the production of green hydrogen to fuel the units and drive green skills in the North East.

GeoPura plans to deploy a fleet of over 3,600 HPUs by 2033, providing clean, low-cost reliable power, and displacing more than six million tonnes of CO2 emissions through their operation over their life.

In response to customer demand, the company aims to bring a number of new products to market, addressing smaller and larger power requirements. The company will work closely with its new strategic partners to advance the technology needed to enable the mass electrification that underpins decarbonisation.

Andrew Cunningham, CEO of GeoPura, said: “Green hydrogen is too often seen as a technology that will happen in the future, but GeoPura and our partners are delivering a commercially viable technology, today. The world can’t afford to wait a decade for green fuels to scale – we must act now.

“This investment allows us to build on our installed base of HPUs and hydrogen production infrastructure to stimulate the green hydrogen economy, and then expand the use of clean fuels into other hard-to-decarbonise areas of our energy system.

The Northern Echo: GeoPura production

GeoPura production (Image: Press release)

“We have secured the right mix of investors, forming strategic partnerships that not only provide the funds to enable us to scale rapidly, but also the skills and resources to accelerate the transition to zero emission fuels. With the support of our investors we can help turn the market on its head and build a green hydrogen economy this decade, not next.”

“The need for green hydrogen energy solutions is expanding as a wide range of customers move toward replacing diesel-powered sources,” said Wade Sheffer, Managing Director, GM Ventures.

“Our investment in GeoPura demonstrates our focus on scaling breakthrough innovations that can advance sustainability, while supporting GM’s progress toward an all-electric, zero-emissions future. GeoPura’s HPUs and GM’s HYDROTEC fuel cell expertise have the potential to provide better energy solutions across industries.”

Green hydrogen is widely recognised as essential to achieve global climate goals, potentially supplying 25% of energy demand by 2050, with a $10tn addressable market, according to Goldman Sachs.

The UK government has set its own target to hit 10GW of low carbon hydrogen capacity this decade. However, there remain limited commercial technologies able to capitalise on this demand. GeoPura set out to prove green hydrogen as a commercially viable solution, today, to replace existing fossil fuels.

GeoPura has grown rapidly since delivering its first HPU in collaboration with Siemens Energy in 2019, generating hydrogen and transporting the fuel to customers for use in its HPUs – customers then rent the units and pay for the fuel used.

The company is initially targeting sectors with the highest diesel use today, such as construction, infrastructure, outdoor events, and back-up power. It is also providing a solution to power commercial EV charging, where the local electricity network isn’t capable. The only by-product is pure water and heat.

Hydrogen-powered cars and high-tech animal feed: two sustainable ventures on finding funding and creating jobs

Duncan Jefferies
Tue, 21 February 2023

Solving the world’s toughest problems requires ambition, determination and resilience. Entrepreneurs with great ideas for tackling the climate crisis or food security require all of these qualities because turning a game-changing innovation into a viable business isn’t easy without the right support. And that’s where Unreasonable Impact, a partnership between Barclays and the Unreasonable Group, comes in.

In a nutshell, Unreasonable Impact handpicks innovators with the most creative ideas – and backs them. Deep Branch, a biotech company that uses microbes to turn carbon dioxide from industrial emissions into protein for animal feed, and Riversimple, which is developing hydrogen-powered vehicles, have both benefited from access to the expertise and resources provided by the programme.

Deep Branch’s technology offers a more sustainable means of creating protein. Currently, livestock are mostly fed soybean or fishmeal, which are linked to deforestation and overfishing. Deep Branch’s technology takes purified CO2 and mixes it with microbes, in a process called gas fermentation, to create a protein powder that can be added to animal feed. It isn’t at the mercy of volatile weather or global supply chain disruptions, so helps to ensure food security. And it has the further benefit of reducing competition for valuable arable land.

“Deep Branch’s tech means you can use arable land to keep producing products that can’t be made another way,” says Pete Rowe, CEO and co-founder of Deep Branch, which employs 30 staff in the UK and the Netherlands. “Letting land be used for something else – even rewilding – is a big win.”

