A Human Tragedy Could Unfold With Hurricane Eta In Central America

Marshall Shepherd Senior Contributor FORBES Science


Photo of the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Hurricane Eta is already an unprecedented storm. It represents the first time that we have used the Greek letter “Eta” in a storm name. Hurricane Eta is the fifth major hurricane (category 3 or greater) of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season and the third major hurricane to form since October 1st. According to Colorado State University hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach on Twitter, “This is the first time on record that the Atlantic has had 3 major hurricane formations (e.g., storm first reached major hurricane strength) in October-November.” However, there is something more ominous than climatological records that worries me about Eta. A human tragedy could unfold as it makes landfall.


Hurricane Eta on Monday afternoon (November 2nd, 2020). NOAA AND TROPICALTIDBITS.COM

Eta, which rapidly intensified to a Category 4 storm on Monday afternoon, is expected to make landfall on Tuesday. The National Hurricane Center is sounding the alarms for a multi-hazard event, which includes potentially catastrophic winds and excessive rainfall. I want to specifically focus on the rainfall amounts. National Hurricane Center estimates are as follows:


Nicaragua and Honduras: 15 to 25 inches with isolated amounts of 35 inches.
Eastern Guatemala and Belize: 10 to 20 inches with isolated amounts of 25 inches.
Panama and Costa Rica: 10 to 15 inches with isolated amounts of 25 inches.

One particular concern about Hurricane Eta is the forward speed. The forecast map below illustrates that the storm will not move significantly after landfall. Between now and Wednesday, the storm is still sitting over regions of Nicaragua and Honduras. Even by Thursday, the weakened storm is projected to be over the region before moving back out over water by late Friday. Eta is just one more storm in what Weather Channel expert Rick Knabb calls Category “Slow” hurricanes like Harvey (2017), Florence (2018), or Sally (2020).



Forecast track for Hurricane Eta NOAA NHC

In the Monday afternoon National Hurricane Center Public Advisory, forecasters warn that, “This rainfall will lead to catastrophic, life-threatening flash flooding and river flooding, along with landslides in areas of higher terrain of Central America." Additionally, coastal regions of Nicaragua could experience storm surge water levels in the 12 to 18 feet above normal tide levels.


Topographic map of Central America NASA JPL

Richard Henning is a meteorologist and former graduate school classmate of mine at Florida State University. Henning is also a NOAA Hurricane Hunter. He reflected on Hurricane Mitch (1998) in a social media post. He wrote, “It (Eta) reminds me of late season Hurricane Mitch of 1998 that caused the deaths of more than 10,000 people in this same area.” Nearly 2 to 3 feet of rainfall falling on terrain like the map below is a recipe for disaster and the potential loss of human lives. Hurricane Mitch, which reached Category 5 status, caused over $5 billion in damages and was one of the deadliest storms in the Western Hemisphere, according to History.com

At the time of writing, Hurricane Eta was still in an intensification phase. There is nothing that guarantees that we will see scenarios like the region saw in 1998, but the similarities are in place.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website.

Marshall Shepherd
Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd, a leading international expert in weather and climate, was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS) and is Director of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Atmospheric Sciences Program. Dr. Shepherd is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor and hosts The Weather Channel’s Weather Geeks Podcast, which can be found at all podcast outlets. Prior to UGA, Dr. Shepherd spent 12 years as a Research Meteorologist at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center and was Deputy Project Scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. In 2004, he was honored at the White House with a prestigious PECASE award. He also has received major honors from the American Meteorological Society, American Association of Geographers, and the Captain Planet Foundation. Shepherd is frequently sought as an expert on weather and climate by major media outlets, the White House, and Congress. He has over 80 peer-reviewed scholarly publications and numerous editorials. Dr. Shepherd received his B.S., M.S. and PhD in physical meteorology from Florida State University.

Mongabay Series: Global Forests
Rewilding key to averting mass extinctions and reducing carbon emissions

by Meghie Rodrigues on 3 November 2020


A recent study that analyzed data from biomes all over the world, covering an area of almost 3 billion hectares (7 billion acres) that were turned from natural habitats into farmlands, concluded that rewilding is key to recovery.

Restoring 30% of this area and preserving remaining natural habitats could remove almost half the carbon dioxide surplus humans have emitted since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Restoring this area would also save 71% of animal species from extinction compared with current extinction rates, according to researchers.

High-priority areas are concentrated in the tropics. Wetlands restoration has the highest positive impact for biodiversity conservation and forests the highest importance for climate change mitigation.

An international team led by Brazilian researchers recently published a study in the journal Nature showing that restoring habitats that are currently degraded by agricultural activity is key to mitigating climate change impacts and avoiding animal species extinction.

The study analyzed data from 2.87 billion hectares (7.09 billion acres) of natural areas worldwide that were transformed into farmland over the years, assessing forests, grasslands, shrublands, wetlands and arid ecosystems all over the globe.

Researchers used three criteria to evaluate optimal outcomes — biodiversity conservation, mitigation of climate change, and costs — with the best restoration solutions combining the highest biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation with the lowest costs possible. They modeled 1,200 scenarios combining these elements using different restoration approaches.

