P&G shareholders vote in landslide to address supply-chain deforestation

by Genevieve Belmaker on 26 October 2020
Mongabay Series: Global Forests



A shareholder proposal filed in September 2020 by Green Century Funds was approved by a 67% affirmative vote in the annual Proctor & Gamble (P&G) shareholder meeting in mid-October.

The vote was brought as a call for the international corporation to cull forest degradation and deforestation from the company’s supply chain.

Such corporate commitments are not uncommon, but the P&G vote signals a shift in shareholder awareness of the long-term implications of a supply chain that’s potentially destructive to forests.

The majority of shareholders of international consumer goods company Procter & Gamble (P&G), which makes paper-based products like toilet paper, have voted to tackle supply chain loopholes that impact deforestation and forest degradation.

During their annual shareholder meeting on October 13 (which was virtual this year), shareholders voted yes on a resolution aimed to address deforestation and forest degradation. The majority of shareholders – 67% – voted in favor of the action, according to the Green Century Funds (GCF), which put the resolution up for a vote. According to their website, the GCF are a group of “fossil fuel free, responsible, and diversified mutual funds.”

“P&G’s failure to adequately mitigate deforestation and forest degradation in its supply chains poses material financial risk to the company and its shareholders,” said Green Century President Leslie Samuelrich in a statement. “The company must catch up to its peers and enact stronger policies to prevent unsustainable forest products from entering its supply chain.”

U.S.-based P&G is over 180 years old and headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. They operate in over 70 countries around the world in South America and Southeast Asia, regions that are plagued by the plundering of their natural resources, particularly when it comes to forests.

At issue in particular in the October 2020 shareholder vote, though, is wood pulp that’s being produced from Canadian boreal forests. According to P&G’s website, the company is already committed to stopping deforestation. But the GCF and points out that those commitments don’t include requirements to protect old growth and high-conservation value forests.

Boreal forest covers much of Canada and northern Eurasia. Photo by user peupleloup via WIkimedia Commons (CC 2.0)

Over the last 15 years in particular, the company has become increasingly involved in addressing issues like sustainability and waste. Those efforts have included cold water tech laundry detergent, working toward zero manufacturing-waste-to-landfill at 45 global sites, and bottles made partly with recycled beach plastic.

In an emailed response from P&G’s media relations office noted that the results of the shareholder vote will include a P&G-issued report with an assessment of actions the corporation can take to “increase the scale, pace, and rigor of our efforts to eliminate deforestation and the degradation of intact forests.” The information will be issued on the main website.

Many P&G products are paper-based, and sold largely to customers in North America, where there is an active awareness and conversation about the need to address the environmental impacts of corporate supply chains. Their brands include seemingly ubiquitous names like Charmin and Bounty. According to the company’s 2020 shareholder report, nearly half of the company’s $71 billion net sales in 2020 of beauty, health, home, baby care products, and more – like paper-based toilet paper and tissue – were in North America.

Banff National Forest in Canada, home to montane forests. Image by Rhett A. Butler.

The vote garnered attention from Denver-based Environment Watch, which pointed out that the shareholder vote was not supported by the board. The non-profit noted that some paper products have relied on virgin wood fibers. That can lead to logging Canadian boreal forest, an important carbon sink and home to caribou, lynx and more.

“We applaud these shareholders for raising their voices in support of the environment,” said Environment Watch senior advisor Steve Blackledge in a statement. “While the boreal forest may seem far away to most of us…it is the most carbon dense forest in the world and is needed to mitigate the effects of climate change.”

He added that now P&G brands should start to use recycled paper or alternative forest-free fibers.

Banner image: A woodland caribou in the forests of Canada. Image via Wikimedia Commons/ThartmannWiki.

Ambitious and holistic goals key to saving Earth’s biodiversity, study says
by Liz Kimbrough on 26 October 2020




A recently published study in the journal Science gives recommendations for decision-makers preparing to set new biodiversity goals at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2021.

The researchers urge CBD negotiators and policymakers to consider three critical points as they create the new biodiversity goals: the goals must be multifaceted, developed holistically, and highly ambitious.

“No net loss” of diversity is an example of a highly ambitious goal. Its targets include increasing natural ecosystem area, saving culturally important species, and conserving 90% of Earth’s genetic diversity.
To turn the tide, the new biodiversity goals must be both highly ambitious and unified, and address ecosystems, species, genetic diversity, and nature’s contributions to people.

The Earth is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction, leaving humanity in a critical time to safeguard global biodiversity.

Global players have failed to reach the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets, established under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010 to curb biodiversity loss, according to the CBD’s assessment in September.

A recently published study in the journal Science gives recommendations for developing the next set of biodiversity goals so they will be both robust and achievable. These new goals for 2030 and 2050 will be developed at the CBD’s 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties in China in 2021.

The brown mouse lemur (Microcebus rufus) in Madagascar is vulnerable to extinction. Photo by Frank Vassen via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

The research team evaluated the CBD’s draft post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. Based on this and other published biodiversity proposals, the scientists urge the CBD negotiators and policymakers to consider three critical points as they create the new biodiversity goals.

The first point is to recognize that these issues are extremely complex, so multiple and multifaceted goals must be established. The goals must address ecosystems, species, genetic diversity, and nature’s contributions to people.

“This paper underscores that a safety net cannot be focussed on simplistic goals and it is very possible to set multiple interlinked targets needed to tackle nature’s decline,” study co-author James Watson of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the University of Queensland, Australia, said in a statement.

A coral reef in Indonesia. Photo by Grant Thomas / Coral Reef Image Bank.

Second, because of these many facets, these goals must be developed holistically, not in isolation, allowing for many to advance at the same time.

“If the facets were nested into one another like Russian dolls or at least nearly so,” the paper says, “then a single concise goal that specifies one number about the most encompassing facet could cover all of them. However, although the facets of nature are deeply interlinked, they are far from neatly nested.”

Lastly, because of the scale of the biodiversity crisis, these goals must be highly ambitious and carried out in an integrated way. For instance, a focus on reversing extinction must also include protecting genetic diversity.

“No net loss” of diversity is an example of a highly ambitious goal. Its targets include increasing natural ecosystem area, saving culturally important species, and conserving 90% of Earth’s genetic diversity.

The klipspringer (Oreotragus oreotragus), photographed here in Namibia, is the last of its genus. Photo by Frank Vassen via Flickr. (CC BY 2.0)

The new CBD drafts have improved, the authors say, as they contain “outcome-oriented” goals that can be broken down into targets. The targets can be assessed using more specific, measurable indicators.

The biggest challenge, according to the study, will not be creating these goals, but making them happen. Part of this process is being sure the goals and targets are written in a way that is difficult to exploit, with no loopholes or weaknesses in wording. Addressing the causes of biodiversity loss, including the social, economic and political pressures driving this loss, are key.