Riversimple aims to deliver an equally big win in sustainability terms: the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport. The company says that its prototype hydrogen fuel-cell car, the Rasa, is designed for a range of 300 miles on a full tank of hydrogen and, unlike conventional electric vehicles, can be refilled in three minutes. This means it offers all the flexibility of a fossil fuel car without the environmental downsides, as its tailpipe emits nothing but droplets of water.

Rather than selling its vehicles, Riversimple, which is based in Llandrindod Wells in Wales, plans to offer them as part of a subscription service that covers all the associated running costs, from servicing and maintenance to insurance and fuel. It’s a business model that makes efficiency profitable without asking the customer to pay a premium for it. At the end of a contract, the vehicle is returned to Riversimple and supplied to another customer.

Riversimple’s hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle, the Rasa, has been developed at the company’s headquarters in Wales. Top left, a fuel-cell engine; right, the car’s wiring at an early stage. Photograph: Joel Redman/The Guardian

“We’re about resource conservation instead of consumption,” says Hugo Spowers, chief engineer and founder of Riversimple. “If you sell cars, the more resources you consume, the more money you make. And I don’t see how we can ever have a sustainable industrial society based on rewarding industry for doing the opposite to what we’re trying to achieve.”

Unreasonable Impact was established in 2016 to provide ambitious entrepreneurs such as Rowe and Spowers with the guidance and support they need to tackle pressing global challenges. Over the course of the programme, entrepreneurs are brought together with a curated group of mentors and industry experts who can help them solve key issues facing their business. Support continues through the Unreasonable Fellowship, which provides these innovators with access to investors and experts, including from Barclays, as well as some of the world’s most powerful institutions.

More than 250 firms have benefited from the programme to date. Collectively, they’ve raised more than £10bn in financing and are supporting more than 19,500 full-time employees.

Fiona and Hugo Spowers of Riversimple

Fiona Spowers, communications director at Riversimple, says the company’s involvement resulted in “a very welcome, patient and longstanding cohort of support” and that she was “surprised and delighted” that many of the entrepreneurs in the group were also working on “hard, real technology solutions …[tackling] real problems”. In the years since, Barclays’ mentors have remained helpful, encouraging and interested in the issues involved in developing a hydrogen-powered car, she says.

Rowe, meanwhile, appreciates the fact that the programme allows CEOs of companies to engage with one another on a very purposeful level. “Within your organisation, you don’t necessarily have any peers … [so] it’s nice to have an external network you can lean on.”

He’s now focused on industrialising Deep Branch’s CO2-to-protein technology, “because big problems need large-scale solutions”. A pilot plant at an innovation hub in the Netherlands is due to open shortly, and the company is also exploring the possibility of a commercial-scale facility in Iceland. The company’s aim is to produce 600,000 tonnes of protein per year by 2030. “It’s exciting to think of a world where there’s a lot more food security and food self-sufficiency,” says Rowe.

Pigs feeding

Deep Branch creates proteins for animal feed from purified CO2. Photographs: Jussi Puikkonen/The Guardian/Getty Images

The Rasa, meanwhile, has undergone successful beta testing, and Riversimple was recently in talks to locate a manufacturing plant in Aberdeen’s energy transition zone. It would produce 5,000 vehicles a year and potentially create 200 jobs, plus 600 more in the supply chain.

Rather than the UK building electric car battery factories when China already dominates the market and supplies of the critical minerals the batteries contain, Hugo Spowers believes Britain should seize the opportunity that hydrogen vehicles represent, given that fuel-cell technology is still immature. “It doesn’t require those critical minerals, and it really depends on innovation, which we’re pretty good at,” he says. “So a position of global significance in the supply chain for fuel-cell vehicles is a real opportunity for the UK.”

While protein for animal feed and hydrogen-powered cars might seem quite different, both illustrate the guiding ethos of Unreasonable Impact: that solving tough global problems is not only a moral imperative, it’s also a financial opportunity. And thanks to support from the programme, hundreds of innovators that share this belief should now find it easier to scale their business – and maybe change the world.