They note that different objectives point out distinct restoration areas and strategies: recovery of forest areas is the priority when the goal is to mitigate climate change effects, while the restoration of wetlands is of the highest importance when the objective is to conserve biodiversity. Arid ecosystems and grasslands are the most cost-effective areas for restoration.

Though all continents harbor areas that best combine the three criteria, most of the priority areas for restoration were determined to be in the world’s tropics. Preserving natural habitats and restoring 30% of the total converted lands focusing in these regions would save 71% of animal species from extinction and absorb 465 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — roughly half of all carbon emitted since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Gislene Ganade, coordinator of the Restoration Ecology Laboratory at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, says this is the first study to piece together advanced modeling methodology and focus on biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation and overall restoration costs globally. “There are several restoration studies with different recovery techniques to all ecosystems, but I don’t know one that has used these three criteria at the same time globally before,” Ganade, who did not participate in the study, told Mongabay in an interview.

This research sounds the alarm for policymakers and citizens at a time when the world is entering the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration starting next year as defined by the United Nations, Ganade says. “It shows that Brazil is a leader in restoration studies and also helps to look at a global problem with deep local implications. If there’s a time to talk about these issues, it is definitely now,” she adds.

The study at the global scale was inspired by the same methodology that lead author Bernardo Strassburg, a researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, developed to map priority areas for restoration in the Atlantic Forest, one of the most degraded biomes in Brazil.

Restoration, the authors note, does not need to come at the expense of agricultural production, since 55% of converted lands could be restored while maintaining current yields.

The Atlantic Forest is a biome in the top 5 % highest priority for restoration. The image shows a portion of the biome at Serra do Caparaó, at the limits between Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais states. Credits: Heris Luiz Cordeiro Rocha/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Differing views

The approach the researchers used, however, has its critics. Giselda Durigan, a researcher at the São Paulo State Forest Institute, who did not participate in the study, says she considers the criteria to be fruit of a “pragmatic economist view,” since it focuses on restoration in areas “where it is easier and cheaper to do.”

Durigan told Mongabay that “it is important to heal Earth’s wounds where they are deepest, where natural areas are degraded the most and where there is more pollution and water scarcity — and these areas do not always match with what the study found.” The areas Durigan highlights are mostly in the global north. Restoring areas at fountainheads and riverbeds are of special importance for the maintenance of water in volume and quality, but this isn’t mentioned in the study, she adds.

Strassburg says he agrees with Durigan’s assertion. “Restoring fountainheads is extremely necessary and when we work on modeling at the local scale, we come across this sort of priority,” he told Mongabay.

The study, however, was not able to merge such specific modeling because of its scale. There are a number of factors to take into account when working with such fine-grained models, “from the type of soil in riverine areas to river inclination and its curve type,” Strassburg says. “It is possible to work with such data on a local scale. At the global scale, this is not yet computationally possible.” He adds that, despite mapping restoration areas in a grid of 9-hectare (22-acre) cells, they used much larger cells of 2,500 hectares (6,200 acres) to optimize the final modeling. “Within these cells it makes all sense to prioritize fountainhead areas for restoration. Both approaches work well together,” he says.

Semi-arid farmland in Kenya. The study led by Bernardo Strassburg oversees the restoration of farmland to their natural ecosystems to halt biodiversity loss and mitigate climate change effects. Credits: Andrew Wu, World Resources Institute, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The role of forests and a glimpse of what is possible

More than half of the converted lands the study mapped were originally forest regions (54% of the total). Twenty-five percent of the area was grasslands, 14% shrublands, 4% arid lands and 2% wetlands.

Recovering forest areas is crucial to mitigating the effects of climate change, but many forest areas in priority regions such as Brazil are seeing their areas shrink instead of expanding. The Amazon Rainforest has had more fires this year than in 2019 (more than 89,600 to date against 89,176), when the smoke was so massive that it blacked out the skies in São Paulo, more than 2,700 kilometers (1,700 miles) away.

In the Atlantic Forest, a region that harbors 70% of Brazil’s population, the situation is even more critical. Originally, the biome covered parts of the Brazilian northeast and all states in the southeast and south, including Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil’s most populated cities. But today, little more than 12% of its total vegetal cover is left. The study shows the biome is in the top 5% of priority areas for global restoration, Strassburg says.

Deforestation between 2018 and 2019 was almost 30% higher than in the period from 2017 and 2018, according to the SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation and INPE, Brazil’s national space research institute. Restoring and maintaining the forests in such populous regions are essential for the water maintenance Durigan calls attention to.

But there are actions trying to counter the trend.

Strassburg says initiatives such as the Pact for the Atlantic Forest Restoration — aiming to restore 15 million hectares (37 million acres) of native forest — have been very important in the attempt to mitigate part of the habitat loss in the area. “There have been several restoration initiatives in priority places that we mapped in this study and in previous ones. There are actions of several kinds, from natural restoration to assisted natural restoration, led by local groups, cooperatives and large companies,” he says. One example is the Restoration Task Force, led by the Environment Secretariat in the city of Rio de Janeiro, an ongoing reforestation program in the Atlantic Forest region since 1994.

Another of these initiatives, led by photographer Sebastião Salgado’s Instituto Terra, won the E-Award for education from the United Nations at the Rio+20 Conference in 2012. On the occasion, they had planted more than 1.7 million trees in the Atlantic Forest.