“We hope this is a useful tool in the CBD negotiations on a new strategy for nature and people,” the paper’s lead author, Sandra Díaz of Córdoba National University in Argentina, said in a statement.

An Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) cub. Only around 400 individuals remain in the wild. Image by Ex-Situ Conservation Program of the Iberian Lynx via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0 ES).

Nearly 40% of plant species are threatened with extinction; more than 500 vertebrate species are almost extinct, with fewer than 1,000 remaining; and in the American tropics alone, the number of species has declined by more than 50% over the past five centuries.

“Building a sufficiently ambitious safety net for nature will be a major global challenge,” Díaz said, “but unless we do it, we are leaving huge problems for every future generation.”

Citation:

Díaz, S., Zafra-Calvo, N., Purvis, A., Verburg, P. H., Obura, D., Leadley P., … Zanne, A. E. (2020). Set ambitious goals for biodiversity and sustainability. Science, 370(6515), 411-413. doi:10.1126/science.abe1530

Banner image of a coral reef in Indonesia. Photo by Grant Thomas / Coral Reef Image Bank.

Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @lizkimbrough

Brazil’s Amazon dam plans: Ominous warnings of future destruction (commentary)
Commentary by Philip M. Fearnside on 22 October 2020




Brazil’s current 10-year Energy Expansion Plan calls for three more large dams in Amazonia by 2029, and Brazil’s 2050 National Energy Plan lists many more.
Both plans contain ominous passages explaining that the list of dams could expand if “uncertainty” is resolved regarding current regulations protecting Indigenous peoples and protected areas for biodiversity.
Brazil’s National Congress is considering bills to eliminate environmental licensing; a bill submitted by President Jair Bolsonaro would allow dams on Indigenous lands. Brazil’s dam-building plans to satisfy 2050 energy demand extend to neighboring Amazonian nations, including Peru and Bolivia.
The 2050 plan essentially admits that dams on Indigenous lands and within other protected areas are not necessary because the electricity could be generated by offshore wind power. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.  

The Santo Antônio dam (seen here) and Jirau dam were documented to have significantly contributed to disastrous upstream flooding on the Madeira River in 2014, extending out of Brazil into Bolivia. Today, both dams block aquatic migrations and have negatively impacted river fisheries. Image courtesy of Santo Antônio Energia.

Every year Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy publishes a “Decennial Plan for Energy Expansion,” which includes the “large” dams (since 2004 defined in Brazil as having at least 30 MW installed capacity) to be completed within the ten-year time horizon.

The number of Amazonian dams listed has steadily declined in the last few plans, a fact that the plans make clear is due to “uncertainty” about current licensing policies restricting impacts on the environment and on Indigenous peoples. The most recent plan, which is for 2020-2029, lists only three dams: Tabajara (in Rondônia), Bem Querer (in Roraima), and Castanheiras (in Mato Grosso). A longer list of dams to be completed “after 2029” is also included, but the most controversial dams are also not included in it.

The 2020-2029 plan contains an ominous paragraph (p. 264) making clear that unnamed dams could be built depending on the “treatment” of conservation units (protected areas for biodiversity) and Indigenous Lands. In other words, more and more-damaging dams could be built if regulations are changed, as is proposed in bills currently moving through committees in Brazil’s National Congress.

This is not a remote possibility, as Brazil’s environmental regulations have been being dismantled since the mid-2000s, and this process has accelerated enormously since Jair Bolsonaro became president in January 2019. Several proposed laws would effectively eliminate environmental licensing. There is also a proposed law introduced by President Bolsonaro that would open Indigenous lands for exploitation by non-indigenous people — hydroelectric development is one of the uses specifically mentioned, development which could be carried out without requiring consent of the Indigenous groups impacted.

In addition to the ten-year plans, Brazil also has periodic “National Energy Plans.” The most recent one, which completed its public comment period on October 13, extends to 2050. This plan also omits the most controversial dams such as the Babaquara (renamed “Altamira”) Dam on the Xingu River upstream of Belo Monte. However, the report’s list of potential dams (Figure 1) includes the Chacorão Dam on the Tapajós River, which would flood part of the Munduruku Indigenous Land, as well as other dams on the Tapajós and its tributary the Jamanxim River that would flood part of Sawré Mubyu, a Munduruku area that has had its official status as an “Indigenous land” blocked precisely to make way for these dams. 

Figure 1. Map from Brazil’s 2050 National Energy Plan (p. 77) showing dams with at least 30 MW installed capacity that are completed or under construction (black triangles) and dams under consideration for future construction (red triangles).

The omissions in the 2050 National Energy Plan are intriguing. For example, the map of planned transmission lines omits the line from Manaus to Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state (p. 191). It is included in the 2029 10-year plan (p. 105). This line would pass through the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous Land and requires consultation. Yet the planned Bem Querer Dam in Roraima, which would use the line to transmit most of its output to Manaus, is moving ahead quickly and is scheduled for completion in 2028 according to the 2020-2029 10-year plan (p. 57).

Dam plans can appear out of nowhere, as with the Barão do Rio Branco project announced soon after Bolsonaro took office. This project would build a 2,000-MW dam on the Trombetas River (Figure 2) together with a road connecting the Amazon River to the border with Suriname on a route that is almost entirely composed of conservation units (protected areas for biodiversity), Indigenous Lands and Quilombola Lands. “Quilombolas” are descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped in past centuries and set up their own villages in the forest; they have the same rights as Indigenous peoples under Brazil’s 1988 constitution. Bolsonaro’s planned dam would flood Quilombola Lands.

Figure 2. A leaked map obtained by The Intercept showing President Bolsonaro’s plan for a dam on the Trombetas River.

Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador also have big plans for Amazonian dams. The 2010 Brazil/Peru agreement specified six large dams in the Amazonian part of Peru to be built by Brazilian construction firms with financing from Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), largely to export electricity to Brazil (Figure 3). Since 2010 the “Lava Jato” (“Car Wash”) corruption scandal in Brazil has tainted the main construction firm expected to build the dams (Odebrecht), as well as various political figures in Brazil and in the other Amazonian countries. In addition, Brazil’s economy has not been doing well, and BNDES has less money to invest than it once did. Nevertheless, many of these dams are listed in Brazil’s 2050 National Energy Expansion Plan as possible sources of electricity in the coming decades (Figure 4)

.

Figure 3: Planned dams in Peruvian Amazonia. Source: International Rivers.

Figure 4: List of planned dams in countries neighboring Brazil from which the 2050 National Energy Plan (p. 90) considers that electricity could be exported to Brazil.

