Examining the link between body image and income

by Lucie Rutherford, University of Virginia

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

What started as a casual dinner conversation between two very different researchers in 2016—one a data scientist and engineer, the other an expert in economic models—has since turned into a journal article quantifying the effects of the "beauty premium," the notion that those who are more physically attractive tend to have a greater income.

The research team's engineer is Stephen Baek, an associate professor of data science at the University of Virginia, while the econometrician is Suyong Song, an associate professor of economics and finance at the University of Iowa. Five years ago, the two found that their research interests overlapped more than they initially realized, causing an unexpected idea to spark.

Baek began his collaboration with Song as a researcher at Iowa before joining the UVA School of Data Science faculty in August 2021. In his previous work, Baek analyzed and modeled human body shapes for engineering applications such as product design, virtual fashion, garment design and ergonomics. Song, on the other hand, brought expertise studying economic models that suffer from measurement and reporting error.

Compared to previous publications on the beauty premium, Baek and Song's research methods are novel, due to the nature of their data set, sourced from the 2002 Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource project, or CAESAR. In addition to self-reported height and weight measures—which have been used in previous studies—the project also gathered 3D body-scanned data, extensive information on demographic and family income, as well as tape-measure and caliper body measurements from nearly 2,400 civilians. With this data, the two researchers could provide a richer story of physical appearance and socio-economic variables.

"The issue with previous works was that people were oversimplifying the parameters to describe body shape," Baek said. "The traditional processes for determining physical appearance, such as stature, weight and BMI, are imperfect processes, and therefore not capable of capturing all the dimensions of human body shape."

Using a novel machine-learning algorithm called a "graphical autoencoder" or "deep machine learning," the 3D scans were inputted to encode geometric features of human body shape. After the machine was introduced to thousands of individual scans, the algorithm reduced the data's dimensionality—from a few hundreds of thousands of points down to a few important features –characterizing each human body shape using numerical values. Baek and Song then visualized the features to determine which body parts the algorithm was referencing and estimated their relations with socio-economic variables. Using this scientific approach, the causal effects of physical appearance could be quantified

For male and female subsamples, stature and obesity were both important features, while hip-to-waist ratio was an additional unique feature in the physical appearance of women. The empirical results found that greater stature in males was correlated to higher family income, while greater obesity in women was correlated to lower family income.

In addition to their findings regarding the beauty premium, Song's expertise in economic models added another layer to their findings: the negative role that survey and measurement error play in studies utilizing body measurements. According to his calculations—made possible by the fact that the 2002 data also included self-reported body measurements—Song found that reporting error highly correlated with true weight and height. On average, lighter-weight individuals tended to over-report their weight, whereas heavier individuals tended to under-report. The findings proved that survey errors regarding these measurements are substantial, and that previous studies utilizing self-reported survey data likely suffer because of it. Song explained that when regression models are run in which economic variables suffer from survey or measurement error, the estimation becomes biased, blurring the correct relationship.

"To address the issue of error, many economists assume that these errors are negligible or they are zero on average," Song said. "However, our study showed that they are not negligible and they are not zero on average, but rather showed that they are correlated with true height or weight, which alarms many studies using survey data."

Initially, Song anticipated a target audience of economists and statisticians, but with these findings, has since realized the topic's broader impact on fields like engineering, computer science, biology and social science.

Three years after its initial submission, the research paper, "Body Shape Matters: Evidence from Machine Learning on Body Shape-Income Relationship," was published in the open-access journal, PLOS One.

With heightened publicity, not only do Baek and Song hope to present the extent of error in previous body shape studies that relied on self-reported survey data, but also to bring awareness to the issue of beauty premiums.Breakthrough in 3D scanning leads to 4500% more accurate results

More information: Suyong Song et al, Body shape matters: Evidence from machine learning on body shape-income relationship, PLOS ONE (2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254785

Journal information: PLoS ONE 

Provided by University of Virginia 

 

Degassing data suggests Mt. Etna began showing signs of pressure buildup months before 2018 eruption

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A team of researchers from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, in Italy, has found evidence showing that magma pressure had begun building up deep in Mt. Etna's reservoir several months before the 2018 eruption. They also found evidence of degassing. In their paper, published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of data from gas monitors situated on the famous volcano.

Back in 2018, Mt. Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes, erupted in a dramatic fashion on Christmas Eve, spewing ash into the air and forcing closure of airspace. Two days later, a magnitude 4.9 earthquake shook the area around the volcano wreaking damage and injuring four people. In this new effort, the researchers suggest that degassing inside the volcano for approximately six months before the eruption could have been a warning of what was about to happen.

Over the years, scientists have placed a host of sensors on and around the volcano, each of which give some clues about the processes involved. Some of those sensors measure gasses that are emitted by the volcano. Prior research has shown that the ratios of gasses change over time as the volcano undergoes changes. In their work, the researchers looked at ratios of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, hydrochloric acid and helium isotopes—gasses that have been associated with the buildup of magma in the volcano's reservoir. Prior research has also suggested that pressure buildup of magma can be a signal suggesting that the volcano is on a path toward eruption. The researchers found that ratios of helium isotopes at five sites near vents on the volcano began increasing, up to a year before the eruption. They also found that the volcano began emitting more carbon dioxide approximately six months before the eruption and that there were fluctuations in many other gasses as well. They suggest that together the changes in degassing ratios could be an indication of magma pressure buildup leading to an eruption. They conclude their paper by suggesting that the eruption in 2018 was inevitable, because the volcano was extremely over-pressurized in the weeks before it blew.

Scientists detect earthquake swarm at Hawaii volcano

More information: Intense overpressurization at basaltic open-conduit volcanoes as inferred by geochemical signals: The case of the Mt. Etna December 2018 eruption, Science Advances (2021). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abg6297

Journal information: Science Advances 

© 2021 Science X Network

• 
  

Unified theory explains how materials transform from solids to liquids

by Lois Yoksoulian, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The mucus layer on the underside of a snail foot is one example of a soft material that 

yields to stress up to a certain point, then flows. This behavior, simplified in a new study

 from researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is what helps the snail

 move without unwieldy sliding, similar to that of many other natural and synthetic materials

, from mud to the additives that make toothpaste flow when squeezed.

 Credit: Rodrigo Quarteu

Years of meticulous experimentation have paid off for researchers aiming to unify the physics that defines materials that transition from solids to liquids. The researchers said a new theoretical model could help develop new synthetic materials and inform and predict civil engineering and environmental challenges such as mudslides, dam breaks and avalanches.

The study, led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Simon Rogers, unveils a unified mathematical expression that defines how soft-yet-rigid materials transition from a solid into a liquid flow when they exceed their specific stress threshold. The findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"The behavior of yield-stress fluids has traditionally been defined by trying to combine the physics of two different types of materials: solids and liquids," said lead author Krutarth Kamani, a chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student at Illinois. "But now, we have shown that these physical states—solid and liquid—can exist together in the same material, and we can explain it using one mathematical expression."

To develop this model, the team performed numerous studies that subjected a variety of different soft materials to stress while measuring the individual solidlike and liquidlike strain responses using a device called a rheometer.

"We were able to observe a material's behavior and see a continuous transition between the solid and liquid states," said Rogers, who is also an affiliate at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I. "The traditional models all describe an abrupt change in behavior from solid to liquid, but we were able to resolve two distinct behaviors that reflect energy dissipation via solid and fluid mechanisms."