Banner image: Tiger Leg Monkey Tree Frog (Phyllomedusa hypochondrialis) in Brazil. Photo by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

Citation:

Strassburg, B. B. N., Iribarrem, A., Beyer, H. L., Cordeiro, C. L., Crouzeilles, R., Jakovac, C. C., … Visconti, P. (2020). Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration. Nature, 586(7831), 724-729. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2784-9

Article published by Genevieve Belmaker

Report: Soy, cattle industries trail palm oil, timber on deforestation risk

by Ashoka Mukpo 

on 3 November 2020

The report says the soybean and cattle industries lack certification bodies like the RSPO that were created after consumer pressure.

Among soybean and cattle producers, Glencore Agriculture, JBS and Minerva scored worst on indicators for forest risk.

The two industries have a significant role in the deforestation of the Amazon and Brazil’s Cerrado biome.

Corporations that trade in four forest-risk commodities are failing to do enough to prevent deforestation in their supply chains, according to new analysis by the Climate Disclosure Project (CDP), an NGO that works with businesses and governments to track their environmental impacts. The paper points an accusing finger at the cattle and soy industries in particular, saying that their practices lag far behind those of companies that trade in other commodities.

“The focus on deforestation today has been on timber and palm oil despite the fact that cattle has been one of its major drivers between 2005 and 2015,” said Ling Sin Fai Lam, lead analyst at CDP and one of the authors of the report.

According to the report, companies operating in the agriculture and logging industries drive more than 80% of global deforestation, with soy, palm oil, cattle, and timber being largely to blame. Lam says that a combination of consumer pressure and certification schemes have forced changes in the timber and palm oil sectors, while soy and cattle companies continue to operate with few checks and balances despite their heavy footprint in the Amazon and other forest regions.

“A lot of these companies have no visibility on where the cow might have been reared or if at some point in its life cycle it may have grazed on deforested land,” Lam told Mongabay. “And our analysis shows that all the cattle and soy companies in our sample continue to operate in the Amazon, which has the highest rate of tree loss.”

The boom in global demand for beef and soybeans has pushed the Amazon into crisis, with one recent analysis of NASA satellite data concluding that forest fires were likelier to occur near industrial meatpacking pants and soybean silos than in other areas.

Part of the reason why has to do with their supply chains. Major traders like JBS and Cargill typically purchase cattle and soybeans directly from smaller companies and independent farmers. Cows often pass through multiple hands before reaching a slaughterhouse, and Lam says the big industry players that operate them aren’t doing nearly enough to make sure their suppliers aren’t contributing to deforestation.

“Companies like Minerva and JBS don’t actually provide any evidence of traceability beyond the fattening farms where cattle goes before it gets slaughtered, but throughout the life cycle of the cattle it could actually move through quite a few farms before it gets there,” Lam said.

Of the 10 major soy and cattle producers analyzed in the report, Glencore Agriculture, JBS, and Minerva Foods ranked at the bottom of a list of indicators developed by CDP to evaluate deforestation risks. All three companies have made commitments to fight deforestation, but CDP’s report says their efforts are falling far short of what’s needed to protect tropical forests.

JBS, for example, claims to prevent deforestation in its direct supply chain, but says it isn’t able to monitor all of its indirect suppliers. This summer, an investigation revealed evidence that it continued to work with some of those suppliers that had been sanctioned for illegal deforestation.

And Cargill has dismissed the idea of a moratorium on the production of soy inside the Cerrado, a forested savanna region of Brazil that boasts some of the highest biodiversity in South America. Like in the cattle industry, most large soybean traders purchase the commodity from smaller local operations.

Demand for the legumes has skyrocketed in recent years, largely as a result of China’s appetite for the pigs that feed on them.

“Just four out of the seven soy companies that we covered provided any clarity on soy certification,” Lam said.

In contrast, the report says the palm oil and timber industries have made progress in recent years, largely via participation in certification platforms that bring civil society, governments, and producers together to monitor plantation operations. The 10 palm oil producers covered in the report are together responsible for managing nearly half of the total land certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO); and 68% of the timber produced by companies included in CDP’s analysis was certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

But even those certification bodies have been critiqued by environmental campaigners, and some say it would be misleading to point to them as a standard that the beef and soy industries should mimic.

“Industrial agricultural commodities responsible for the majority of deforestation worldwide are not regulated and therefore continue to drive the climate crisis through unfettered environmental destruction and human rights violations,” said Gaurav Madan, senior forests and lands campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “This blind spot in regulation comes in part due to an overreliance on voluntary corporate commitments and sustainability certification schemes, like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.”

Lam says the better track record of the palm oil and timber industries in recent years doesn’t mean they are entirely off the hook.

“It’s all relative, and at the end of the day we know that deforestation is still happening for all these commodities,” she said. “But we’d really like to see cattle and soy get up to where palm oil and timber is.”

In the long run, she adds, the main takeaway of the analysis is that the world isn’t doing nearly enough to tackle the impact that forest-risk industries are having on climate-critical forests.

“The world needs to make systemic changes to the global food system,” she said.

HWY. BR-319: The beginning of the end for Brazil’s Amazon forest (commentary)

Mongabay Series: Amazon Infrastructure

Commentary by Philip M. Fearnside on 3 November 2020

Brazil’s planned reconstruction of the BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway paralleling the Purus and Madeira rivers would give deforesters access to about half of what remains of the country’s Amazon forest, and so is perhaps the most consequential conservation issue for Brazil today.