Discover more about the Unreasonable Impact programme, a partnership between Barclays and Unreasonable Group that supports high-growth entrepreneurs working on social and environmental challenges

GREENWASHING

What in the world is carbon insetting - and is it any better for the planet than carbon offsetting?

Rosie Frost
Tue, 21 February 2023 


Corporations are increasingly turning to carbon ‘insetting’ to meet their net zero goals.

But the practise is plagued by integrity issues and misreporting, a damning new report has warned.

The practise of carbon offsetting - investing in green projects or tree-planting as a way to balance out your carbon emissions - is increasingly widespread.

Insetting operates on a similar model, but brings the carbon reduction process in-house. Instead of buying carbon credits from unrelated third parties, companies invest in carbon reduction or removal projects along their own supply chains.

Nestle, for example, plants trees on the land of its suppliers.

But according to a new report by the New Climate Institute (NCI) - a German campaign group - the “contentious practise” doesn’t always stack up.

“Insetting is a business-driven concept with no universally accepted definition. The approach can lead to low credibility greenhouse gas emission offsetting claims and the double counting of emission reductions,” the report authors warn.

Ryanair: Low-cost airline warned about misleading carbon offset claims

Community conflict and vague predictions: The five biggest reasons carbon offsetting schemes fail

What is carbon offsetting?

Carbon insetting is a version of the more widely-known carbon offsetting.

These days, offsetting - paying to plant trees or investing in green projects as a way to balance out your carbon emissions - is a pretty standard method of easing your environmental conscience.

The process has spawned a thriving business making billions of euros every year as companies trade carbon credits to reach climate change goals.

You can now even offset to undo your own personal environmental damage, with airlines and organisations offering to help you take full responsibility for your residual emissions. For a small fee, of course.

Increasingly, however, this sustainability solution has come under fire from activists as being little more than greenwashing. Critics have compared it to the practice of selling indulgences in the ancient Catholic church; you can live how you want as long as you have the money to buy off your sins.

In December 2022, a Source Material and Guardian investigation claimed up to 90 per cent of forest-based carbon credits approved by industry-leader Verra are 'worthless.'
How does carbon insetting differ to carbon offsetting?

What if, instead of making environmental protection a side issue, businesses made these kinds of carbon-absorbing projects a part of the new normal?

It sounds like a positive development.

Tilmann Silber, director of sustainable supply chains for environmental expert, South Pole, discusses how important a completely new approach could be in allowing brands to show they are serious about fighting climate change.

“Insetting is derived from offsetting, as the name suggests,” Silber explains. Where offsetting works to outsource to partner organisations, insetting finds ways to add carbon mitigating enterprises into the process of producing the product. “They would be looking for projects in or close to their supply chain.”

Nestlé is one the companies singled out by the NCI report for its insetting scheme. - AP

Conventional carbon neutralising usually involves investing in projects unrelated to products, but insetting instead addresses a company’s balance with the ecosystem directly.

Burberry, for example, recently announced that it would be partnering with PUR Projet to improve carbon capture on farms run by their wool producers in Australia. Restoring the biodiversity of these habitats helps capture CO2 from the atmosphere but also ensures the future of the landscape.

Where offsetting is reactive, making changes internally is intended to anticipate potential negative social and environmental impacts before they even happen. Ultimately the goal is to provide a net positive outcome.

What are the problems with carbon insetting?

But insetting is vulnerable to the same integrity threats as offsetting, the New Climate Institute report warns.

The NCI analysed the climate pledges of 24 major multinational corporations.

Many of these corporations tout their insetting programs - a development that threatens to undermine company climate strategies, the NCI warns.

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Because insetting all happens inhouse, it’s hard to scrutinise the methodologies that different companies use. It is hard to show that the emissions reductions are permanent - trees planted for emissions reduction may be logged later on, for example - and difficult to verify how the company is tallying its carbon footprint.

There are no global verification standards for insetting schemes. Advertisement of such unvetted schemes could give consumers a "false impression of the company’s activities' true climate impact.," the NCI warns.

Can insetting be made successful?

Companies should be minimising their carbon footprint along their own supply chains. This premise - the central idea behind insetting - is sound.