The study reports that this development gives researchers a simple model to work with, making it easier to make large-scale calculations like those needed to model and predict catastrophic events like mudslides and avalanches.

"The existing models are computationally expensive, and researchers need to struggle with the numbers to get the calculations to be as accurate as possible," Rogers said. "Our model is simple and more accurate, and we have shown that through many proof-of-concept experiments."

The researchers said complex yield-stress studies of fluids are a hot topic for those investigating geophysical flows, waste remediation and industrial processes like new materials development, 3D printing and the minimization of waste transport costs. "Our model defines a basic example of solid-to-liquid behavior, but I think it will serve as a jumping-off point for researchers to make significant progress in defining the more complex yield-stress fluid phenomena."

New approach to soft material flow may yield way to new materials, disaster prediction

More information: Krutarth Kamani et al, Unification of the Rheological Physics of Yield Stress Fluids, Physical Review Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.218002

Journal information: Physical Review Letters 

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

ROBO TRUCK
Vale launches self-driving trucks at its largest mine

Reuters | September 2, 2021 

(Image courtesy of Vale)

Brazilian miner Vale SA said on Thursday it had begun using self-driving trucks for the first time at its Carajas complex, its largest iron ore mining operation, as it continues to expand its use of the driverless technology.


Vale expects to boost productivity and safety by using the trucks to haul iron ore, said Pedro Bemfica, the executive heading the autonomous technology program.

The miner’s six self-driving vehicles at Carajas are nearly twice as tall and more than three times as wide as a conventional trucks and capable of holding 320 tonnes of iron ore.

The behemoths will operate alongside its fleet of about 120 normal offroad vehicles at Carajas, which is located in the northern Amazon state of Para. The company plans to add four additional self-driving trucks by year’s end.


THE COMPANY’S ENTIRE FLEET OF 13 OFFROAD VEHICLES IN THE BRUCUTU MINE IN SOUTHEASTERN MINAS GERAIS STATE IS AUTONOMOUS

The company forecasts that the trucks, which operate constantly and at a higher speed, will cut fuel consumption by about 5% and help Vale’s plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

Costs related to wear-and-tear should also be lower with less spending needed on lubricant and tires.

“The principle objective is really to bring safety,” said Bemfica. “We launched this technology in trucks with the objective of removing people from inherent risk.”

The company’s entire fleet of 13 offroad vehicles in the Brucutu mine in southeastern Minas Gerais state is autonomous, and there has not been a single accident since the technology was first introduced there in 2016, he said.

The executive said the company intends to invest $64 million in expanding its fleet of self-driving trucks to 37 units at Carajas, although he did not give a clear timeframe for when that would be completed.

Vale also has four autonomous drilling rigs at Carajas and plans to add another three by the year’s end, Bemfica said.

(By Marta Nogueira and Jake Spring; Editing by David Evans)

Offshore drilling ban and mining curbs edge closer to passage

Bloomberg News | September 2, 2021 | 

Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Aerial with mountains and Ivishak River. 

Stock Image.

Legislation to block oil drilling in most U.S. waters and Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge edged closer to passage Thursday, as the House Natural Resources Committee rejected more than a dozen changes sought by Republicans.


The bill would slap new fees on oil and mining companies and effectively block the proposed Resolution Copper mine in Arizona while doling tens of billions of dollars to climate resilience, drought relief, conservation and other programs.

LEGISLATION WOULD ABOLISH A FOUR-YEAR-OLD REQUIREMENT THAT THE GOVERNMENT SELL DRILLING RIGHTS IN THE ARCTIC NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE’S COASTAL PLAIN

The committee is expected to approve the bill next week after spending roughly nine hours considering the measure Thursday. Congressional Democrats then would fold the measure into the broader $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending legislation they are developing to expand the government’s role in health care, combat climate change and fulfill much of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

On Thursday, panel Democrats united in party-line votes to reject Republican-backed amendments to eliminate proposed fees and restrictions on oil operations, among other changes. More amendment votes are expected when the committee resumes considering the bill on Sept. 9.

The legislation would bar the sale of new oil and gas leases in Pacific and Atlantic waters as well as the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It also would abolish a four-year-old requirement that the government sell drilling rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain while voiding nine leases issued in that northeast Alaska region earlier this year.

Other provisions would rule out domestic uranium production near the Grand Canyon, create annual fees of up to $10,000 per mile on offshore pipelines and effectively block the Resolution Copper Co. mining project proposed by Rio Tinto Plc and BHP Group Plc in Arizona.

(By Jennifer A. Dlouhy)

Native Americans lose bid to halt digging at Nevada lithium mine site
Reuters | September 3, 2021 | 

(Photo courtesy of LAC)

A U.S. federal judge ruled on Friday that Lithium Americas Corp may conduct excavation work at its Thacker Pass lithium mine site in Nevada, denying a request from Native Americans who said the digging would desecrate an area they believe holds ancestral bones and artifacts.


The ruling from Chief Judge Miranda Du was the second victory in recent weeks for the project, which could become the largest U.S. source of lithium, used in electric vehicle batteries.

The court is still considering the broader question of whether former President Donald Trump’s administration erred when it approved the project in January. That ruling is expected by early 2022.

Du said the Native Americans did not prove the U.S. government failed to properly consult them during the permitting process. Du in July denied a similar request from environmentalists.

THE COURT IS STILL CONSIDERING THE BROADER QUESTION OF WHETHER FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S ADMINISTRATION ERRED WHEN IT APPROVED THE PROJECT IN JANUARY

Du said, though, that she was not dismissing all the Native Americans’ arguments, but felt bound by existing laws to deny their request.

“This order does not resolve the merits of the tribes’ claims,” Du said in her 22-page ruling.

Vancouver-based Lithium Americas said it would protect and preserve tribal artifacts.

“We’ve always been committed to doing this the right way by respecting our neighbors, and we are pleased today’s ruling recognizes our efforts,” Lithium Americas Chief Executive Jon Evans told Reuters.

No digging can take place until the U.S. Bureau of Land Management issues an Archeological Resources Protection Act permit.

The Burns Paiute Tribe, one of the tribes that brought the lawsuit, noted that the bureau told the court last month that the land holds cultural value for Native Americans.

“If that’s the case, well then there’s going to be harm if you start digging into the landscape,” said Richard Eichstaedt, an attorney for the Burns Paiute.

Representatives for the bureau and two other tribes who sued were not immediately available to comment.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by David Gregorio and Rosalba O’Brien)

Centerra says 40 metres of water at Kumtor pit a threat to workers, environment

Cecilia Jamasmie | August 31, 2021 | 

Centerra says this photo, taken in August, indicates there may be at least 40 meters (131 feet) of water at the bottom of the Kumtor central pit (Image courtesy of Kumtor Gold Company.)

Canada’s Centerra Gold (TSX: CG) said on Tuesday there are at least 40 meters of water at the bottom of its seized Kumtor gold mine in Kyrgyzstan and “abnormally” large amounts running down the pit walls, which it said could lead to catastrophic events.


The Toronto-based miner said that in the three months the former soviet nation has been running the mine, the pit has flooded with more water than they ever saw collect in the over 25 years of the operation under its control.

While the government-controlled Kumtor Gold Company (KGC) said the mine is stable and running at full speed, Centerra said it has photographic evidence suggesting the contrary. They include a video posted on August 15 on KGC’s Facebook page.