The highway route is essentially a lawless area today, and the lack of governance is a critical issue in the battle over licensing the highway reconstruction project.

The BR-319 upgrade would link the current “arc of deforestation” to central Amazonia, allowing movement of deforestation actors to all forest locations with road links to Manaus, while a planned BR-319 connecting road would open the vast forest area between the BR-319 and the Peruvian border.

The BR-319 Environmental Impact Assessment has many flaws, including ignoring impacts beyond those adjacent to the highway. The EIA also contains passages admitting to some disastrous project impacts. This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay

.

The BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway passes through large areas of intact rainforest, seen here in 2018 with road “maintenance” underway. Source: Folha de São Paulo.

The text of this commentary is updated from an earlier Portuguese-language version of the author’s column at Amazônia Real.

The BR-319 (Manaus-Porto Velho) Highway was built in the early 1970s by Brazil’s military dictatorship, but was abandoned in 1988. In 2016, a “maintenance” program was authorized, and the highway is now passable during the dry season.

The currently proposed “Reconstruction” of BR-319, which would build a new paved road atop the old dirt roadbed, is certainly among the most consequential decisions facing Brazil today. The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the project has been submitted to the licensing agency (IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental agency), where it is receiving accelerated treatment for what appears to be a foreordained approval. The hasty authorization of a project that implies a major expansion of the area in Amazonia that is exposed to deforestation is extremely unwise.

So far, deforestation has been almost entirely limited to the “arc of deforestation” along the southern and eastern edges of the Amazon forest in Brazil, and to the eastern half of the region where road access is already implanted.

Brazil’s Legal Amazon region. The “arc of deforestation” is the red area along the southern and eastern edges of the forest. The BR-319 cuts the remaining Amazon basin forest in half, providing access to vast areas of standing forest by those who have deforested the eastern and southern portions of the region. Deforestation data courtesy of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

Large-scale impacts

The impact of the BR-319 will extend far beyond the strip along the highway route that is the subject of the EIA.

The BR-319 opens the central and northern portions of Amazonia to the migration of land grabbers (grileiros), loggers, cattlemen, individual squatters (posseiros) and organized landless farmers (sem-terras). These actors are already present in the “arc of deforestation” and have moved into areas in the southern portion of the state of Amazonas where there is road access, including Apuí, Igarapé Realidade and Lábrea (see black and white map below).

Critically, BR-319 is associated with plans for additional roads, such as AM-366, that would open the vast area of intact rainforest in the western part of the state of Amazonas.

Opening this “Trans-Purus” region in western Amazonas to deforestation would be catastrophic for Brazil, leading to loss of critical environmental services. These include water supply to the city of São Paulo: the Trans-Purus area is the last great block of intact forest in Brazilian Amazonia, and losing this area means losing the Amazon forest’s function of recycling the water that is carried in the “flying rivers” to Brazil’s major urban and agricultural areas (see here, here, here, here and here). Amazonia is supplying 70% of the water during the peak of the rainy season in São Paulo, when the reservoirs that supply the city fill. São Paulo has nearly run out of water several times, even with Amazonia’s water cycling function still intact.

The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for reconstructing the “middle stretch” of the BR-319 is now publicly available. The EIA defines an “area of direct impact” (ADA) and an “area of indirect impact” (AIA) that excludes the wider impacts of the highway, including the critical “Trans-Purus” region to the west of the Purus River.

The BR-319 Highway and its planned side roads, including AM-366 that would open the vast intact forest area between the highway and Brazil’s border with Peru (Source: Fearnside & Graça, 2006).

Despite the many deficiencies of the EIA, buried in the document’s 3735 pages there are passages that recognize many of the project’s true impacts, for which the authors should be congratulated. Among these is the threat that reconstructing the BR-319 poses to the Trans-Purus region by unleashing a chain of events that would result in opening the planned AM-366 road, thus allowing deforesters to enter this critical region:

The repaving and full operation of the BR-319 along its entire length may encourage regional politicians to pressure the government of Amazonas to resume the project to implement the AM-366 highway. This risk is very concrete in that, a few years after the opening of BR-319, a “picadão” [big trail] linking BR-319 to the city of Tapauá was opened by an initiative that was probably from private agents. (ECI-Apurina, p. 119).

The EIA also mentions the relevance of Brazil’s current presidential administration to the increased danger of the AM-366 being built:

In the political-institutional conditions now present in the region and in the country, added to the initiatives of the executive branch of the federal government to review environmental protection measures and to facilitate the advance of agribusiness in southern Amazonas — as previously noted — it is quite possible that the AM-366 could obtain sufficient political support for its implementation. (ECI-Apurina, p. 119).

The potential for invasion of the areas opened up by the AM-366 road and the illegal side roads along its route between Tapauá and the BR-319 is mentioned:

[AM-366] would offer migrants from the south and southeast regions, and especially those from Rondônia, an open route for opening lots in government lands — at zero cost. (ECI-Apurina, p. 83).