The dams Brazil plans to build in Peru and Bolivia would have many impacts on the environment and on the people who live along the rivers in these countries. Ironically, they also would have impacts in Brazil itself. A study by Bruce Forsberg and coworkers showed that these planned dams would retain enough sediments to significantly reduce the transport of this valuable material into the Brazilian part of the basin. Nutrients in, and associated with, these sediments represent the base of the food chain for fish. As a result, the fisheries along the entire length of the Amazon River would see reduced production.

The fact that Brazil would be “shooting itself in the foot” by building these dams does not mean that they won’t be built. After all, Brazil dammed the Madeira River with the Santo Antônio Dam in 2011 and the Jirau Dam in 2013, thus sacrificing much of what had been the world’s second-greatest riverine fishery, second only to the Mekong (which is also threatened by dams). Fish catches plummeted due to the two Madeira dams, not only in Brazil but also in Bolivia and Peru because of the blockage of fish migrations.

In Bolivia, the same type of arrangement as in Peru applies to at least two planned dams. Brazil has also considered building a dam in Guyana, which could be connected to the planned Boa Vista-Manaus transmission line. All of these dams would have major environmental and human impacts, and the other Amazonian countries generally have even weaker legal protections than Brazil. This fact appears to be part of the reason for building these dams abroad, as the secretary of planning of Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy as much as confessed in 2012 in admitting that the foreign dams had priority because they would be faster to approve and build.

As compared to previous energy plans, one improvement in the current plans is that they foresee a substantial increase in wind energy. While the plans for wind power still focuses on onshore generation, the 2050 plan has calculations of the enormous potential for wind power on the continental shelf along the Brazilian coast. The plan admits that “The total expected installed capacity of wind power in 2050 may be even greater than 200 GW… as long as the expansion of hydroelectric dams with interference in protected areas is not allowed” (p. 101). In other words, Brazil could get all of the electricity it demands by tapping this wind resource without needing to allow hydroelectric dams to be built in the country’s Indigenous Lands and conservation units (protected areas for biodiversity).

The 2050 National Energy Plan shows that by 2050 Brazil could install 89 GW of “centralized” photovoltaic solar power (i.e., not counting “distributed” panels on rooftops), and that this would make up the difference in foregone hydroelectric generation if restrictions are not removed on Indigenous land and protected areas (pp. 111-112). If restrictions on hydropower are relaxed, less centralized photovoltaic solar (42 GW) would be installed. These numbers for solar power assume that wind power will be installed on a large scale. If some restriction prevents this, then centralized photovoltaic solar power could be expanded to over 100 GW (p. 112).

For comparison, Brazil’s total potential installed capacity of untapped hydropower is only 52 GW, and of this only 12 GW (23%) does not interfere with indigenous lands and other protected areas (p. 79). The 2050 plan’s repeated inclusion of scenarios with flooding within Indigenous lands and conservation units undoubtedly reflects the expectation of Brazil’s electrical authorities that protection of these areas against flooding by dams will indeed be eliminated.

The 2050 plan assumes that hydropower is the cheapest, and therefore the most desirable option, followed by wind and then solar. However, dams are by no means cheap energy, as shown by a worldwide survey of hundreds of dams that found that most are uneconomical because they almost always cost much more than originally estimated and they routinely take longer than expected to begin generating electricity. Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam is a good example: it cost more than double the original expectation and completion took longer than planned. The importance of the high financial cost of dams pales in comparison to that of their human and environmental impacts, which are far greater than those of wind and solar power.

The plans could be more ambitious in the area of energy conservation. The 2020-2029 Ten-Year Plan calculates that 4.8% of Brazil’s projected electricity use in 2029 could be avoided through conservation measures (p. 220). The 2050 National Energy Plan has many calls for energy efficiency, but no calculations of how much electricity use could be avoided. Ever since the 2008 National Plan for Climate Change (PNMC), the government’s goal has been to end use of the electric showerheads that, according to the PNMC, consume 5% of all electricity in Brazil (p. 58), but basically nothing has been done. There is no mention in any of these plans of stopping the export of electricity in the form of aluminum and other electro-intensive products (7% of Brazil’s electricity use).

Banner image: The Tucuruí hydroelectric dam on the Tocantins River in Pará state, one of the first mega-dams built in the Brazilian Amazon. Image courtesy of International Rivers.

Long entrenched Brazilian military mindset is key to Amazon policy: Expert

by Peter Speetjens on 26 October 2020

According to academic Joao Roberto Martins Filho, an expert on the Brazilian armed forces, the military traditionally sees itself as the “protectors of the Amazon.” For his research, Martins Filho talked to soldiers, officers, and even generals, whose views were very consistent.

President Bolsonaro has included 6,000 former and current military personnel in his administration, including the VP, who heads the new Amazon Council. Bolsonaro needs military support to shield him from international criticism and to secure reelection, says the expert.

A chief Brazilian military view, according to Martins Filho, judges Indigenous people as obstacles to progress and “savages” in need of civilizing. Amazon foreign intervention is also feared, explaining a national security-driven desire to extend a highway to Brazil’s northern border.

Interestingly, in a previously secret 1986 document, Brazil’s military warned about the grave consequences of Amazon deforestation, stating that massive tree loss would lead to a reduction in rainfall, changing river flows, soil erosion, siltation of rivers and bringing climate change.

Brazilian Vice President and leader of Jair Bolsonaro’s newly formed Amazon Council, Hamilton Mourão. The VP has no environmental credentials but served as the military commander over the Amazon region for five years. Image by Gabriel Cruz on flickr.

The media portrayal of Brazil’s annual fire season — which in 2020 is trending worse than in 2019 — is “surreal” according to the country’s vice-president, Hamilton Mourão, who spoke during a web seminar on 27 August. Not flames and deforestation, but “development” is the biggest challenge ahead for the Amazon, the VP said then.

“The Brazilian state is not present in the Amazon,” the former general told the Wall Street Journal one week later. “That is why illegality thrives.” Yet, an enhanced government presence alone is not a solution, he added. Only viable economic opportunities can end the poverty which, according to the VP, is the root cause of environmental destruction there.

Mourão’s contention that “development” will save the rainforest may feel counterintuitive to outsiders and especially conservationists, but his words echo the intertwined policies of national “security and development” which have served as the cornerstones of the Brazilian armed forces’ vision for the Amazon for more than half a century.

And his words carry considerable weight: The 67-year-old VP was named head of the Conselho Nacional da Amazônia Legal (the National Council of the Amazon; CNAL) last January. Consisting predominantly of former military officers, this governmental super body is to “coordinate and supervise the implementation of all public policies related to the Amazon.”