“Based on these images, Centerra believes at least 40 meters of water may be at the bottom of the Kumtor central pit (…) This has put the entire mine and its workers at risk of potentially catastrophic events, not to mention the real harm to the environment.,” the company said in an emailed statement.

The mine under Centerra’s operation (left) and current on right. (Courtesy of Centerra Gold.)

The miner believes urgent action is needed to address critical safety and operational issues.

“This is massive and the entire situation presents an imminent danger at many levels, not just the water in the pit, but also the tailings storage facility due to glacier melt”, Lindsay Newland Bowker, executive director of World Mine Tailings Failures told MINING.COM.

“The Kyrgyz government has zero capacity and no money to take on a proper assessment or correction of this problem,” she added.

The mine pit slices through two glaciers — Lysyi and Davidov. This vicinity and the practice of storing waste rock directly on the glaciers represents a risk to the enormous natural ice sheets, according to data compiled by Bankwacht Network.

In response to Centerra’s allegations, KGC the water levels in the pit were normal. To support this allegations, it included in its statement photos of similar amounts of water in the pit dating back to 2010, when Centerra operated the mine. “We believe that all the information presented in [theCenterra] press release is untrue and contains elements of destructive panic,” KGC said.

Water is a danger in pits in several ways, including affecting slope stability and a potential leak of the metal-rich water stored there, known as mine drainage, says Geoff Beale from Piteau Associates, a Canadian geotechnical and water management consultancy.

“WATER IS A DANGER IN PITS IN SEVERAL WAYS, INCLUDING SLOPE STABILITY AND A POTENTIAL LEAK OF THE METAL-RICH WATER STORE THERE, KNOWN AS MINE DRAINAGE

”GeofF Beale, Piteau Associates

In an online seminar last year, Beale — who is also co-editor of the CSIRO Guidelines for Evaluating Water in Pit Slope Stability — noted the amount of water contained in a pit can be an accident catalyzer.

“Water changes the resistive forces of a slope and creates driving forces. It’s a very simple concept. It’s two forces acting at the same time— the downward pressure of the rocks that holds the material together and the other is the upper pressure of the water that can break the rock. The less water, the more resistance,” he said.

Centerra chief operating officer Dan Desjardins, who managed the mine for five years as the president of Kumtor Gold until January 2020, urged the mine’s current management to hire independent experts to assess the condition of the mine and to publish the findings.

“Clean glacial water is flowing uncontrolled into the pit. This is dangerous and we are worried about the safety of workers,” he said. “When we operated the mine, nearly all of the glacial melt water was intercepted before it reached the pit.”

One of the most well-known landslide in an open pit is the one that happened at Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah in 2013. The incident did not claim victims, but it damaged equipment, a building structure, slowed output, and took at least three years to repair.

Resource nationalism

The Kyrgyz’s parliament passed in early May a law allowing the state to temporarily take over Kumtor gold mine, the country’s biggest industrial enterprise.

Kyrgyzstan’s move came after a court fined Centerra’s unit Kumtor Gold Company (KGC) more than $3 billion for allegedly dumping mining waste on glaciers near the mine 4,000 meters above sea level. A state commission also recently alleged that KGC owed more than $1 billion in unpaid taxes.

Kumtor is the largest of Centerra’s three gold mines, accounting for over 50% of the company’s total output. Since the seizure, Centerra’s Kyrgyz subsidiaries have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company has also sued the new external manager of the mine, alleging that he conspired to steal the asset while he was a director.

Centerra said at the time that KGC and the Kumtor Operating Company CJSC (KOC) were solvent, with total assets (including the Kumtor mine) above $1.1 billion and no external bank debt.

Kumtor Gold Company’s video:





The Canadian miner is not a party to or affected by the Chapter 11 filing and remains with more than $883 million in cash and almost $1.3 billion in liquidity as of June 30, 2021, it said earlier this month.

The mine has produced more than 13.2 million ounces of gold between 1997 and the end of 2020. Last year’s output was slightly over 556,000 ounces. Centerra guided in January for Kumtor to produce 470,000 to 510,000 ounces of gold, with improving grades and production expected towards year-end.

The operation is considered by analysts a classic example of the risks tied to resource nationalism, as it has been for years the subject of both renegotiations protracted legal battles.

Centerra is currently seeking to hold the Kyrgyz government and Kyrgyzaltyn responsible for all losses and damages that result from their coordinated campaign to seize the gold mine in violation of longstanding investment agreements and without compensation to Centerra.

The company also seeks to prevent the Kyrgyz government and Kyrgyzaltyn from taking any further actions to nationalize the mine or improperly dispose of it.

Its two units, KGC and KOC, filed last week a motion in a US Bankruptcy Court seeking penalties of $1 million a day against the Kyrgyzstan government.

Eight people suffocate at Burkina Faso mine after police fire tear gas

Reuters | September 2, 2021 | 

Bissa mine in Burkina Faso. Image: Nordgold.

Eight people suffocated to death when police in Burkina Faso used tear gas against unauthorised gold miners at Nordgold’s Bissa mine, a prosecutor said on Thursday.


About 40 were on site on Wednesday when the police fired tear gas, which “caused panic and the suffocation of the clandestine gold miners”, national prosecutor Wendyam Lambert Sanfo said in a statement.

Sanfo said charges for involuntary homicide would be brought in the case but did not specify against whom. Four people were also arrested on charges of burning 10 vehicles on the site.

RELATED: IAMGOLD halts transport to and from Burkina Faso mine after attack

The police said in a statement on Monday that they had discovered the bodies of six miners at the mine but did not mention firing tear gas.

Nordgold, a Russia-focused miner majority owned by Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov and his sons, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Burkina Faso and neighbouring West African countries have experienced a gold rush in recent years as informal miners, starved of other well-paying economic opportunities, dig for ore in often dangerous conditions.

(By Thiam Ndiaga and Aaron Ross; Editing by Grant McCool)

ECOCIDE

Congo says 12 dead, 4,400 sick following Angola mine tailings leak

Reuters | September 2, 2021 | 

Credit: Catoca Mining Company

The Democratic Republic of Congo will seek compensation from the owners of an Angolan diamond mine after a tailings dam leak polluted drinking water, causing 12 deaths and making thousands of people ill, the country’s environment minister said on Thursday.


The late-July leak from Angola’s biggest diamond mine turned a tributary of the Congo River red following a rupture in a spillway for the mine’s tailings dam, which stores mining industry waste meant to stay undisturbed.

Researchers at Kinshasha University last month pointed to “huge pollution” that affected some 2 million people, killed fish and caused diarrhoea among river communities.

Congo, which shares a 1,600-mile (2,575 km) long border with Angola, will seek compensation in line with the “polluter pays” principle, where those who produce pollution should bear the cost of mitigating it, Eve Bazaiba told a media conference after visiting the country’s southern Kasai province.

Bazaiba said she could not yet say how much in damages the country could seek. She said 4,400 people had fallen ill.

CATOCA SAID IT IMMEDIATELY SOUGHT TO REPAIR THE LEAK, BUILT TWO DYKES TO FILTER SEDIMENT OUT OF THE WATER AND BY AUG. 9 THE BREACH WAS SEALED

The mine’s operator, Sociedade Mineira de Catoca, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the damages claim and deaths listed by the minister.

The leak and deaths represent the latest in a string of tailings disasters for the global mining industry that investors, executives and environmentalists have tried to curtail with safety and inspection standards introduced last year.

Not all companies – including Catoca – have publicly committed to the standards, which are non-binding, further fuelling questions about how the standards can cause industry-wide change if not all mines and mining companies adhere.