The EIA also mentions the likelihood of the AM-366 sprouting side roads (ramais) to provide access to oil and gas production areas planned for exploitation under the massive “Solimões Sedimentary Area Project”:

The question of the exploration of the blocks in the Solimões [Upper Amazon] basin. ,,, gains greater relevance due precisely to the possible interconnection between the BR-319 and the municipalities of Tefé and Coari via the AM-366 highway, from which ramais [side roads] could “branch off” to the locations of the oil installations … (ECI-Apurina, p. 106).

Illegal side roads (ramais) branching off BR-319 are already being built, such as one begun in February 2020 entering a protected area, the Lago do Capanã Grande Extractive Reserve. There are also illegal roads being built in the opposite direction, starting from towns on the Purus River and progressing towards the BR-319. In addition to the illegal side road being built from Tapauá (ECI-Apurina, pp. 119-121), the EIA mentions a similar illegal road being built to connect Canutama to the BR-319, which is already 40 kilometers long (EIA, p. 2565). The obvious lack of governance in the area is a key issue in the battle over licensing.

Bridge built across a stream in February 2020 on an illegal side road (ramal) branching off of BR-319 and penetrating a protected area, the Lago do Capanã Grande Extractive Reserve. Image courtesy of Indigenous leader whose identity is withheld.

The oil and gas project is a major threat to the forests of the Trans-Purus region because the scale of the project means that the companies exploiting the oil and gas would have a major motive for pressuring the government to provide road access.

The EIA touches on the responsibility of DNIT, Brazil’s National Department of Transportation Infrastructure, for the disastrous outcome that would result from the BR-319’s role in increasing the likelihood of the AM-366 being built:

….this chain of events…, in a certain way, gives the entrepreneur some degree of responsibility for the eventual terrestrial connection of BR-319 to the city of Tapauá …. (ECI-Apurina, p. 120).

Despite some passages in the EIA recognizing the BR-319’s wider impact, this does not translate into recommendations about what to do about it. Instead, the focus is restricted to the ADA and AIA, and the recommendations are limited to pointing out that governance is needed to minimize impacts. Questioning the existence of the project, or delaying it for a substantial period of years while governance is established, are not presented as serious options.

Instead, the recommendations for avoiding the massive impacts are limited to the standard call for “governance,” but the chances of such a program being implemented on a scale that would avoid disaster are near zero. The BR-319 area is essentially lawless today, with land grabbing (grilagem) and illegal land invasions, logging and building of side roads occurring with impunity. It is simply fictitious that “BR-319 will be an example of sustainability for the World,” as the members of the Legislative Assembly of the state of Amazonas claim.

The BR-319 is now passable in the dry season due to a “maintenance” program begun in 2016. (Photo: P.M. Fearnside).

Impacts on Indigenous peoples

The Indigenous component is critical. This project element was apparently submitted to the licensing agency (IBAMA) some time after the rest of the EIA. Although the separation in time was relatively short in this case, it is an important irregularity, repeating the scandal that surrounded the 2015 EIA for the São Luis do Tapajós Dam. As with that controversial dam, the Relatório de Impacto Ambiental (RIMA), which is the document that serves for public discussion of the BR-319 project (including the public hearings), was obviously completed before the Indigenous component was available and contains no information on Indigenous peoples.

The question of consultation of Indigenous peoples affected by the BR-319 highway project represents a key test of Brazil’s legal system. Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry (a public prosecutor’s office established by Brazil’s 1988 constitution to defend the rights of the people) has long been trying to bring the rule of law to Brazil in this regard, but these efforts have so far failed, as in the cases of the Belo Monte and São Manoel Dams (see here, here and here).

The EIA for the BR-319 mentions the fact that Brazilian law and Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO-169), of which Brazil is a signatory, require prior consultation of affected Indigenous peoples. This legally required consultation needs to not only occur before the construction work begins, but rather before any decision is made on whether or not to go ahead with the project:

And Article 15 of the Convention makes it explicit that this consultation must take place before governments undertake or authorize any program for prospecting or exploiting resources that exist in the habitat of Indigenous peoples. (ECI-Apurina, p. 27).

In the case of BR-319, no Indigenous people have been consulted, despite the project’s bidding already having been opened and its initiation being immanent in violation of ILO-169 and by Brazilian law (10.088, de 5 de novembro de 2019, formerly 5.051, de 19 de abril de 2004), which implements the convention.

However, DNIT plans to do its “consultation” while the road construction is underway. The plan is to only consult five Indigenous areas, despite the road’s impact extending much farther. IBAMA’s internal regulations (Portaria Interministerial Nº 419, de 26 de outubro de 2011, Anexo II) consider all Indigenous areas within 40 kilometers of a highway in Amazonia to be “directly impacted” and requires them to be included in the Indigenous component of the EIA. In the case of the entire BR-319 highway (not only the “middle stretch”), there are 13 Indigenous areas within the 40-kilometer limit.

Reconstruction of the middle stretch is what would trigger the socio-environmental impacts from the entire road by opening the floodgates for traffic and migration. ILO-169 and its replication in Brazilian law have no distance limit for impacts requiring consultation. These impacts clearly go far beyond the area considered in the EIA. In addition to adversely affecting Indigenous peoples already living within the areas of migration flow that the highway would stimulate, such as those in the state of Roraima, deforestation from the highway route itself can spread far beyond 40 kilometers. If a 150-kilometer limit is considered, 63 Indigenous areas would be considered impacted.