CNAL is hardly the only public institution “militarized” during the watch of President Jair Bolsonaro, himself a former Army Captain. Research by Brazil’s Federal Audit Court shows that the current administration employs more than 6,000 active and former military personnel, by far the most since the end of the military dictatorship which ruled the country between 1964 and 1985.

Yet, despite this infusion of military high brass into the heart of the nation’s civil administration, “it is important to understand that the Bolsonaro government is not a military government,” cautioned Joao Roberto Martins Filho, professor of social sciences at the University of Sao Carlos and an expert on the role of the military in Brazilian politics. “It is a government leaning towards fascism, which is supported by the military, as it is supported by other factions. I don’t believe Bolsonaro is controlled by the military. It is much more ambiguous that that. He needs them and they need him.”

Vice President Hamilton Mourão (left) greets President Jair Bolsonaro — both of them, Brazilian military men. Photo credit: Palácio do Planalto on Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-SA

Inside the Amazonian elite

Joao Roberto Martins Filho offers an academic window into the Brazilian military mindset — and potentially the mindset defining the current administration. At first glance, he notes, the president and vice president could not seem more different. Bolsonaro, born in 1955 in a tiny village in the interior of Sāo Paolo state, is a populist who often addresses his core supporters in very crude terms.

Mourão, on the other hand, “is a product of the Amazonian elite,” Martins Filho told Mongabay in an exclusive interview. “This is something little talked about in Brazil, but his family continues to take up important positions in the state of Amazonas.” The VP also shies away from the limelight and tends to choose his words far more carefully than the chief executive.

During the early 20th century rubber boom, Mourão’s grandfather traveled from Recife in northeastern Brazil to Manaus deep in the Amazon, where he eventually became a judge. His grandmother was a plantation owner’s daughter of Indigenous descent. Mourão followed in the footsteps of his father, who served in the military, to become a general and commander of the nation’s South. Bolsonaro, never made it beyond the rank of captain.

However, the two leaders also share a similar, very conservative, worldview likely born out of the military dictatorship. Both, for example, refuse to perceive the 1964 military takeover as a coup. Both also openly have praised Colonel Carlos Alberto Ustra, the military regime’s chief torturer.

And maybe most critically, both view the Amazon rainforest first and foremost as Brazilian territory subject only to Brazilian sovereignty, that must be aggressively protected from national security threats — including foreign influence and invasion, whether by other countries or international NGOs.

Joao Roberto Martins Filho, University of Sao Carlos professor of social sciences and an expert on the military’s role in Brazilian politics. Image courtesy of Joao Roberto Martins Filho.

No surrender

“We have to be realistic about why Bolsonaro appointed Mourão head of CNAL,” Martins Filho said. “Bolsonaro’s policy for the Amazon has been one of destruction. He promised to destroy the mechanisms created to control deforestation, to not add one centimeter to the Indigenous territories, and to never reprimand a garimpeiro [artisanal gold miner]. And that is what he did. The problem is that his policy caused enormous international criticism, which could prove costly for Brazil.”

Last June, a group of important international investors threatened to withdraw their funding from Brazil if the government did not clean up its environmental act. Shortly after, 38 Brazilian firms and four business associations called upon CNAL for strong measures against deforestation. France and several other European countries have also signaled they will not ratify the EU Mercosur free trade agreement — the largest single global trade agreement ever negotiated, and vital to Brazil — unless Bolsonaro gives up his Amazon development plans.
“That’s why Bolsonaro called in the help of those who consider themselves the ‘Lords of the Amazon,’ which is the military,” explained Martins Filho. “The Brazilian armed forces see themselves as protectors of the Amazon. [And] Bolsonaro needs their support to shield him from international pressure, and of course for his own personal project: reelection.”

The conquest and colonization of the Brazilian Amazon has a long, often tragic history, which was brutally accelerated under the nation’s military dictatorship. In 1970, the military government launched the National Integration Plan (PIN) under the slogan “Integrar Para Não Entregar,” — integrate to not surrender.

The program oversaw the construction of thousands of miles of roads piercing the Amazon, including the TransAmazonian Highway — roads deemed necessary to protect Brazilian national security. Mining and agriculture were promoted in the rainforest and the first plans for major hydroelectric projects were drawn up. People from Brazil’s drought-stricken northeast were encouraged to resettle in the Amazon under the slogan: “Unite the people without land, with a land without people.”

But at that time, the Amazon, the alleged “land without people” was inhabited by many thousands of Indigenous and traditional inhabitants, who were shoved aside, uprooted, and even killed when they resisted resettlement by the military.

A column of tanks in a show of power along the streets of Rio de Janeiro in April 1968, during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. Image by Correio da Manhã in the Public Domain.
The French Connection

“The military perceived the Amazon as an empty space that needed protection, as an empty space that can easily be infiltrated” by outsiders Martins Filho explained. “But obviously there is a problem with this logic, as the Amazon is home to multiple Indigenous peoples.”

Many Indigenous people revolted against the military regime’s development efforts on their lands. Often with bloody consequences. The National Truth Commission report issued in December 2014 estimated that the Brazilian army killed at least 8,350 Indigenous people during the dictatorship.

“Over the years I have spent a lot of time with the military,” said Martins Filho. “I’ve talked to soldiers, officers, brigadiers and generals. And I’ve always been stunned at how rudimentary their thinking is. To them the Indigenous [person] is still a savage who needs civilizing and is an obstacle to progress.

“The military sees the Indigenous as a threat to Brazilian sovereignty,” he added. They fear that “Their territories, with [the] help of the international community, could one day become independent. This is madness of course, but it is what they believe until this very day.”

France plays a surprising role as villain in this distrustful scenario. It was former French president François Mitterand who in 1989 first launched the concept of the internationalization of the rainforest by suggesting: “Brazil must accept relative sovereignty over the Amazon.” Adding to that national security concern is the presence of French Guyana on Brazil’s northern border — from which a French incursion might be launched.

“This sounds unbelievable,” said Martins Filho. “But ask members of the Brazilian armed forces if France could intervene in the Amazon and 99% will say yes.”

This mindset helps explain Bolsonaro’s move shortly after taking office of reviving a plan of the military dictatorship to extend the BR-163 highway north from the Amazon River, hundreds of miles through undisturbed rainforest, to the nation’s northern border, likely as a means of assuring the quick deployment of troops.

The plan to extend the BR-163 highway to the border with Suriname was originally drawn up by the Brazilian military dictatorship in the 1970s and has since been revived by President Jair Bolsonaro. Image by Júlia Lima.

Calha Norte

In the 1970s, the military’s protective Amazon policy was an integral element of the country’s National Security Doctrine (NSD), which consisted of two major parts: internal and external security, coupled with economic development.