Catoca, a joint venture between Angolan state diamond company Endiama and Russia’s Alrosa, said in a press release last month that tailings leaked into the Lova River, a tributary of the Tshikapa River, which eventually feeds into the Congo River, in late July.

Satellite images reviewed by Reuters show the Tshikapa turned red on July 25.

Catoca said it immediately sought to repair the leak, built two dykes to filter sediment out of the water and by Aug. 9 the breach was sealed.

Alrosa, which holds a 41% stake in Catoca, did not disclose the incident and told Reuters it was not its responsibility to do so as it does not control the mine site.

Endiama, which also holds 41% of the company, also said it was Catoca’s responsibility to make the incident public. In answers to Reuters’ questions, Endiama said it was made aware of the leak on July 30, three days after Catoca said it was seen.

Catoca said it donated food baskets to riverine communities to mitigate the impact of the pollution. Endiama said other measures were being worked on, without providing details.

The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), the global mining industry trade group, which worked to draw up standards on tailings dams, said it had offered support to Alrosa – which is not an ICMM member – after the leak.

Adam Matthews, chief responsible investment officer for the Church of England Pensions Board, which was also instrumental in drawing up the safety norms, said the leak was a reminder that tailings management requires continued attention from industry, governments and investors.

He said investors and the United Nations are developing an Independent International Institute which would implement the standard and verify companies’ compliance with it.

(By Hereward Holland, Helen Reid and Polina Devitt; Editing by Ernest Scheyder and Richard Pullin)

US court overturns Trump water rule on environmental grounds
MINING.COM Editor | September 3, 2021 | 3:55 am News USA Copper Gold

The San Pedro River is one of the Arizona’s waterways affected by the Trump-era clean water rules. (Image courtesy of Katja Schulz | Flicr Commons.)

Environmental groups welcomed a federal judge’s decision this week to overturn the Trump administration’s scaled back clean water rule limiting the number of waterways overseen by federal regulations.


The ruling by Arizona district court judge Rosemary Marquez said the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule was filled with “errors” and has negatively impacted arid states in the west, particularly Arizona and New Mexico.

The draft version of the rule, which went into effect near the end of Trump’s time in office, was specifically criticized by the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) own science advisory board. They said the norm ignored current scientific understanding and was incompatible with the aims of the Clean Water Act.

“WE WOULD LIKE TO AVOID HAVING EACH ADMINISTRATION CHANGE THE REGULATIONS WHICH LEAVE GREEN ENERGY, MINING, HOUSING AND CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS IN QUESTION” 

Steve Trussell, executive director of the Arizona Rock Products Association

Mining and farming representatives were not pleased with the ruling. Steve Trussell, executive director of the Arizona Rock Products Association, said the ruling reinstates uncertainty around what is regulated, what the regulations are, and how they will be implemented.

“Sadly, the uncertainty of this decision will only harm the … parties which represent job creators and the backbone of America’s economy,” he told Arizona PBS. “We would like to avoid having each administration change the regulations which leave green energy, mining, housing and critical infrastructure projects in question.”

For the six federally recognized Native America tribes who had sued the EPA and Army Corps for passing a rule they claim fail to protect their waterways, this week’s verdict is a victory.

“The court recognized that the serious legal and scientific errors of the Dirty Water Rule were causing irreparable damage to our nation’s waters and would continue to do so unless that Rule was vacated,” said Janette Brimmer, attorney for Earthjustice, which represented the tribes.

The tribes include the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Tohono O’odham Nation, Quinault Indian Nation, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin, Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

(With files from Reuters)

Barrick, NovaGold closer to Donlin mine decision
Cecilia Jamasmie | September 3, 2021 | 

Donlin Gold project, Alaska, being developed by Novagold, which recently joined EY’s Canadian Mining Index. (Image courtesy of Novagold Presentation, Nov. 2020.)

Joint venture partners Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX) (NYSE: GOLD) and NovaGold Resources (TSX: NG) have published the first results of their 24,000-meter drilling program for their Donlin gold project in Southwest Alaska, which will likely provide the final data needed for an optimized mine plan at the 39-million-ounce gold asset.

The Donlin Gold Project is an intrusion-related gold deposit in southwest Alaska, USA. It is currently in the late feasibility stage of development and is 50/50 owned by NovaGold (TSX:NG) and Barrick Gold (TSX:ABX). The Tintina Gold Province is bordered by two large fault systems and hosts many gold deposits of varying types.

Donlin Gold Project, Alaska | Geology for Investors

www.geologyforinvestors.com/donlin-gold-project/

The primary objective of the 2021 drill program is to complete the necessary work to validate and increase confidence in recent geologic modeling concepts at Dolin.

Having completed 18 drill holes, plus additional partial results for another 11 holes, the partners have detected significant new high-grade drill hole intercepts that hint of potential feeder zones for the larger system.

BARRICK AND NOVAGOLD ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY MAKING HEADWAY ON OBTAINING THE FINAL STATE PERMITS NEEDED TO DEVELOP AN OPERATION THAT MATCHES THE WORLD-CLASS DEPOSIT

“The 2021 drill program has been enormously rewarding — allowing us to improve our knowledge of the geology and mineralization in the ACMA and Lewis deposits which in turn will provide the information required to proceed with a new feasibility study,” Greg Lang, Novagold’s President and CEO, said in the statement.

After this year’s drilling season, Barrick and Novagold expect to be able to turn their attention towards a feasibility study for the proposed mine. The companies are simultaneously making headway on obtaining the final state permits needed to develop an operation.

The pending and final state authorization includes water permits and a right of way agreement for the 482km (300-mile) pipeline that will deliver natural gas to the Donlin mine.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the US Army Corps Engineers and Bureau of Land Management have already granted Barrick and Novagold the federal permits needed to develop the mine in the second largest gold-producing state in the US.

According to the partners, the Donlin deposit hosts one of the largest and highest-grade undeveloped open-pit gold endowments in the world, with an estimated 39 million ounces of gold grading 2.24 grams per tonne in the measured and indicated resource categories.

Rare earths make their way to Colorado’s waterways
Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | September 3, 2021 |

A student collects aquatic insects from the Snake River during a 2015 field trip. (Image by Stephen Cardinale, courtesy of UC Boulder’s Institute for Water and Alpine Research).

New research by a team at the University of Colorado Boulder found that rare earth elements are making their way into the state’s water supplies, driven by changes in climate.


The study, which is the first to look at how rare earth elements move within a watershed that is rich in minerals — the Snake River watershed — was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. According to the document, there is growing concern about REE concentrations because they are not monitored and there are no water quality standards set for them.

The paper is also the first one to dig into how climate change, by altering stream flow and natural weathering processes, is releasing more rare earth elements into streams.

“We documented a concentration range of one to hundreds of micrograms per liter—several orders of magnitude higher than typical for surface waters—with the highest concentrations nearest the headwaters and areas receiving drainage from abandoned mine workings,” the lead author of the study, Garrett Rue, said in a media statement.


THE RESEARCHERS SUGGEST THAT INVESTIGATING AND INVESTING IN TECHNOLOGIES TO RECOVER RARE EARTH ELEMENTS FROM NATURAL WATERS COULD YIELD VALUABLE COMMODITIES AND HELP ADDRESS THE PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH ACID ROCK AND MINE DRAINAGE

Rue and his co-author Diane McKnight also documented that increases in rare earth elements in the Snake River corresponded to warming summer air temperatures, and that rare earth elements are accumulating in insects living in streams at concentrations comparable to other metals such as lead and cadmium shown to be toxic.