However, the concept can be used to obscure a company's true climate footprint.

So how would genuinely sustainable insetting work? The practice does have a possible range of benefits beyond purely financial rewards. “It improves the resilience of the supply chain by investing where it is most vulnerable,” Silber says.

Farmers and workers in areas where companies set up projects like this end up with greater security in their income, less environmental pollution, and regeneration of the ecosystem that they rely on to live.

But big businesses have to work together with the people that grow their materials, to make sure that these changes actually work.

“There has to be a partnership approach, it’s not sustainable to force farmers to make changes,” explains Silber.

“It’s not enough to just make it financially attractive in the short-term, that means a farmer signs up for 5 to 10 years and then stops doing it.”

Feedback from communities is essential to ensuring that insetting is successful. Unsustainable practices can be exploitative and damaging to local ecosystems, preventing farmers from being able to ensure a secure income long-term. Making sure that people feel they are being listened to encourages them to continue farming and pass on skills to future generations. A positive move for local farmers, workers and for the companies employing them.

Po River: Winter brings little relief for Italy's drought struck waterway

The once-mighty Po River is flowing at extremely low levels, after a dry winter fails to compensate for record-breaking drought last summer. 

 - Copyright Marco_Bonfanti/Getty Images/iStockphoto

By Charlotte Elton with AFP • Updated: 20/02/2023 - 

Northern Italy’s lakes and rivers are abnormally low after an unusually dry winter, farmers have warned.

The mighty Po River is Italy’s longest waterway. Flowing from the snowy Alps to the Adriatic Sea, the Po stretches more than 650km, nourishing crops and providing vital irrigation to arable land.

But the river - and the farming communities who depend upon it - are under threat.

Last summer, record-breaking droughts reduced parts of the once-gushing waterway to a sluggish trickle. An unusually dry winter has brought little relief.

Next year’s harvest could be under threat, warns Stefano Greppi, head of the Farmers’ association of Pavia

"This winter has been very dry because there has been very little snowfall even on mountains, and the reservoirs are at historic lows, so the same situation as in 2022 is likely to occur again,” he says.
Italy drought: WWII bomb revealed by record-low water levels in River Po is safely detonated
Italy drought: Compare satellite images to see how Po River has changed in two years
How low is the Po right now?

The mighty Po River is currently 3.3 metres below zero gauge height - a normal dry point for the river.

The waterway is rarely this low, even in the height of summer.

There has been little rain this winter, warns Stefano Mancuso, Professor of Arboriculture, University of Florence.

"Right now the situation is typical for global warming,” he explains.

“The same amount of rain falls in a year, but it is concentrated in very few days. To think that this situation can change is absolutely impossible."

The Po river is usually much higher at this time of year.

The Lake Garda and Po River Basin Authority have decided to reduce water flow by 5 cubic meters per second. This will hopefully prevent the river from drying up in particularly vulnerable spots.

The river has been flowing at extremely low levels since summer 2022, when Italy sweltered through record-breaking heat and drought. It dwindled so much that the remains of a tank from WWII were revealed and the ruined walls of a medieval town emerged from the water.

The historic average flow for June is 1,805 cubic metres per second. In late June 2022, the flow measured in some parts of the river fell below an average of 145 cubic metres per second.

Seawater surged upstream, rushing in to fill the vacuum caused by dramatically low water levels. This saltwater seeped into the earth and poisoned parched crops.

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What does the winter drought mean for farmers?

The vast flatlands surrounding the Po are Italy’s breadbasket, boasting tracts of wheat and rice crops. The river provides vital irrigation to this land.

A lack of winter snow - which has caused ski resorts to close across the continent - will likely have knock-on impacts for the harvest next summer.

Low rainfall means farmers can’t plough their land to plant seeds either.

"There are geological factors that prevent ploughing, the soil is so hard that the ploughshares can't cut through the earth,” Grappi says.

Watch the video 

Murder of the Dead by Amadeo Bordiga 1951

https://www.marxists.org › archive › bordiga › works

In Italy, we have long experience of “catastrophes that strike the country” and we also have a certain specialisation in “staging” them. Earthquakes, volcanic ...