“In the early 1970s, there was still a real concern for a surge of leftwing guerillas,” Martins Filho explained. “Once this had been contained, and the Brazilian left became a democratic movement, the focus shifted to the frontiers. The military feared problems with Guyana, Columbia and potentially Cuba. This played a role throughout the Cold War. Once the Cold War was over, the main question became: How do we react when one day a foreign power invades the Amazon?“

Unlike in Chile and Argentina, Brazil’s dictatorship did not come to an abrupt end, severing past policies. Instead, the military authorities carefully planned a transition back to civilian rule. That included a policy for the Amazon known as the Projeto Calha Norte (PCN): a plan for “development and security in the region north of the Solimões and Amazon rivers.”

In order to better protect the region between the two rivers, and all the way to Brazil’s northernmost border, the PCN called for an increased state presence there, strengthened by border posts, better infrastructure and economic development.

That plan, an initiative of the National Security Council (NSC), was formulated by a multi-ministerial team and embraced by José Sarney, Brazil’s first civil president after 21 years of military rule.

“The most interesting aspect of the PCN is a formerly secret document from 1986, in which NSC for the first time ever warns of the grave consequences of deforestation in the Amazon,” said Martins Filho. “It states that deforestation will lead to a reduction in rainfall, changing river flows, large scale soil erosion, siltation of rivers and climate change.

“So, trained in discovering threats to the country, the military actually admitted that deforestation will have negative consequences for the whole of Brazil,” Martins Filho added. “The position they took later on was to negate all ecological issues related to Amazonia. But we now have this document, which clearly states otherwise.”

The area across which the proposed extension of the BR-163 Highway will cut is a rich patchwork of conservation units and traditional territories; 40% of the species that live there are found nowhere else on Earth. Image by Júlia Lima.
Good cop, bad cop, same cop

The PCN is of extreme importance to Amazon policy in Brazil today. One of the first things Bolsonaro did following his presidential inauguration was to approve R $150 million (US $40m) for the Ministry of Defense, mostly going to its PCN department.

Three weeks after Bolsonaro’s inauguration, former general Maynard Marques de Santa Rosa launched the Barão do Rio Branco project. In line with the PCN, it proposes the construction of a very expensive bridge across the Amazon River, the building of a power plant north of the river, and the extension of the BR-163 highway to Brazil’s northern border with Suriname.

A PowerPoint presentation related to the project obtained by Open Democracy states: “Calha Norte must be implemented in the Amazon basin to integrate it with the rest of the national territory in order to fight off international pressure for the implementation of the project called Triple A.” The so-called Andes–Amazon–Atlantic project, or “Triple A” is an international proposal to create an ecological corridor in the northern Amazon — and, according to conservationists, has nothing to do with a challenge to Brazilian sovereignty.

Advocates of the Rio Branco Project have warned of a “globalist threat” to the Amazon, pointing variously to the perceived French threat, the increased recent Chinese presence in Suriname, along with international socioenvironmental NGOs operating through local allies, including Indigenous and traditional communities, and quilombos — communities composed of the descendants of runaway slaves.

All indications are that Vice President Mourão is military old school, and always considering Amazon development within the context of Brazilian national security and sovereignty. As part of that framework, the VP supports Bolsonaro’s plan to hand landgrabbers legal deeds to land often claimed by traditional communities, showing that these military men are willing to reward what was obtained illegally to develop the region.

On examining the current Brazilian power structure, Mourão may seem the more reasoned of the two leaders. Yet, he is very much pedaling in the same direction as his seemingly less sophisticated presidential counterpart. Martins Filho concludes: “If ever Mourão were to take over as president, I don’t think his policies would be very different from Bolsonaro’s.”

Banner image: Commodities on the move on the completed southern section of the BR-163 Highway. A planned extension of the BR-163 could result in major new deforestation along a 300-mile corridor stretching north from the Amazon River to the Suriname border. Image by Roosevelt Pinheiro courtesy of Agência Brasil.

Brave New Arctic: Sea ice has yet to form off of Siberia, worrying scientists

by Sharon Guynup on 26 October 2020

After a summer that saw record Siberian fires and polar temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit, along with near record low sea ice extent in September, the Arctic Ocean’s refreeze has slowed to a crawl.
The Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea are, at this point, failing to re-freeze as rapidly as in the past. Scientists see all of these worrying events, along with many other indicators including fast melting permafrost, as harbingers of a northern polar region that may be entering a new climate regime.
Models predict the Arctic will be ice-free in summer by 2040 or 2050, with unforeseen negative impacts not only in the Far North, but on people, economies and ecosystems around the globe. One major concern: scientists worry how changes in the Arctic might alter temperate weather systems, impacting global food security.
“We’re conducting this blind experiment, and we don’t yet know the real implications,” one sea ice researcher tells Mongabay. “How do you sell climate change to be as much of an emergency as COVID-19? Except that it will kill a lot more people.”
Ice bergs float in an open Arctic Ocean. Image by Polar Cruises licensed under CC BY 2.0.

At this time of year, in Russia’s far north Laptev Sea, the sun hovers near the horizon during the day, generating little warmth, as the region heads towards months of polar night. By late September or early October, the sea’s shallow waters should be a vast, frozen expanse.

But not this year. For the first time since records have been kept, open water still laps this coastline in late October though snow is already falling there.

“In one sense, it’s shocking, but on the other hand, it’s not surprising,” said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Over the past 40 years, unprecedented climate change-driven events such as this have become the new normal in the Arctic — which is heating up far faster than the rest of the planet.

While weather patterns at the top of the world vary, the overall changes are dramatic and occurring so rapidly that the region may be entering a “new Arctic” climate regime, says Laura Landrum, an oceanographer with Colorado’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The Arctic is transitioning from a mostly frozen state into an entirely new climate — and impacting the entire planet, she said.

Meier calls the Arctic the “bellweather of climate change” because it’s a place where a small bump in temperature has real impact: a change from -.5°C to .5°C (31°F to 33°F) is the difference between ice skating and swimming, he said, while a couple of degrees warmer in Florida may not even be noticed.
Comparison of autumn sea ice formation for the first half of October 2012 (the record year for Arctic sea ice extent loss) and in 2020 (second place for sea ice extent loss).
The satellite record goes back to 1979. Image courtesy of @Icy_Samuel, data provided by NSIDC.
An extreme year in a region known for extremes

It’s been quite a year in Siberia — on land, and off the Arctic coast. The first six months were extraordinarily warm and the sea ice began melting early. By May, fires burned in permafrost zones that are usually frozen year-round. In June, temperatures hit a record-breaking 38°C (100°F), and by September, blazes incinerated about 14 million hectares (54,000 square miles) of tundra — an area the size of Greece.