“We’re starting to understand that once rare earth elements get in the water, they tend to stay there,” the lead researcher said. “They aren’t removed by traditional treatment processes either, which has implications for reuse and has led some European cities to designate REEs as an emerging contaminant to drinking water supplies. And considering that the Snake River flows directly into Dillion Reservoir, which is Denver’s largest source of stored water, this could be a concern for the future.”

Given these results, Rue and his colleague suggest that investigating and investing in technologies to recover rare earth elements from natural waters could yield valuable commodities and help address the problems associated with acid rock and mine drainage, which are poised to worsen as the climate shifts.

“Rare earth elements are used to make a lot of products. But most of the supply comes from China. So our government has been looking for sources, but at the same time mining has left an indelible mark on the waters of the West,” Rue said. “If we can harvest some of these materials that are already coming into our environment, it might be worthwhile to treat that water and recover these materials at the same time.”
How they did it

To reach their conclusions, the team followed the water quality monitoring process that has been carried out since the 1990s at CU Boulder.

Given the location of the Snake River watershed, it is considered a good natural laboratory for investigating these processes as the area’s pyrite-rich geology allows for acid rock drainage to occur naturally. At the same time, historic mines that disturb large amounts of rocks and soil amp up the process dramatically and cause downstream water pollution.

The Snake River’s Peru Creek part of the watershed has been heavily mined, while the Upper Snake River has not.

What takes place there is that rocks that include sulphide-based minerals, such as pyrite, oxidize when exposed to air and water. The resulting chemical reaction produces sulfuric acid and dissolved metals like iron, which drain into streams. More acidic water can further dissolve heavy metals, like lead, cadmium, and zinc, and as it turns out can carry rare earth elements as well.

“What really controls the mobility of rare earth elements is pH. Acid literally leaches it out of the rocks,” Rue said.

Rue and McKnight also found that both parts of the watershed are now contributing significant amounts of metals downstream, as climate change has brought longer summers and less snow in the winters. Longer, lower stream flows make it easier for metals to leach into the watershed, and concentrate the metals that would otherwise be diluted by snowmelt.

The same processes that mean more heavy metals are finding their way into streams are also acting on rare earth elements.

Obscure precious metal takes center stage for platinum giants

Bloomberg News | September 3, 2021 | 

NOx annihilating nugget. Stock image.

The rise of rhodium, the world’s most expensive precious metal, has made it the No. 1 revenue stream of the biggest platinum miners.


While the metal is well shy of its March peak, rhodium still accounted for 45% of Anglo American Platinum Ltd.’s first-half revenues. That’s more than platinum and palladium put together. For parent Anglo American Plc, the silvery-white metal generated more revenue than the diamonds mined by its De Beers business or the copper it extracts in Chile and Peru.



The scarcity of rhodium — a byproduct of platinum and palladium mining — and its unparalleled ability to curb nitrogen oxides from car exhaust fumes pushed up prices as stricter pollution laws boost demand. In March, it climbed to a record $29,800 an ounce, making it 17 times more valuable than gold.

Originally used for decoration or as corrosion-resistant coating, rhodium has also become the biggest export for South Africa, which produces more than 80% of global supply.

IN SOUTH AFRICAN RAND


“Rhodium prices have retreated somewhat but continue to contribute significantly to revenues particularly for rhodium-rich mines,” said Mandi Dungwa, a mining analyst at Kagiso Asset Management Ltd. in Cape Town.

With rhodium declining more than 40% from its peak, that contribution may not be repeated. Impala Platinum Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Nico Muller expects market tightness to keep the metal above $15,000 an ounce for the next year, but Neal Froneman, his counterpart at Sibanye Stillwater Ltd., expects prices to fall to a more “sustainable level” of about $10,000 over the next two years.

(By Felix Njini, with assistance from Yuliya Fedorinova and Thomas Biesheuvel)

All In by Billie Jean King review – game, set and match

A vivid and inspiring autobiography by the woman who took on the tennis establishment and won

Battle of the sexes ... Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. 

Photograph: Bettmann Archive


Fiona Sturges
Sat 4 Sep 2021 

Billie Jean King learned early that, as a girl who excelled at sport, she wouldn’t always be treated fairly. There was the elementary school teacher who marked her down for using her “superior ability” during playground games, and the tennis official who pulled her, aged 10, from a players’ photo during a California tournament because she was wearing shorts instead of a skirt.

King went on to observe top-ranking teenage boys getting free meals at the canteen of the Los Angeles Tennis Club where she trained, while she and her mother were made to eat the food they had brought from home outside. Later, as a player competing on the international stage, she would see male competitors winning up to eight times the prize money of their female counterparts. “Even if you’re not a born activist,” she writes, “life can damn well make you one.”

King’s memoir ­– written with the sports journalist Johnette Howard and writer Maryanne Vollers – is a vivid and detailed account of her rise to sporting greatness and her struggles to attain equal treatment for women in a shockingly discriminatory sport. She reveals how, in the early 1970s, she forged a path for female players by leading the breakaway movement for the first all-women’s tennis pro tour, despite threats that it would finish her career. Many male players, among them Stan Smith , denounced King’s efforts; the Australian player, Fred Stolle, told her: “No one wants to pay to watch you birds play.” But King was undeterred, persuading eight others, among them Rosemary Casals and Nancy Richey, to sign up to what would become the Virginia Slims Circuit for a token dollar bill. They were called the “Original 9” and their set-up became the basis for the formation of the Women’s Tennis Association three years later. 

King with the Wimbledon trophy following her victory over

 PF Jones in July 1967. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

In 1971, King, who had spent much of the 60s living hand-to-mouth on the measly per diems dispensed during amateur tournaments, earned an unprecedented $100,000; in 1976, Chris Evert’s earnings topped $1m. There were those who felt King’s focus on money was vulgar, but she remained steadfast. As Althea Gibson, the first African American tennis player to win a Grand Slam title and one of King’s biggest inspirations, said: “You can’t eat trophies.”

Elsewhere, it’s with remarkable clarity that King recalls life-changing matches, in some cases walking us through each set. This isn’t as laborious as it sounds. King revels in drama and tension, both in her tennis and in her storytelling; given her status as a record-breaking sportswoman, her occasional lapses into bombast seem forgivable. The build-up to the famous “Battle of the Sexes” match, in which she played against Bobby Riggs, and the circus that surrounded it, is terrifically told. Riggs, a fiftysomething attention-seeker and self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig”, had challenged King to a prize fight in order to prove that women’s tennis was inferior to men’s, and not worthy of investment. Where King spent the weeks before the match training hard and studying Riggs’s game, he spent much of them taunting her in media interviews and setting up endorsement deals. She thrashed him in straight sets.

King’s campaigning went beyond tennis, of course. She marched for women’s liberation alongside Gloria Steinem and, in the face of ferocious criticism, went public about having had an abortion. King also endured intense and unfair scrutiny about her marriage to the lawyer Larry King and her sexuality. For years, she kept quiet about her relationships with women, for fear of blowing up her career (she is now a staunch advocate of the LGBTQ community). While All In contains plenty of sporting highs and lows, it is her reflections on this denial and secrecy that gives it its emotional heft.