In conclusion, reconstructing the BR-319 highway would have enormous impacts and few benefits. In addition to the need to comply with legal requirements such as obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples, Brazil’s leaders should pause to consider the wisdom of the project itself, given the threat it represents to the country’s national interests. Risking the loss of Amazonia’s environmental services, such as supplying water to São Paulo, is no small matter for Brazil.

How to fix the movement for fossil fuel divestment

by Texas A&M University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Bankers and environmentalists alike are increasingly calling for capital markets to play a bigger role in the war on carbon. In the absence of a meaningful global price on carbon, however, capital continues to flow freely toward fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive industries. The movement for fossil fuel divestment has been trying since 2012 to reverse this trend. A strong media presence and divestment pledges from high-profile investors notwithstanding, the movement has had little, if any, impact on the market valuation or bottom line of fossil fuel companies to date. A recent Nature Climate Change comment by Felix Mormann, a professor at Texas A&M University School of Law, reveals a number of critical shortcomings that prevent the movement from achieving its stated goals of delegitimizing the fossil fuel industry and reducing its access to capital.


The most fundamental shortcoming lies in the divestment movement's failure to properly differentiate among companies based on their relative contributions to global warming and climate change. "Drawing a binary divestment line between fossil and non-fossil stocks misses the reality that, when it comes to climate action, there are good actors and bad actors on both sides of the divide," notes Mormann. "The current focus on extractive and energy companies has undoubtedly proven media-effective. But it misrepresents the complex push-and-pull dynamics across the value chain of energy and other climate-relevant products and services."

If the divestment movement can be faulted for being under-inclusive as regards non-fossil companies with excessive carbon footprints, then a similar critique can be extended to the movement's investor reach. The latest divestment tally lists more than 1,200 commitments from pension funds, philanthropic foundations, faith-based organizations, and other institutional investors, managing over $14 trillion in assets. Individual investors who hold stocks and other securities for their personal account, however, account for fewer than 60,000 commitments worldwide, representing just over $5 billion in assets. Compared to the nearly $25 trillion in equities owned by individual investors in the United States alone, the latter numbers reveal the divestment movement's egregious failure to mobilize a key contingent of the global financial market—not to mention potential jurors in the court of public opinion.

"The divestment movement deserves huge credit for shining a spotlight on the crucial role that capital markets have to play in the war on carbon," emphasizes Mormann, who also holds an appointment in Texas A&M University's College of Engineering. "But the more I studied it, the clearer it became that major reforms are needed if the movement is to achieve its stated goals and move the needle on corporate climate action."

One such reform that Mormann suggests in his comment is to rebrand beyond fossil fuel divestment toward a more nuanced campaign for low-carbon (re-)investment. To do so, the overly crude fossil vs. non-fossil distinction should be abandoned in favor of a more sophisticated assessment of companies' climate impact and governance, modeled after the ratings of creditworthiness that have long been a staple of capital markets. "Think of a rating agency à la Moody's or Standard & Poor's, only for climate change," explains Mormann. The international non-profit CDP, formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project, has begun to rate thousands of companies annually on their climate impact and action. Substituting such ratings for the binary fossil vs. non-fossil divestment criterion could go a long way toward mobilizing capital markets, companies, and investors in the quest to combat global climate change.


Explore furtherCombating climate change: Why investors should keep their shares in fossil fuel companies

More information: Felix Mormann, Why the divestment movement is missing the mark, Nature Climate Change (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-00950-2

Journal information: Nature Climate Change


Provided by Texas A&M University

PHONE HOME —VGER

NASA calls Voyager 2, and the spacecraft answers from interstellar space

The spacecraft is so far south it can only talk to one Earth-bound antenna.

ERIC BERGER - 11/3/2020, 11:27 AM

Enlarge / DSS43 is a 70-meter-wide radio antenna at the Deep Space Network's Canberra facility in Australia. NASA

The Voyager 2 spacecraft has been gone from Earth for more than 43 years, and it now lies 125 astronomical units from our planet. That is 125 times the distance between the Earth and Sun.

Understandably, this distance makes it rather difficult for NASA to communicate with its far-flung spacecraft—there is a time delay of more than 17 hours. However, with Voyager 2, there is another complication in talking to the spacecraft.


FURTHER READINGThe Sun in its rearview mirror, Voyager 2 is in interstellar space

After flying by Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, Voyager 2 made its final planetary flyby in August 1989 past Neptune. Scientists were also interested in flying by Neptune's intriguing moon Triton, so they commanded Voyager 2 to do so on its way beyond Neptune, flying over the north pole of Triton. This trajectory carried it along a southward path relative to the plane of the Solar System, and it has kept on booking it south.

This has consequences for communicating with NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth, which consists of three large radio antenna facilities around the world, in California, Spain, and Australia. Typically, this geographical spread allows for all of NASA's spacecraft still active to have the capability to communicate with at least one of these facilities at all times.

But because Voyager 2 has dipped so far south of the plane of the Solar System, it can now only communicate by line of sight with the 70-meter-wide antenna in Canberra, Australia. Because this facility is about five decades old, it needed to undergo refurbishment and upgrade work beginning in March, and it had been offline since that time. This work is expected to conclude in February, so NASA has been unable to send signals to Voyager 2 since that time.Advertisement

Last week, to test new hardware recently installed on the large dish, Voyager mission managers were able to send a series of signals to the spacecraft for the first time since March. Voyager 2 replied that it had, indeed, received the signals and executed NASA's commands, the space agency says.