A combination of changing climate and quirky weather are now preventing this fall’s freeze-up. Siberian sea temperatures are higher than usual because of this year’s extreme climate events. The heat wave warmed the many rivers that feed into the Arctic Ocean and also triggered an early melt-out. Without ice and snow that acts like a mirror — reflecting the sun’s heat back into the atmosphere — the dark ocean absorbed extra warmth over the summer. Much of the remaining ice disintegrated. Then in September, unusually strong, warm winds blew in from the south, pushing any newly formed ice out to sea.

In the past, a shift in the winds wouldn’t have mattered much. Back in the 1980s, Igor Polyakov, a climate scientist at the University of Alaska, remembers being part of expeditions that landed small seaplanes on sea ice to study the Siberian Arctic. He described the Laptev Sea as a solid, glaring white landscape punctuated by pastel-tinged ice: rose-colored, light blue and green. Since the regions’ deeply cut gulfs and bays are located in shallow continental shelf waters, they mostly stayed frozen.

But by summer 2002, sea ice was less stable, and today, ice breakers can travel the region through open water. “The changes are dramatic,” he said. “It happened in front of our eyes. Now, in the summer, there’s no ice at all for thousands of kilometers, sometimes as far north as the 85th parallel.” That’s five degrees from the North Pole.

In the 1980s, about 80% of the Arctic Ocean and its surrounding seas were frozen in thick, “old ice” that mostly survived the summer melt, said James Overland, an oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who has studied the Arctic for decades. “Now much of that has to refreeze each winter. We did not expect to see this so soon.”
Arctic sea ice extent on October 25, 2020 was at a record low 5.613 million square kilometers for this date, surpassing the record set in 2019 of 6.174 million square kilometers. Image courtesy of ChArctic NSIDC.
A dangerous cycle

Across the Arctic, ice is now thawing earlier, freezing later, thinning and — in many places — disappearing altogether.

Thinner ice is less resilient. Picture ice cubes in a glass. Thick chunks last longer and melt slower than ice chips and slivers. All disintegrate faster in warmer liquid. This is a huge problem in the Arctic, where vast stretches of open blue water absorb the sun’s heat during summer, when the sun never really sets. Those warm waters flow beneath the ice to melt it from below.

This year, the overall health of the sea ice was bleak: the end-of-summer minimum was tracking at the second-lowest amount of sea ice in 42 years, Landrum said. Measurements by NASA and the NSIDC found it was about 2.6 million square kilometers (1 million square miles) lower than the average from 1981 to 2000. NASA satellite data shows an overall downward trend in Arctic ice is averaging 12.9% a year.

This year’s average global temperature will be among the warmest on record, researchers say. Current models predict the Arctic will be ice-free in summertime by 2040 – 2050. Overland thinks this so-called Blue Ocean Event (BOE) might come even sooner.

Many factors are colliding that could speed massive melt. New feedback loops continue to emerge, compounding and accelerating changes. For example, early climate models didn’t factor in methane — a potent greenhouse gas — that’s pouring into the atmosphere from melting permafrost. The tundra is now thought to be emitting 300-600 million tons of carbon yearly, the equivalent of driving between 65 and 129 million cars for a year.

The Arctic appears to be changing into an entirely new climate state due to rapid warming. The extent of sea ice in the late summer, when it reaches its minimum each year, has already entered a statistically different climate, with surface air temperatures and the number of days with rain instead of snow also beginning to transition. Image by Simmi Sinha, ©UCAR.

Likewise, thick ice that withstood high winds and storms decades ago, now is thin and can be severely damaged by such storms — amplifying one-off extreme weather events. Then there’s “Atlantification,” the increasing intrusion of salty, temperate Atlantic Ocean waters into chillier Arctic seas.

The changes in the Laptev Sea, long known as an Arctic “ice factory,” add another concerning factor. In the past, sea ice created there typically moved with wind and ocean currents, traveling over the North Pole towards Greenland. Depending on changing conditions, that ice then spent years trapped in a slowly spinning gyre in the Beaufort Sea; ended up off the Greenland coast; or piled up on the north shore of the Canadian Archipelago, building ice ridges that towered 3 to 9 meters (12 to 30 feet) high — multi-year ice that resisted melting.

That system no longer works as before, with the Laptev Sea now turning to blue water every summer, the “ice factory” largely shut down, and multi-year Arctic sea ice at a record low — and still dropping.

A polar bear prowls the Arctic shoreline. Photo via VisualHunt.com
An interconnected planet

The polar bear has become the poster child for climate change impacts on wildlife. But Ursus maritimus isn’t the only victim; cascading affects throughout the Arctic food chain are impacting everything from plankton to seals, globally important fisheries species like pollock, on up to whales, musk ox and other cold climate mammals.

In Siberia, reindeer are starving in wintertime. “Weather whiplash” is bringing rain, in what should be the frigid dead of polar night. The falling rain freezes atop the snowpack, forming a layer of thick ice that makes it impossible for reindeer to dig down to grass and plants below; many now die of hunger. These once-rare Arctic warm spells are now commonplace.

Indigenous people are also suffering. Without proper ice platforms, it’s growing harder for them to hunt for the walrus and whales that sustain them. Coastlines are eroding as sediments held together by permafrost become unglued. And rising seas are inundating coastal villages.

Worse, rapidly escalating climate change in the Far North is being exported to the rest of the world: The Earth’s biomes are interconnected. “You can’t alter one system without affecting others,” explained Mark Serreze, a research scientist for the NSIDC. “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, and the changes are unfolding faster than our ability to keep up with them.” Serreze, in his 2018 book framing the problem, dubbed the north polar region as, “The Brave New Arctic.”

Serreze notes that the Arctic covers a massive area; it’s the size of the lower 48 U.S. states combined. Amplified Arctic warming alters global weather, and impacts the rest of the planet, changing weather, ocean patterns and the jet stream.

Intense storms, droughts and heat waves — once-every- 100- or 500-year extreme weather events — are now occurring regularly around the globe, with devastating impacts on people, economies, and ecosystems. This year alone, for example, saw massive record wildfires in California, Colorado, Siberia, and Brazil, and no one yet knows how this autumn’s delayed Arctic re-freeze might impact the planet’s upcoming weather.

A fire burning through northern forest in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in July 2020. Image courtesy of Greenpeace International.

Julienne Stroeve, who specializes in sea ice research at NSIDC, adds another potential serious impact to the list: threats to our food supply. “What’s predicted to happen in agricultural sectors is not good news.… We’re going to be living on a very different planet if we keep adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere,” she said. “We’re conducting this blind experiment, and we don’t yet know the real implications.

Stroeve is desperate to inform people of the urgency: “How do you sell climate change to be as much of an emergency as COVID-19? Except that it will kill a lot more people.”