King repeatedly lied to her family, colleagues and the media, even after a former girlfriend, Marilyn Barnett, outed her in 1981 by filing a palimony lawsuit. King writes movingly of her denials of homosexuality, which she says were a result of fear, shame and her own internalised homophobia. “It’s a legacy of so many things, including not knowing if you could trust anyone with the information,” she observes. “People in the closet often take consolation in the idea that at least they’re controlling who knows the truth, when the real truth is that the closet is controlling them.” Later she adds: “I didn’t come out completely and wasn’t comfortable in my own skin until I was 51. I wish I could have done it sooner.”

Nonetheless, the courage and stamina it took King to take on a defensive, intractable and often bigoted tennis establishment, and to win, is no small feat, even if it turned out that her biggest battle would be with herself. All In describes a life comprising one epic struggle after another, both on and off court. “But I came through it,” she writes in the epilogue. “I am free.”

All In: An Autobiography is published by Viking (£20). 

Feminists warned about America’s abortion crisis for years. We were written off as hysterical

Why has the effective end of Roe v Wade been met with shock by so many corners of political life?

Supreme court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. ‘This outcome was never in doubt. Trump promised to appoint anti-choice judges. He kept that promise.’ Photograph: Doug Mills/AP

Moira Donegan
Sat 4 Sep 2021 11.00 BST

This was predictable. In fact, it was predicted. The end of Roe v Wade and nationwide protections for abortion rights became likely in 2016, the night that Donald Trump was elected. It became inevitable in 2018, when Anthony Kennedy, the fifth pro-choice vote, retired and handed his seat to Trump to fill. But the end of nationwide legal abortion in America has been coming for decades, and there has been no ambiguity about the appetite for Roe’s overturn on the American right. And crucially, feminists have been sounding the alarm for decades, warning in increasingly desperate terms that gradual erosions of Roe’s protections in the law had led to a rapid and widespread loss of abortion access on the ground.

Perhaps the form of Roe’s eventual downfall was a surprise. Few thought that Roe’s fatal case would be over Texas’s new abortion law, with its privatized enforcement system of bounty-hunting civil suits designed to elide judicial review. And among a sea of legal observers, only Cardozo law professor Kate Shaw seems to have predicted that the court would dispose of a long-established constitutional right in so rushed and perfunctory a proceeding as a late-night order on the shadow docket. But this outcome was never in doubt. Trump promised to appoint antichoice judges. He kept that promise. This week his three appointees – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, joined by Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas – did what all of them know they were put on the court to do. They allowed the first state to outlaw abortion within its borders.

So why has the effective end of Roe v Wade, coming in a one paragraph order in the wee hours of Thursday morning, been met with shock by so many corners of political life? The Republican party’s control of the federal judiciary had left little doubt that those judges most inclined to strip women of their rights would have both the power and the opportunity to do so. And yet politicians, pundits, and legal observers had for years assured the public that the justices would not gut abortion rights, despite the clear evidence that they would. We were assured that the Republicans on the court were less determined to gut Roe than they appeared to be, and that those worried about the future of abortion rights were overreacting.

The court would not gut Roe, we were told by politicians and academics, because they said they wouldn’t. Kavanaugh, the ruddy-faced Trump appointee, had referred to Roe as “important precedent”. That this rather tepid comment was a disingenuous bit of posturing meant to ease his confirmation to the court was evident to everyone. Nevertheless, defenders of the confirmation process implored the public to treat it as if it had been uttered in good faith.

In a speech announcing her decision to vote to confirm Kavanaugh, Senator Susan Collins said that she believed Kavanaugh would not vote to overturn Roe, or to gut it procedurally, because “his views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.” Of course, the court, with Kavanaugh’s help, did effectively overturn Roe “by stealth” – in an unsigned order in the middle of the night.

Of the feminists who opposed his nomination, Collins was dismissive, even patronizing. “We have seen special-interest groups whip their followers into a frenzy by spreading misrepresentations and outright falsehoods about Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record.” She condemned these women’s concerns as “over-the-top rhetoric and distortions”.

The court would not gut Roe, we were told by the legal world, because the justices were too professional. Barrett, the third of Trump’s appointees, had been a member of an antichoice faculty group while a law professor at Notre Dame. She had given a lecture to a Right to Life group; she had signed a letter condemning Roe and its “brutal legacy”. And yet despite Barrett’s extremist and evidently very passionately held views on abortion, people posing as serious told us that we could not know how she would vote on abortion rights, that the opinions and worldviews of judges would somehow not affect their legal judgement. “My personal views don’t have anything to do with the way I would decide cases,” Barrett told Senator Patrick Leahy when she was asked about her lengthy history of anti-abortion advocacy. The statement insulted both Leahy’s intelligence, and ours.

And yet as conservative, antichoice judges consolidated their power, several myths about the court persisted. We were told that the people who looked like rabidly conservative justices were really reasoned moderates; or that at least they would be professional and impartial in their judgements; or that at least the removal of abortion rights would move slowly. These myths were presented as the only serious way to understand the court. Feminist claims that what appeared to be happening really was happening – that the judiciary really had been taken over by antichoice zealots, that the ability of women to control their own bodies and lives would soon be stripped away – were labeled as delusional and silly. Faith in the integrity of the conservative justices was cast as informed, mature, and intelligent. And it was contrasted with the supposed hysteria of feminists, whose passion and fear was taken as a sign of their own delusion, not as an indication of the seriousness of the problem.
Feminist claims that what appeared to be happening really was happening were labeled as delusional and silly

This notion, that the only intelligent response to a threat to women’s rights is to be calm, blasé, and preemptively assured that nothing very bad or important will result, has been weaponized with particular insidiousness over the course of the abortion debate during the past five years. In the halls of power, contempt for abortion rights activists was nearly complete.

After Kennedy’s resignation, the CNN host Brian Stelter took to social media to scold a liberal activist for her fear of a Roe reversal. “We are not ‘a few steps away from the Handmaid’s Tale’,” he wrote. “I don’t think this kind of fear-mongering helps anybody.” Confronted with women opposed to the confirmation of Kavanaugh, Senator Ben Sasse all but rolled his eyes. There had been, he said, “screaming protesters saying ‘women are going to die’ at every hearing for decades.”

The insistence that Roe is not in danger, and that women’s fear is silly, persists even now, after the court has effectively ended Roe. “Now breathe,” wrote the law professor Jonathan Turley in a blogpost urging women’s rights advocates to calm down, as if they were toddlers in the midst of a temper tantrum. “It is ridiculous to say that it was some manufactured excuse for a partisan ruling.”

Is it ridiculous? The public has no real reason to believe that the supreme court is acting in good faith – aside from the repeated assurances of supposed experts whose predictions have usually been wrong. Instead, it was the so-called alarmist feminists, the ones warning about manufactured excuses for partisan attacks on abortion rights, who got their predictions mostly right. Maybe these women are not so ridiculous after all. Maybe it’s time to start listening to them.


Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Thai protesters hit the streets as PM clings to power

Issued on: 04/09/2021 - 

Pro-democracy protesters took to Bangkok's streets after the country's

 prime minister survived a no-confidence vote 

Jack TAYLOR AFP


Bangkok (AFP)

Pro-democracy protesters vented their anger in Bangkok's heavy rain Saturday after Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-cha survived a no-confidence vote in parliament.

More than 300 demonstrators marched in central Bangkok's main shopping mall district carrying red flags and wearing ponchos in the downpour.

"The government should be gone. If things were good why would we come out to protest?" a 28-year-old demonstrator told AFP.