That's good for NASA and science in general, as Voyager 2 (along with Voyager 1) is now venturing beyond the Solar System, into interstellar space. Out in the great black beyond, Voyager 2 will continue to return data about the speed, density, temperature, and pressure of charged particles in the interstellar medium.

ERIC BERGER is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 

Gentoo penguins are four species, not one, say scientists

by University of Bath

South Georgia Gentoo penguins (P. poncetii) live in more northerly habitats where conditions are milder, than their Southern Gentoo cousins which live on the Antarctic ice. Credit: Gemma Clucas

Gentoo penguins should be reclassified as four separate species, say scientists at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, after analysing the genetic and physical differences between populations around the southern hemisphere.


The researchers say that counting them as four separate species will aid in their conservation because it will make it easier to monitor any decline in numbers.

Gentoo penguins, with the Latin name Pygoscelis papua, live in a range of latitudes in the southern hemisphere and are currently split into two subspecies, P. p. ellsworthi and P. p. papua.

The researchers suggest these two sub species should be raised to species level and two new species created, which they have named P. poncetii after the Australian seabird conservationist Sally Poncet, and P. taeniata in recognition of a former proposal for this name dating to the 1920s.

Their study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, looked at the genomes of populations living in the Falkland Islands and South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean, the South Shetland Islands in the Antarctic and Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean.

They used genome data to create an evolutionary tree to understand the relationship between the different populations. When they combined these data with measurements of museum specimens from each of the populations, they found clear morphological (physical) and genetic differences between the four populations.

The four species of Gentoos look very similar, but do not interbreed and have adapted to live in significantly different habitats. Credit: Gemma Clucas

Dr. Jane Younger, Prize Fellow from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, led the study. She said: "For the first time, we've shown that these penguins are not only genetically distinct, but that they are also physically different too.

"Gentoos tend to stick close to their home colonies, and over hundreds of thousands of years have become geographically isolated from each other to the point where they don't interbreed with each other, even though they could easily swim the distance that separates them.

"The four species we propose live in quite different latitudes—for example P. ellsworthi lives on the Antarctic continent whereas P. poncetii, P. taeniata and P. papua live further north where conditions are milder, and so it's not that surprising that they have evolved to adapt to their different habitats."


Ph.D. student Josh Tyler said: "They look very similar to the untrained eye, but when we measured their skeletons we found statistical differences in the lengths of their bones and the sizes and shape of their beaks.

"It's a similar story to giraffes, which were revealed in 2016 to be four genetically distinct species."

Northern Gentoos live on the Faukland Islands in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Credit: Gemma Clucas

The scientists say that regarding the four populations as separate species, gives conservationists a better chance of protecting their diversity because if there's a decline in one of them it will change the threat status as defined by the IUCN Red List.

Dr. Younger said: "Currently gentoo penguins are fairly stable in numbers, however there is some evidence of the northern populations moving further south as the climate gets warmer, so we need to watch them closely."

The proposed changes to the classification of gentoos will be reviewed by an international committee of scientists which will assess all the evidence in the scientific literature before the new taxonomy is accepted.


Explore further

First genome comparison gives insight into penguin origins, evolution
More information: Joshua Tyler, Matthew T. Bonfitto, Gemma V. Clucas, Sushma Reddy, Jane L. Younger (2020) "Morphometric and genetic evidence for four species of gentoo penguin" is published in Ecology and Evolution.

DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6973
Journal information: Ecology and Evolution

When a drought is over, here is what happens to forested areas where trees have died

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Drought-related mortality of Cedrus atlántica and its replacement by Quercus rotundifolia, Middle Atlas, Morocco. Credit: Enric Batllori

A large international team of researchers has found that forested areas that experience tree loss due to drought have a wide range of regrowth possibilities after the drought ends. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of forested areas around the globe that experienced drought and what happened to them when it was over.


As global warming continues seemingly unabated, scientists are attempting to predict what increased temperatures might do to the planet. Current models suggest rainfall will shift, with some areas receiving more rain and others less. They also show that many areas will likely experience both long- and short-duration droughts. In this new effort, the researchers wondered what might happen to drought-afflicted forested areas when a drought ends.

Prior research has shown that extended droughts can lead to widespread tree death in forested areas. Prior research has also shown that in some instances, the trees will grow back after the drought is over but in other situations, trees do not grow back; instead, they are replaced by shrubs and other plants. In this new effort, the researchers took a fresh look at forest regrowth after drought by analyzing data describing the impact of drought on forested areas from 131 sites across the globe and then compared what they found to see if any patterns emerged.

In comparing the data, the researchers found that only 21 percent of the forests grew back into their prior state. They also found that 10% of them shifted to non-forested plant growth, from shrubbery to grasslands. In those sites where the trees did not grow back, two-thirds of them were taken over by shrubs and 10% were taken over by non-wood-type vegetation.