She believes we can rally. If we can produce a COVID-19 vaccine in record time, and heal the ozone layer through the Montreal Protocol, Stroeve thinks “we have the ability to change the course of this train.”

Biggest carbon dioxide drop: Real-time data show COVID-19's massive impact on global emissions

Date:October 14, 202

0Source:Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Summary:While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, the first half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in carbon dioxide emissions -- larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of the 1979, or even World War II.

Masked Earth photo concept (stock image; elements furnished by NASA).
Credit: © diy13 / stock.adobe.com

While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, the first half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in CO2 emissions -- larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of the 1979, or even World War II. An international team of researchers has found that in the first six months of this year, 8.8 percent less carbon dioxide was emitted than in the same period in 2019 -- a total decrease of 1551 million tonnes. The groundbreaking study not only offers a much more precise look at COVID-19's impact on global energy consumption than previous analyses. It also suggests what fundamental steps could be taken to stabilize the global climate in the aftermath of the pandemic.


"What makes our study unique is the analysis of meticulously collected near-real-time data," explains lead author Zhu Liu from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "By looking at the daily figures compiled by the Carbon Monitor research initiative we were able to get a much faster and more accurate overview, including timelines that show how emissions decreases have corresponded to lockdown measures in each country. In April, at the height of the first wave of Corona infections, when most major countries shut down their public life and parts of their economy, emissions even declined by 16.9 %. Overall, the various outbreaks resulted in emission drops that we normally see only on a short-term basis on holidays such as Christmas or the Chinese Spring Festival."

The study, published in the latest issue of Nature Communications, shows which parts of the global economy were most impacted. "The greatest reduction of emissions was observed in the ground transportation sector," explains Daniel Kammen, professor and Chair of the Energy and Resources Group and also professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. "Largely because of working from home restrictions, transport CO2 emissions decreased by 40 % worldwide. In contrast, the power and industry sectors contributed less to the decline, with -22 % and -17 %, respectively, as did the aviation and shipping sectors. Surprisingly, even the residential sector saw a small emissions drop of 3 %: largely because of an abnormally warm winter in the northern hemisphere, heating energy consumption decreased with most people staying at home all day during lockdown periods."

To paint this comprehensive and multidimensional picture, the researchers based their estimates on a wide array of data: precise, hourly datasets of electricity power production in 31 countries, daily vehicle traffic in more than 400 cities worldwide, daily global passenger flights, monthly production data for industry in 62 countries as well as fuel consumption data for building emissions in more than 200 countries.

The researchers also found strong rebound effects. With the exception of a continuing decrease of emissions stemming from the transportation sector, by July 2020, as soon as lockdown measures were lifted, most economies resumed their usual levels of emitting CO2. But even if they remained at their historically low levels, this would have a rather minuscule effect on the long-term CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

Thus, the authors stress that the only valid strategy to stabilize the climate is a complete overhaul of the industry and commerce sector. "While the CO2 drop is unprecedented, decreases of human activities cannot be the answer," says Co-Author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "Instead we need structural and transformational changes in our energy production and consumption systems. Individual behavior is certainly important, but what we really need to focus on is reducing the carbon intensity of our global economy."



Story Source:

Materials provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Zhu Liu, Philippe Ciais, Zhu Deng, Ruixue Lei, Steven J. Davis, Sha Feng, Bo Zheng, Duo Cui, Xinyu Dou, Biqing Zhu, Rui Guo, Piyu Ke, Taochun Sun, Chenxi Lu, Pan He, Yuan Wang, Xu Yue, Yilong Wang, Yadong Lei, Hao Zhou, Zhaonan Cai, Yuhui Wu, Runtao Guo, Tingxuan Han, Jinjun Xue, Olivier Boucher, Eulalie Boucher, Frédéric Chevallier, Katsumasa Tanaka, Yimin Wei, Haiwang Zhong, Chongqing Kang, Ning Zhang, Bin Chen, Fengming Xi, Miaomiao Liu, François-Marie Bréon, Yonglong Lu, Qiang Zhang, Dabo Guan, Peng Gong, Daniel M. Kammen, Kebin He, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber. Near-real-time monitoring of global CO2 emissions reveals the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nature Communications, 2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18922-7

 

THAILAND 

Varsity lecturer, human rights lawyer accompany student protesters to Chiang Mai police station

National

Oct 26. 2020

By The Nation

A lecturer from Chiang Mai University and a lawyer from the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights accompanied student activists to the police station in Chiang Mai province, to acknowledge the charges against them while emphasising their basic right to protest.

The group led by Somchai Preecha-silpakul, a lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Chiang Mai University, arrived at Muang Chiang Mai police station at 10am.

The students who faced charges for the public gathering on August 9 reported to the police because of arrest warrants against them for allegedly inciting disturbance in the kingdom, gathering without informing the authority, violating the emergency decree on pandemic and using speakers without permission.

Somchai said that the seven students came to show their innocence and they were ready to fight in the legal system, saying the gathering was their basic right under the Constitution.

They were not arrested as police said the accused had no intention to flee and more than 10 teachers were willing to bail them in the future.

 

Revealing the Age of the Clovis People

NEWS   Oct 26, 2020 | Original story from Texas A&M University

 

Clovis spear points from the Gault site in Texas. Credit: Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University

There is much debate surrounding the age of the Clovis — a prehistoric culture named for stone tools found near Clovis, New Mexico in the early 1930s — who once occupied North America during the end of the last Ice Age. New testing of bones and artifacts show that Clovis tools were made only during a brief, 300-year period from 13,050 to 12,750 years ago.

Michael Waters, distinguished professor of anthropology and director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans, along with Texas A&M anthropologist David Carlson and Thomas Stafford of Stafford Research in Colorado, have had their new work published in the current issue of Science Advances.

The team used the radiocarbon method to date bone, charcoal and carbonized plant remains from 10 known Clovis sites in South Dakota, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Montana and two sites in Oklahoma and Wyoming. An analysis of the dates showed that people made and used the iconic Clovis spear-point and other distinctive tools for only 300 years.

“We still do not know how or why Clovis technology emerged and why it disappeared so quickly,” Waters said.

“It is intriguing to note that Clovis people first appears 300 years before the demise of the last of the megafauna that once roamed North America during a time of great climatic and environmental change,” he said. “The disappearance of Clovis from the archaeological record at 12,750 years ago is coincident with the extinction of mammoth and mastodon, the last of the megafauna. Perhaps Clovis weaponry was developed to hunt the last of these large beasts.”

Waters said that until recently, Clovis was thought to represent the initial group of indigenous people to enter the Americas and that people carrying Clovis weapons and tools spread quickly across the continent and then moved swiftly all the way to the southern tip of South America. However, a short age range for Clovis does not provide sufficient time for people to colonize both North and South America. Furthermore, strong archaeological evidence “amassed over the last few decades shows that people were in the Americas thousands of years before Clovis, but Clovis still remains important because it is so distinctive and widespread across North America,” he said.

Waters said the revised age for Clovis tools reveals that, “Clovis with its distinctive fluted lanceolate spear point, typically found in the Plains and eastern United States, is contemporaneous with stemmed point-making people in the Western United States and the earliest spear points, called Fishtail points, in South America.

“Having an accurate age for Clovis shows that people using different toolkits were well settled into multiple areas of North and South America by 13,000 years ago and had developed their own adaptation to these various environments.”

Waters noted that a new accurate and precise age for Clovis and their tools provides a baseline to try to understand the mystery surrounding the origin and demise of these people.

Reference
Waters MR, Stafford TW, Carlson DL. The age of Clovis—13,050 to 12,750 cal yr B.P. Science Advances. 2020;6(43):eaaz0455. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz0455

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

 

Work from home increasing pollution? Here’s what study in the UK found
By: FE Online |
October 26, 2020 1:52 PM

While the ECIU report is specific to the UK, an earlier report by US’ Health Effects Institute stated that the pollution in India has the third highest exposure to PM 2.5.

Add caption

The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has released a report recently. (Image: Reuters)

Work from home: Working from home this winter could cause air pollution to rise in London! The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has released a report recently which states that the level of air pollution in some parts of the United Kingdom could increase in the winter season due to the coronavirus-induced work from home setting. The report states that while working from home, people would use gas boilers for heating during the winter, which would cause nitrogen oxides emissions to increase, according to a report in IE. These new emissions would be about enough to negate the improvement made in two years due to traffic pollution measures.
Cause for increased pollution

As per the ECIU report, combustion of gas by boilers and cookers in buildings is one of the biggest reasons for air pollution in the local area. It cited the example of Greater London, where gas combustion forms 21% of the nitrogen oxides emissions. Due to the increased use of boilers and cookers, therefore, the report said that some towns and cities in the UK would see an increase in emissions of nitrogen oxides to the tune of around 12%.

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Delhi's air 'very poor' for 4th day on trot, likely to remain so till Oct 31


The ECIU analysis has also shown that in London itself, there could be a growth of about 56% in the nitrogen oxides emissions from boilers.
Air pollution: Similar trends for India

While the ECIU report is specific to the UK, an earlier report by US’ Health Effects Institute stated that the pollution in India has the third highest exposure to PM 2.5, according to an IE report. PM 2.5 is among the most harmful pollutants for the health of humans. These particles can enter the bloodstream or the lungs and cause several illnesses, including lung cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The report stated that the coronavirus lockdown in India caused a significant improvement in the air quality in many parts. An analysis on pollution in India by the World Bank showed that the pandemic brought significant relief, but the quality of air in the country has been improving since 2018. Compared to 2018, there were fewer days in 2019 when the daily national standard for PM 2.5 was breached.

However, the setting in of winter brings increased pollution in the northern part of the country.

Crows: Are They Scary Or Just Super Smart?

October 26, 20204:00 AM ET


REBECCA RAMIREZ

MADELINE K. SOFIA

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A "murder" scene could seem creepy, but what is going on inside these crows' minds may be most unsettling. Dragan Todorovic/Getty Images

Crows have long been associated with creepiness. After all, a group of them is called a "murder." But maybe the birds have gotten a bad rap — maybe their most unsettling quality is really just how smart they are.

To get some insight into crows and perhaps set the record straight, Short Wave spoke with Kaeli Swift, a lecturer at the University of Washington who wrote her doctoral thesis on crow behavior. She cites three examples of crow smarts.

1. Crows can memorize human faces

Wildlife biologists figured this out by conducting a simple experiment using rubber masks. A "caveman" mask, for example, designated a "dangerous" face while a mask of former Vice President Dick Cheney was "neutral." Researchers in the dangerous mask trapped and banded individual American crows and then released them. While they were careful not to harm the birds during trapping, "it's still a scary experience for the bird," Swift says.

To see whether the crows remembered the dangerous face, researchers returned to the area and walked around wearing the different masks. And when the birds saw the dangerous face, Swift says, "they would alarm-call, they would dive-bomb that person." The neutral face was mostly ignored.


The gender or body type of whoever was wearing the dangerous mask didn't much matter — the crows seemed to key in on the face. Researchers even flipped the mask upside down to see if the crows could still recognize it. "For a brief moment, the crows seemed a little confused, and then they would just tilt their head upside down and then they'd start an alarm-calling," Swift says.

Even crows that hadn't been tagged or banded scolded and dive-bombed the wearer of the dangerous mask. Swift says this suggests the crows "were actually learning from their peers that this particular person is dangerous."

And if you need another reason to be nice to crows, they can also remember faces for years.

2. Crows have "funerals" for their dead

Humans aren't the only animals to note their departed. American crows mark the passing of their dead in two ways: with alarm calls or a series of loud scolds, and with mobbing. Mobbing is when multiple crows hear an alarm call, gather around the dead crow and also begin to scold. "This usually lasts around 15 to 20 minutes," Swift says.

Swift and research partner John Marzluff, who led the facial-recognition study, did an experiment to understand why American crows do this. It turns out that the "funerals" have less to do with dirges and eulogies and more to do with identifying the cause of death. And with spreading the word about potential dangers.

The researchers fed crows over the course of several days to attract the crows to the area and figure out how long it took them to come down for a snack.

Then a person wearing a mask carried a dead crow into the area. The crows scolded and dive-bombed that person. Later, if someone wearing the same mask returned to the area — even if they weren't bearing a dead crow — the birds scolded and dive-bombed them again. "Basically," Swift says, "if they saw a person holding a dead crow would they learn that person's face and go, you know, guilty by association."

The crows were also slower to return to the feeding grounds once the area became associated with danger. Swift says this "suggests that crows did indeed learn from that experience, that although those Cheetos might be really tempting, because there was a dead crow here earlier, I should probably be extra careful before I come down and get my snack." Same, crows. Same.

3. Crows create and use tools.

When we think of animals using tools, we often think of primates. But crows surprise yet again. As Swift puts it, New Caledonian crows are basically "flying primates" because they create hooked tools — essentially twigs shaped into hooks to fish out bugs burrowed in wood.

"There's a lot of animals that use tools, but modifying a material for a specific purpose, that's much more complicated," she says. Swift adds that while some primates have made tools in captivity, she thinks these crows might be "the only other animal besides early humans that habitually make hooks in the wild."

So next time you come across a crow, maybe treat it with a little more respect. After all, the crow won't forget.

This episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez and Ariela Zebede. It was edited by Viet Le and Gisele Grayson. Maddie Sofia checked the facts.