Ahead of the rally, police used shipping containers to block major routes to the advertised protest site at the central Lumphini Park where protesters had planned to march.

There was heavy police presence across the downtown area with riot police and a water cannon truck stationed at the Ratchaprasong intersection near major shopping malls.

This week Thai lawmakers debated an opposition-instigated censure motion about the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and economic management -- Saturday was the third no-confidence motion vote since the 2019 election.

The sluggish rollout of Thailand's vaccination programme and financial pain from restrictions has heaped political pressure on Prayut's government.

The country is reeling from its worst economic performance since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis as well as a deadly third wave of coronavirus infections.

Total case numbers have topped more than 1.2 million with over 12,000 deaths.

Prayut defended his government's handling of the pandemic in parliament earlier this week.

"Thailand’s death rate from COVID-19 is comparatively very low, but we must make sure that there will be no more deaths," Prayut said, adding the decision not to access doses under the global COVAX vaccine equity programme was in Thailand's best interest.

Vaccine supply has been a problem and the country has imported the Chinese-made Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs and received a donation of 1.5 million Pfizer doses from the US after locally produced AstraZeneca vaccines couldn't keep pace.

"Government management of Covid is really bad. My dad is unemployed and my mum got infected despite getting two Sinovac jabs," a 21-year-old male protester told AFP.

Fresh infections tallied almost 16,000 Saturday representing a decrease in recent weeks that has also coincided with a reduction of testing.

In the morning, Prayut and five cabinet ministers clung to power after garnering enough support on the floor of parliament, following a week of speculation some members of the ruling coalition were plotting to withdraw support.

Riot police and water cannon were deployed on Bangkok's streets to block the pro-democracy protests

 Jack TAYLOR AFP

Bangkok has been plagued with regular street protests since late June including clashes between demonstrators and police.

Officers have deployed tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannon while some protesters have retaliated with ping pong bombs and slingshots.

© 2021 AFP

Iran calls on US to stop its addiction to sanctions

Issued on: 04/09/2021 -

Masih Alinejad speaks onstage at a Women in the World Summit 

at the Lincoln Center on April 8, 2016 in New York City 

Jemal Countess GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP


Tehran (AFP)

Iran urged the United States Saturday to stop its addiction to sanctions against the Islamic republic and accused President Joe Biden of following the same "dead end" policies as Donald Trump.

Foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh made his remarks a day after the US Treasury announced financial sanctions against four Iranians accused of planning the kidnapping in the US of an American journalist of Iranian descent.

"Washington must understand that it has no other choice but to abandon its addiction to sanctions and show respect, both in its statements and in its behaviour, towards Iran," Khatibzadeh said in a press release.

On Friday, the Treasury announced sanctions against "four Iranian intelligence operatives" involved in a campaign against Iranian dissidents abroad.

According to a US federal indictment in mid-July, the intelligence officers tried in 2018 to force Masih Alinejad's Iran-based relatives to lure her to a third country to be arrested and taken to Iran to be jailed.

When that failed, they allegedly hired US private investigators to monitor her over the past two years.

Khatibzadeh in July called the American charges "baseless and absurd", referring to them as "Hollywood scenarios".

Under Trump's presidency, Washington unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and six major powers.

The multilateral deal offered Iran relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear programme.

It was torpedoed by Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from it in 2018.

Biden has said he wants to reintegrate Washington into the pact, but talks in Vienna that began in April have stalled since the ultra-conservative Ebrahim Raisi won Iran's presidential election in June.

At the end of August, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Biden's administration of making the same demands as his predecessor in talks to revive the accord.

And on Tuesday, Iran's new Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian suggested that the Vienna talks would not resume for two or three months.

Tehran is demanding the lifting of all sanctions imposed or reimposed on it by the US since 2017.

© 2021 AFP

IUCN RED LIST

New project to track endangered species coming back from brink



Issued on: 04/09/2021

The Green status suggests the California condor would have gone extinct in the wild without conservation 

DAVID MCNEW Getty Images North America/Getty Images/AFP/File


Marseille (AFP)

After decades of recording alarming declines in animals and plants, conservation experts have taken a more proactive approach, with a new "Green Status" launched on Saturday, billed as the first global measurement for tracking species recovery.

Since 1964, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed some 138,000 species for its Red List of Threatened Species, a powerful tool to highlight the plight of wildlife facing extinction.

Some 28 percent are currently at risk of vanishing forever.

Its new Green Status will act as a companion to this survival watchlist, looking at the extent to which species are depleted or restored compared to their historical population levels.

The initiative aims "to measure species recoveries in a standardised way, which has never been done before", Green Status co-chair Molly Grace told a news conference Saturday during the IUCN congress in Marseille.

But it also looks to "incentivise conservation action", with evaluations of how well past preservation efforts have worked, as well as projections for how effective future ones will be.

It was born of a realisation that "preventing extinction alone is not enough", said Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford.

The burrowing bettong now exists in just 5 percent of its indigenous range 

TORSTEN BLACKWOOD AFP/File

Beyond the first step of stopping a species from disappearing entirely, "once it's out of danger, what does recovery look like?"

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed to stop losses in the face of rampant habitat destruction, overexploitation and illegal wildlife trade.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species were nearing extinction.

- 'Invisible' work -

The Green status of over 180 species have been assessed so far, although the IUCN hopes to one day to match the tens of thousands on the Red List.

They are classified on a sliding scale: from "fully recovered" through "slightly depleted", "moderately depleted", "largely depleted" and "critically depleted".

When all else has failed, the final listing is "extinct in the wild".

While these categories mirror the Red List rankings, "they're not simply a Red List in reverse", said Grace.

She gave the example of a pocket-sized Australian marsupial, the burrowing bettong, whose numbers have plummeted and which now exists in just five percent of its indigenous range.

Successful conservation efforts have seen populations stabilise, with a Red List rating improving from endangered to near threatened in recent decades.

But Grace said the Green Status assessment underscores that the species is not out of the woods, with a listing of critically depleted that suggests: "We have a long way to go before we recover this species."

The listing also incorporates an assessment of what would have happened if nothing had been done to save a given species.

The California condor, for example, has been classified as critically endangered for three decades, despite major investment in its preservation.

"Some people might think: 'We've been trying to conserve the condor for 30 years, its red list status has been critically endangered for all those 30 years, what is conservation actually doing for this species?'" said Grace.

But she said her team's evaluation of what would have happened without these protection efforts found that it would have gone extinct in the wild.

"What this does is it makes the invisible work of conservation visible. And this is hopefully going to be really powerful in incentivising and justifying the amazing work that conservationists do," said Grace.

© 2021 AFP

Komodo dragon, 2-in-5 shark species lurch towards extinction

Issued on: 04/09/2021 - 

At least 30 percent of the Komodo dragon's habitat is projected to be l

ost in the next 45 years

 Romeo GACAD AFP/File

Marseille (AFP)

Trapped on island habitats made smaller by rising seas, Indonesia's Komodo dragons were listed as "endangered" on Saturday, in an update of the wildlife Red List that also warned overfishing threatens nearly two-in-five sharks with extinction.

About 28 percent of the 138,000 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are now at risk of vanishing in the wild forever, as the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world deepens.

But the latest update of the Red List for Threatened Species also highlights the potential for restoration, with four commercially-fished tuna species pulling back from a slide towards extinction after a decade of efforts to curb over-exploitation.

The most spectacular recovery was seen in Atlantic bluefin tuna, which leapt from "endangered" across three categories to the safe zone of "least concern".

The species -- a mainstay of high-end sushi in Japan -- was last assessed in 2011.

"This shows that conservation works -- when we do the right thing, a species can increase," said Jane Smart, global director of IUCN's Biodiversity Conservation Group.

"But we must remain vigilant. This doesn't mean we can have a free-for-all of fishing for these tuna species."

- 'Clarion call' -

A key message from the IUCN Congress, taking place in the French city of Marseille, is that disappearing species and the destruction of ecosystems are existential threats on a par with global warming.

And climate change itself is threatening the futures of many species, particularly endemic animals and plants that live on small islands or in certain biodiversity hotspots.

Komodo dragons -- the largest living lizards -- are found only in the World Heritage-listed Komodo National Park and neighbouring Flores.

The species "is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate change" said the IUCN: rising sea levels are expected to shrink its tiny habitat at least 30 percent over the next 45 years.

Nowhere to run: Komodo dragons have a limited habitat 

JUNI KRISWANTO AFP/File

Outside of protected areas, the fearsome throwbacks are also rapidly losing ground as humanity's footprint expands.

"The idea that these prehistoric animals have moved one step closer to extinction due in part to climate change is terrifying," said Andrew Terry, Conservation Director at the Zoological Society of London.

Their decline is a "clarion call for nature to be placed at the heart of all decision making" at crunch UN climate talks in Glasgow, he added.

- 'An alarming rate' -

The most comprehensive survey of sharks and rays ever undertaken, meanwhile, revealed that 37 percent of 1,200 species evaluated are now classified as directly threatened with extinction, falling into one of three categories: "vulnerable", "endangered" or "critically endangered".

That's a third more species at risk than only seven years ago, said Simon Fraser University Professor Nicholas Dulvy, lead author of a study published on Monday underpinning the Red List assessment.

"The conservation status of the group as a whole continues to deteriorate, and overall risk of extinction is rising at an alarming rate," he told AFP.

The Earth's mass extinctions Alain BOMMENEL AFP

Five species of sawfish -- whose serrated snouts get tangled in cast off fishing gear -- and the iconic shortfin mako shark are among those most threatened.

Chondrichthyan fish, a group made up mainly of sharks and rays, "are important to ecosystems, economies and cultures," Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International and co-author of the upcoming study, told AFP.

"By not sufficiently limiting catch, we're jeopardising ocean health and squandering opportunities for sustainable fishing, tourism, traditions and food security in the long term."

A shortfin mako shark being fished for sport in The United States in 2017

 Maddie Meyer GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

The Food and Agriculture Organization reports some 800,000 tonnes of sharks caught -- intentionally or opportunistically -- each year, but research suggests the true figure is two to four times greater.

- Conservation tracker -

The IUCN on Saturday also officially launched its "green status" -- the first global standard for assessing species recovery and measuring conservation impacts.

While Atlantic Bluefin tuna has seen a dramatic recovery, Pacific Bluefin continues to be critically endangered

 Pau BARRENA AFP/File

"It makes the invisible work of conservation visible," Molly Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford and Green Status co-chair, told a press conference on Saturday.

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species are on the brink of extinction -- raising the spectre that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction event in 500 million years.

The IUCN Congress is widely seen as a testing ground for a UN treaty -- to be finalised at a summit in Kunming, China next May -- to save nature.

"We would like to see that plan call for the halt to biodiversity loss by 2030," said Smart.

A cornerstone of the new global deal could be setting aside 30 percent of Earth's land and oceans as protected areas, she added.

© 2021 AFP

Nearly 30% of 138,000 assessed species face extinction, says IUCN report

Issued on: 04/09/2021 -

Text by: FRANCE 24Follow|

Video by: Valérie DEKIMPE


Nearly 30 percent of the 138,374 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) for its survival watchlist are now at risk of vanishing in the wild forever, as the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world deepens.

Trapped on island habitats made smaller by rising seas, Indonesia's Komodo dragons were listed as "endangered" on Saturday, in an update of the wildlife Red List that also warned overfishing threatens nearly two-in-five sharks with extinction.

But the latest update of the Red List for Threatened Species also highlights the potential for restoration, with four commercially fished tuna species pulling back from a slide towards extinction after a decade of efforts to curb overexploitation.

The most spectacular recovery was seen in the Atlantic bluefin tuna, which leapt from "endangered" across three categories to the safe zone of "least concern".

The species - a mainstay of high-end sushi in Japan - was last assessed in 2011.

"These Red List assessments demonstrate just how closely our lives and livelihoods are intertwined with biodiversity," IUCN Director General Bruno Oberle said in a statement.

'Clarion call'

A key message from the IUCN Congress, taking place in the French city of Marseille, is that disappearing species and the destruction of ecosystems are no less existential threats than global warming.

At the same time, climate change itself is casting a darker shadow than ever before on the futures of many species, particularly endemic animals and plants that live uniquely on small islands or in certain biodiversity hotspots.

Komodo dragons -- the world's largest living lizards -- are found only in the World Heritage-listed Komodo National Park and neighbouring Flores.

The species "is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate change" said the IUCN: rising sea levels are expected to shrink its tiny habitat at least 30 percent over the next 45 years.

Outside of protected areas, the fearsome throwbacks are also rapidly losing ground as humanity's footprint expands.

"The idea that these prehistoric animals have moved one step closer to extinction due in part to climate change is terrifying," said Andrew Terry, Conservation Director at the Zoological Society of London.

Their decline is a "clarion call for nature to be placed at the heart of all decision making" at crunch UN climate talks in Glasgow, he added.

'An alarming rate'

The most comprehensive survey of sharks and rays ever undertaken, meanwhile, revealed that 37 percent of 1,200 species evaluated are now classified as directly threatened with extinction, falling into one of three categories: "vulnerable," "endangered," or "critically endangered".

That's a third more species at risk than only seven years ago, said Simon Fraser University Professor Nicholas Dulvy, lead author of a study published on Monday underpinning the Red List assessment.

"The conservation status of the group as a whole continues to deteriorate, and overall risk of extinction is rising at an alarming rate," he told AFP.

Five species of sawfish - whose serated snouts get tangled in cast off fishing gear - and the iconic shortfin mako shark are among those most threatened.

Chondrichthyan fish, a group made up mainly of sharks and rays, "are important to ecosystems, economies and cultures," Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International and co-author of the upcoming study, told AFP.

"By not sufficiently limiting catch, we're jeopardising ocean health and squandering opportunities for sustainable fishing, tourism, traditions and food security in the long term."

The Food and Agriculture Organization reports some 800,000 tonnes of sharks caught -- intentionally or opportunistically -- each year, but research suggests the true figure is two to four times greater.

Conservation tracker

The IUCN on Saturday also officially launched its "green status" -- the first global standard for assessing species recovery and measuring conservation impacts.

"It makes the invisible work of conservation visible," Molly Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford and Green Status co-chair, said at a press conference on Saturday.

The new yardstick measures the extent to which species are depleted or recovered compared to their historical population levels, and assesses the effectiveness of past and potential future conservation actions.

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species are on the brink of extinction - raising the spectre that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction event in 500 million years.

"The red list status shows that we're on the cusp of the sixth extinction event," the IUCN's Head of Red List Unit Craig Hilton-Taylor told AFP.

"If the trends carry on going upward at that rate, we'll be facing a major crisis soon."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)