Lack of replacement by woody vegetation after drought-related mortality in Pinus edulis forests, New Mexico, USA. Credit: Francisco Lloret

The researchers also found that areas that experienced average or greater amounts of rainfall after the drought ended were more likely to return to tree cover. In other areas where there was less rainfall, there were many instances of trees of one type being replaced by another that needed less water to survive. They also found that in areas where pests infected trees during times of drought, contributing to tree death, the area was much less likely to return to its forested state. The researchers also found other factors contributed to growth after a drought, such as community composition, human management and shade tolerance. They conclude by suggesting the variety of changes likely means that it may not be possible to predict what might occur in forested areas as future droughts become longer and more frequent.


Explore further  Small trees offer hope for rainforests

More information: Enric Batllori et al. Forest and woodland replacement patterns following drought-related mortality, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2002314117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

© 2020 Science X Network

THIRD WORLD USA
Study shows over 1.1 million urban people in US live in homes without proper indoor plumbing

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Map of households without piped water access in the USA, 2013-2017. Note: lighter areas indicate areas with higher numbers of households without piped water. Clusters of plumbing exist in major cities and particular regions across the country. Credit: Katie Meehan.

A team of researchers from King's College London, the University of Arizona and ECONorthwest has found that an estimated 1.1 million urban people in the U.S. live in homes without proper indoor plumbing. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their analysis of census data for 50 of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. and what it showed them about people living without standard indoor plumbing and associated facilities.


In advanced countries such as the U.S., it is assumed that most people have basic amenities such as access to clean water and associated facilities. In this new effort, the researchers have found that is not the case for many people living in some of the biggest cities in the country. In reality, many people, especially minorities, are living without proper indoor plumbing facilities.

The work involved analyzing data obtained by the U.S. Census Bureau, the federal government entity responsible for carrying out nationwide surveys every 10 years. Wanting to know more about access to running water, the researchers focused on data from questions about whether people had access to "complete plumbing" which was described as residences that had both hot and cold running water piped into their home, along with at least one bath or shower. They found that for approximately 500,000 households in large urban areas, the answer was no.

In drilling down further into the data, the researchers found that such households accounted for approximately 1.1 million people. They also found a connection between the wealth gap of a given city and the number of people living without piped water. They found, for example, that percentage-wise, wealthy cities such as San Francisco, Portland and Austin had some of the highest rates of what they describe as plumbing poverty. In looking at sheer numbers, they found New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco had the most people living with plumbing poverty. They also found that race played a role. On average, black people were 35 percent more likely to be living with plumbing poverty than white people. They also found that plumbing poverty was most often found in rented facilities, particularly in mobile homes.


Explore further

High rates of COVID-19 on American Indian reservations—water and language barriers affect risk

More information: Meehan et al., Geographies of insecure water access and the housing–water nexus in US cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2007361117

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

© 2020 Science X Network

Crown-of-thorns eat themselves out of house and home

by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

A close-up of a crown-of-thorns starfish. The creatures eat Acropora corals until they're effectively homeless. Credit: Morgan Pratchett.

A world-first study on the Great Barrier Reef shows crown-of-thorns starfish have the ability to find their own way home—a behavior previously undocumented—but only if their neighborhood is stocked with their favorite food: corals.


Australian researchers observed the starfish emerging from their shelters in the afternoons so they could feed on coral during the night before returning home at dawn.

"The crown-of-thorns starfish often partied all night, slept-in and only those with a well-stocked larder found their way home—so it's very much a teenager model of behavior," said lead author Dr. Scott Ling from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania.

"Their preferred prey is Acropora corals," said co-author Professor Morgan Pratchett from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (CoralCoE at JCU). Acropora is an important coral species—for the past two million years they have been the building blocks of reefs across the world.

"When populations of Acropora dropped, the starfish didn't return home," Prof Pratchett said. "Their behavior is directly linked to the local abundance of Acropora."

The results of the study show healthy reefs with a high cover of these corals may encourage crown-of-thorns aggregations and outbreaks. The outbreaks cause extensive, widespread and sustained coral loss throughout the Indo-Pacific region.


Play Credit: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies

Similar examples of predator infestations driving environmental devastation include sea urchins overgrazing on kelp forests and coral reef fishes munching through patches of seagrass.

The researchers used in-situ time-lapse photography to track the movements of 58 starfish in the northern and southern Great Barrier Reef during an outbreak in 2015. In the absence of their preferred Acropora coral prey, starfish were typically homeless and instead roamed up to 20 meters per day.

"Unlike sea urchins that can switch diet once they overgraze kelp forests, results of the time-lapse monitoring indicate that the starfish will consume available Acropora and ultimately eat themselves out of house and home before dispersing in search of new feeding grounds," Dr. Ling said.

Previous outbreaks on the Great Barrier Reef were recorded in 1962, 1979, 1993 and 2009. Though mass-coral bleaching due to global warming is now the greatest threat to coral reefs worldwide, the combined impact of mass-bleaching and crown-of-thorns outbreaks is potentially catastrophic for coral reefs.

"By better understanding the behavior of these starfish we can help prevent and control their outbreaks, which will help alleviate the pressures on coral reefs," Prof Pratchett said.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.


Explore further

Hidden army: How starfish could build up numbers to attack coral reefs

More information: Homing behaviour by destructive crown-of-thorns starfish is triggered by local availability of coral prey, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, rspb.royalsocietypublishing.or … .1098/rspb.2020.1341
Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Provided by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies