Cargo Force Wins $100 Million Postal Service Contract for Priority Mail

FreightWaves
Fri, October 22, 2021,


Cargo Force, which provides terminal handling services for U.S. Postal Service parcels moving by air via FedEx Express (NYSE: FDX), said Friday it is opening four new facilities to support express mail service after winning a seven-year, $100 million contract.

The new facilities in Seattle, San Diego, Detroit, and Orlando, Florida, cover 173,000 square feet in total and will create 255 jobs across the four sites, the company said. The contract also renews service in Jacksonville, Florida, and Omaha, Nebraska.

Last year, Cargo Force also won a large Postal Service contract to process Priority Mail in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Tampa, Florida. It now operates 14 airport facilities around the country to support the Postal Service.

Cargo Force is owned by investment firms Audax Private Equity and Greenbrier Equity Group. Sister company Alliance Ground International manages cargo operations for airlines at airports around the country and provides other services, such as de-icing aircraft and staffing ticket counters in passenger terminals.

Miami-based Cargo Force processes about 300 million pounds of Priority Mail, according to its website.

Local mail plants send Priority mail to Cargo Force warehouses, where it is scanned and sorted by destination, packed into containers, and tendered to FedEx. After FedEx flies the shipment to the destination city, Cargo Force retrieves and unpacks the containers, sorts and scans the mail by ZIP code, and delivers it to local mail centers. Postal drivers then carry the individual parcels to homes and businesses.

The Seattle-Tacoma facility opened Oct. 4 and the other locations will open Nov. 1, the company said.

Inside Japan’s Meltdown Over Princess’ ‘Cursed’ Wedding to Commoner

Jake Adelstein
Fri, October 22, 2021

Carl Court

TOKYO—At long last, Japan's Princess Mako and her “commoner” boyfriend, Kei Komuro, will marry on Oct. 26, after a three-year delay. But will they live happily ever after?

Yes, probably, if they follow through on their plans and get the hell out of Japan.

Opposition to the marriage by the general public, the press, and conservative politicians is strong. In an opinion poll taken by AERA magazine, 93 percent of respondents said they felt the marriage was nothing to celebrate. There have even been small street protests by elderly fanatics holding handmade signs that read, “No! Komuro,” “Do Not Pollute the Imperial Family With This Cursed Marriage.” And yet, Mako will not stand down.

Japanese Princess Mako Ditches Imperial Family to Marry Commoner Sweetheart

It should have been a classic Japanese imperial fairy tale: Princess meets brilliant boy in college, they fall in love and get engaged. This would be followed by a lavish royal wedding. But now, thanks to Japan’s post-war constitution—which also stipulates that patrilineage is the imperial way—the princess must immediately be booted out of the royal family upon tying the knot. There will be no elaborate Shinto rituals to mark the wedding of these two lovebirds. The traditional ceremonies for imperial family members’ weddings have been called off, and the official meeting with the emperor and empress prior to the marriage will not happen.

In an unprecedented decision, Mako has refused to accept a $1.3 million dollar “consolation prize” for giving up the royal registry for love and marriage. The money comes from taxes and is meant to ensure the dignity of departing aristocrats. The Imperial Household Agency, which rules over the royals here like China rules Hong Kong, announced, after much debate, that they “will allow her not to accept it.”

No one in the Japanese press has had the temerity to ask the Agency, “Why do you even announce you've accepted her decision not to take the money? Were you going to stuff it in her suitcase, instead? Isn't that her decision, not yours?” There are conservative scholars who argue Imperial Family members don't have the basic human rights guaranteed in the constitution. These scholars are part of a loud contingent of people in Japan who oppose their marriage on dubious grounds.

At first, it seemed like everyone was happy for Princess Mako. In 2017, the two held a press conference to announce their unofficial engagement. The conference was held at the Akasaka East Palace in Tokyo's Minato Ward. They appeared to be beaming, happy, and deeply in love.

That bliss did not last long. What went wrong?

Komuro and the princess met in 2012 when they were students at the International Christian University in Tokyo. Their wedding was initially scheduled to take place on Nov. 4, 2018, but before that could happen, a weekly magazine threw a wrench in their plans. In December 2017, Shukan Josei (Weekly Woman) reported what was considered a major scandal with the headline: “Imperial Family Shocked And Shaken, Komuro's Mother Owes Money To Former Fiance.”

The entire affair boiled down to this: Komuro's mother and her former fiance had money issues. The man claimed the mother and son had failed to repay a debt that was owed to him of about $36,000. Not long after, both the tabloids and the mainstream were shamelessly reporting on the private life of the Komuro family. No mistake was too small, no rumor too unsubstantiated to be put into print. In the gutters of social media, some asserted that Komuro was actually Zainichi, Korean-Japanese. In Japan, the Korean-Japanese, many of whom are now fourth-generation residents, originally brought to Japan as slave labor, are often looked down upon and marginalized.

The Imperial Household Agency went into panic mode after the reports of financial trouble and other flimsy scandals kept flooding in. They announced in February 2018 that the ritual ceremonies were going to be postponed. They also pressured Mako to release a statement explaining why the marriage would be delayed. She reluctantly complied.

In August 2018, Komuro left for the United States to study at Fordham University’s law school. The two remained engaged but things looked bleak. A couple of months later, Mako’s father, Prince Akishino, held a press conference. He said it wasn't feasible to host an engagement ceremony until the financial disputes were resolved. He implied that it wasn't a situation where “the Japanese people could really celebrate the event.” He also told the press, “Recently, I have not spoken much with [Mako], so I don't know how she feels.”

Mako responded to her father by releasing a statement in which she was adamant about her desire to marry her college love. She let it be known that she would wait for Komuro to graduate from law school and take the bar exam.

Mako and Komuro reportedly didn't meet again in person until he returned to Japan this September. When he arrived at the airport, the mass media went agog over his new hairstyle: He had a ponytail! Clearly, this was a sign that he was unfit to marry into the proximity of the Imperial Family. One sports newspaper ran the headline, “Ponytail Returns,” and included a diagram of the offending hairdo.

KEI KOMURA
Boyfriend of Japanese Princess Mako
Kyodo via AP

A Japanese media outlet even decided that the haircut merited serious investigative journalism. While Komuro quarantined at home, he reportedly had his hairstylist come to the house and trim his long hair. Evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai concluded that getting your hair trimmed at home may be a violation of Japan’s Beautician Laws.

The amount of vitriol launched at Komuro is shocking to anyone outside of Japan. “The hate Komuro campaign stems from the sexism of a patriarchal order,” professor Jeff Kingston at Temple University, author of the seminal modern history text Contemporary Japan, told The Daily Beast. “They can't tolerate women making their own choices and standing up to male authority. The shameless attack on his looks is not journalism. It's institutionalized bullying with a green light from powers that be.”

In the end, Mako won't get the lavish ritual send-off that some might have hoped for. She has opted for a low-key exit, including visiting the mausoleum of her great grandparents, ​​Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako. At their graves, she reportedly informed them of her decision to get married to a commoner. Perhaps they would have approved.

She may have given up a million dollars to marry her beloved, but the princess did send a powerful “fuck you” to the powers that be in Japan. The diminutive princess is no weeping willow. With her marriage, there will be only 17 members of the imperial family left, and unless the rules change, the family will keep getting smaller and smaller and even risks fading into oblivion. The union has sparked discussions about changing the laws to allow women who marry commoners to remain in the imperial family.

Kaori Shoji, author and essayist, sees the opposition to the marriage as indicative of a generational divide. “The union seems to be a thorn in the side of people mostly over 60, who had long idolized former Empress Michiko. For the older generation of Japanese, Michiko-sama represents all that's wonderful about Japanese womanhood: Marriage at an appropriate age for child-bearing, sacrificing her personal life completely in the name of upholding tradition, and supporting her husband for what is effectively an eternity.”

Princess Mako, on the other hand, “is not adhering to her grandmother's model at all,” says Shoji.

“She's both headstrong and sensitive and has a will of her own. In short, she's a modern young woman who wants nothing to do with the sacrifice and child-bearing BS that has defined the destinies of women in the royal household. She also seems to have no qualms about ditching her country, family, and lineage to be in New York with the man she loves.”

Princess Mako and Komuro have already made plans to move to New York City where she will find work as an art curator, and where he already works at a law firm. “Marrying into royalty is a tough job,” Shoji says, “but someone's gotta do it. And most Japanese are thankful it ain't them.”

How the 'economics of global warming' are unfolding differently in Russia

Brigid Kennedy, Contributing Writer
Fri, October 22, 2021

Russian Arctic. EKATERINA ANISIMOVA/AFP via Getty Images

The ever-present threat of climate change is a danger to all of us — but meanwhile, over in Russia, the "economics of global warming" are playing out differently, writes The New York Times.

Winter heating bills are on the decline, Russian fishermen have found "a modest pollock catch in thawed areas of the Arctic Ocean near Alaska," and, in Russia's Far North — where "rapidly rising temperatures have opened up a panoply of new possibilities" — potential mining and energy projects abound, the most "profound" prospect being year-round Arctic shipping as an alternative to the Suez Canal, writes the Times.

Multiple government-supported companies across the Russian Arctic, in fact, are midway through a plan to invest the equivalent of $10 billion over five years developing the Northeast Passage — a shipping lane between the Pacific and Atlantic — with the goal of securing some of the business that currently traverses the Suez. Traffic through the Russian Arctic rose by approximately 50 percent last year (though it still could not hold a candle to the Suez), per the Times. Arctic visitiation is expected to increase still next year.

And the "thawing ocean has also made oil, natural gas and mining ventures more profitable," the Times writes, and analysts estimate at least half a dozen large Russian energy, shipping, and mining companies will benefit from climate change.

The Russian government is not blind to the threat posed by global warming, but they seem to be enjoying things while they can, profiting where possible. Still, said Marisol Maddox, an Arctic analyst: "The evidence suggests the risks far outweigh the benefits, no matter how optimistic the Russian government's language."

U.K. Spent £69 ($95) Billion Supporting Furloughed Employees




Andrew Atkinson
Thu, October 21, 2021

The U.K. spent 69 billion pounds ($95 billion) paying the wages of furloughed workers by the time the program came to an end last month, according to government figures.

The total cost of subsidizing lost earnings touched 97 billion pounds when grants to self-employed workers hit by the pandemic are included, the Office for National Statistics data published Thursday show.

The job support programs were the centerpiece of a government response to the Covid-19 crisis, which is estimated to have cost taxpayers more than 370 billion pounds. That’s drove the budget deficit to levels not seen during British peacetime.

The furlough program, which paid up to 80% of a full-time wage to people whose workplaces were closed during the pandemic, supported almost 12 million jobs at various times. An estimated 1.1 million people were still furloughed around the time the program finished on Sept. 30, ONS figures Thursday show. A relatively small number of them are expected to end up unemployed, however.

In September, the cost of the so-called Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme declined to 740 million pounds, the lowest figure of the pandemic. In the early stages of the crisis, the bill was totaling over 10 billion pounds a month.

(Adds ONS furlough data)

At United Nations, Afghan women appeal: don't let Taliban in


Former Afghan diplomat Asila Wardak, former Afghan politician and peace negotiator Fawzia Koofi, Afghan journalist Anisa Shaheed and former Afghan politician, Naheed Fareed speak to reporters outside the U.N. Security Council


Michelle Nichols
Thu, October 21, 2021

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A group of Afghan women urged the United Nations to block the Taliban from gaining a seat at the world body, calling for better representation for their country during a visit to the organisation's New York headquarters on Thursday.

"It's very simple," former Afghan politician and peace negotiator Fawzia Koofi told reporters outside the UN Security Council in New York. "The UN needs to give that seat to somebody who respects the rights of everyone in Afghanistan."

"We are talked a lot about, but we are not listened to," she said of Afghan women. "Aid, money, recognition - they are all leverage that the world should use for inclusion, for respect to the rights of women, for respect to the rights of everybody."

Koofi was joined by former politician, Naheed Fareed, former diplomat Asila Wardak and journalist Anisa Shaheed.

"When the Taliban took Afghanistan ... they said that they will give permission to women to resume their jobs, to go back to the school, but they didn't keep that promise," said Fareed.

Since seizing power in mid-August, Taliban leaders have vowed to respect women's rights in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law. But under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, women could not work and girls were banned from school. Women had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative when they left home.

The United Nations is considering rival claims on who should represent Afghanistan. The Taliban nominated their Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as UN ambassador, while Ghulam Isaczai - the UN envoy representing the government ousted by the Taliban - is seeking to remain in the country's seat.

UN member states are expected to make a decision by the end of the year.

Wardak urged countries to pressure the Taliban "to put their words in action" when it comes to women's rights, adding: "If you're going to give them a seat, there should be conditions."

The women spoke to reporters before addressing a UN event on support for Afghan women and girls, organized by Britain, Qatar, Canada, UN Women and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

The UN Security Council also met separately on Thursday to discuss women, peace and security.

"Women and girls in Afghanistan are pinning their hopes and dreams on this very council and world body to help them recover their rights to work, travel and go to school," Isaczai told the 15-member council. "It would be morally reprehensible if we do nothing and let them down."

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Ontario is running out of places to dump garbage, here's one company's solution

Isabella O'Malley
Fri, October 22, 2021

Ontario is running out of places to dump garbage, here's one company's solution

Nearly 15 million people live in Ontario, which is roughly 38 per cent of the entire Canadian population. With this comes a growing appetite for resource consumption, even though the province is running out of space to dump its waste.

Based on population growth projections and economic trends, the provincial government estimates that 16 new or expanded landfills will be needed by 2050 without improvements in waste reduction and resource recovery.

Stormfisher, a company that turns food waste into energy, says that they have the solution for diverting more waste from landfills. The company operates the largest private organic waste-to-energy biogas facility in North America with locations currently operating in both the U.S. and Canada.

“Ontario is a leader in regards to anaerobic digestion. There are about 30 plants that are working on farms as well as industrial facilities like ours,” Brandon Moffat, StormFisher’s Vice President of Development, told The Weather Network.

“We need a lot more of these in Ontario, we figure maybe 100 more of varying sizes and scales and so we think that municipalities and industrial facilities, as well as farms, can play a role in the production of renewable natural gas from organic waste,” Moffat said.

a woman putting food into the food garbage 
Decomposing organic waste in landfills contributes to the staggering methane emissions. (Vesnaandjic/ E+/ Getty Images)

HOW FOOD GARBAGE TURNS INTO ENERGY

Energy is created when discarded organic waste is placed in a digester that is absent of oxygen and filled with bacteria. The bacteria release methane as they consume the organic matter, which can be used as-is or can be upgraded to a quality equivalent to natural gas that is extracted from the earth.

“We can make a pipeline-quality gas that is renewable in nature that we can then sell to natural gas utilities, corporations, institutions, and municipalities,” explained Moffat. The prospective biogas applications include anything that currently uses natural gas, such as home furnaces and heavy-duty trucks.

When methane is burned as a fuel it turns into water and carbon dioxide. This differs from the methane emissions that are released directly into the atmosphere without being burned, which occurs from conventional landfills, fossil fuel usage, and livestock farming.

Methane emissions are a notorious pollutant because they capture significantly more heat than carbon dioxide on multi-decadal timescales, and a growing number of scientists and policymakers are calling for drastic reductions of this greenhouse gas.

Although biogas is not a carbon-free energy source, it is regarded as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, which release staggering levels of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. According to IEA Bioenergy, the turnover time between carbon in plants and in the atmosphere is only a few hundred years, whereas the turnover time between carbon and fossil fuels is over 10,000 years.

In addition to the sustainable impacts, Moffat commented that the economic development and employment perspectives are some of the perks of what StormFisher does.

“The circularity of what we do is really great from the environmental side but there is also the economic side. We provide good-paying jobs for the staff that work in our facilities but also the indirect jobs for the trucking groups, mill rights, and electricians that support our type of infrastructure,” Moffat said.

“Just because it's circular people always think it costs more, when in fact we’re lower cost than most landfills in terms of our processing fees and we are able to put those fees back into the community in terms of the operating expenses to run our facilities day in and day out.”

Thumbnail credit: ugurhan/ E+/ Getty Images

Bourbon maker reaches tentative deal with striking workers

Kentucky Bourbon Producer-Strike

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2021 file photo, members of Local 23D Union picket in front of Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown, Ky. Heaven Hill, one of the world's largest bourbon producers, announced a tentative contract deal Friday, Oct. 22, with striking union workers, just days after signaling it intended to start hiring permanent replacement employees for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky.(Silas Walker/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP, File)More

BRUCE SCHREINER
Fri, October 22, 2021, 

Heaven Hill, one of the world's largest bourbon producers, announced a tentative contract deal Friday with a union representing striking workers, just days after signaling it intended to start hiring permanent replacement employees for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky.

About 420 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23D went on strike about six weeks ago, forming picket lines at Heaven Hill’s operations in Bardstown after rejecting a previous contract proposal. The workers will vote Saturday on the latest five-year contract offer.

The dispute revolved around health care and worker scheduling issues. Wrangling over scheduling was a sign of the bourbon industry’s growing pains as it tries to keep up with global demand.

“The agreement continues Heaven Hill’s long-standing commitment to its team members with industry-leading health care, wage growth and increased schedule flexibility,” Heaven Hill said in a statement Friday.

Neither Kentucky-based Heaven Hill nor union officials provided details Friday about the tentative contract deal. Local union President Matt Aubrey said the union reached a “fully recommended tentative agreement” with the company.

“With the strong support of the Bardstown community, these hardworking men and women have been standing together for more than a month to protect these good Kentucky jobs that their families have counted on for generations,” Aubrey said in a statement. "Heaven Hill workers will make their voices heard tomorrow when they vote on this tentative agreement.”

 

Family-owned and operated Heaven Hill produces Evan Williams, one of the world’s top-selling bourbons. The spirits company's other brands include Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna, Old Fitzgerald, Larceny and Parker’s Heritage Collection.

On Monday, Heaven Hill announced the contract talks had reached an impasse. The company said it would begin the process of hiring permanent replacement workers. Union leaders responded that they were willing to continue negotiations and accused the company of wanting to replace the striking employees with non-union workers.

But the public acrimony did not permanently derail the negotiations. The two sides resumed bargaining Thursday, resulting in the tentative agreement announced a day later.

Workers often spend long careers at Kentucky bourbon distilleries, and the jobs often attract multiple generations of families. Disputes flare up occasionally, and other strikes occurred in recent years at Jim Beam and Four Roses — other iconic names in the bourbon sector.

The bourbon industry has been on a long upward trajectory.

Combined U.S. sales for bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey rose 8.2%, or $327 million, to $4.3 billion in 2020, despite plunging sales from bars and restaurants because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States reported early this year.

Kentucky distilleries produce 95% of the world’s bourbon supply, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

US Fossil fuel executives to testify at "landmark" hearing focused on climate disinformation



Noah Garfinkel
Fri, October 22, 2021

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced on Friday it will hold a "landmark" hearing next week with fossil fuel executives focused on the industry's role in spreading climate disinformation.

Why it matters: This is the first time oil company CEOs, and the head of their main trade group, will testify under oath about their knowledge of the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change, per Axios' Andrew Freedman.

Details: The hearing will take place on October 28th and top executives from ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron, and Shell Oil are slated to appear, as are trade group execs from the American Petroleum Institute and President and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"We are deeply concerned that the fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits for decades while contributing to climate change that is devastating American communities, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and ravaging the natural world," committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and subcommittee chair Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote in September. "We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change."

The committee will also focus on efforts to block reforms and lobby against potential climate change action.

This hearing comes ahead of the the COP26 climate summit, slated to begin October 31 in Glasgow.

The big picture: Oil giants, under increasing pressure from activists and investors, have in recent years been stepping up their own climate efforts and investments in cleaner technologies. But oil and gas remain the dominant business lines, per Axios' Ben Geman.

OMG! BLASPHEMY! IS FREE SPEECH

Antifa protesters disrupt Texas college campus pro-life prayer vigil: 'F--- your God!'


Jon Brown

FOX NEWS IS OUTRAGED,OUTRAGED I SAY
Thu, October 21, 2021, 


EXCLUSIVE: Antifa protesters disrupted a pro-life candlelight prayer vigil Monday night on the campus of the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton.

The protesters, who reportedly numbered in the hundreds, chanted blasphemous slogans and attempted to drown out the small group of students gathering to demonstrate against abortion, as seen in video obtained by Fox News Digital.

The vigil had been organized by the UNT chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT), a student group that has existed in some form since 1980.


Kelly Neidert, who founded the UNT chapter of YCT and has chaired it since 2019, is unsure where all of the protesters came from but speculated they might have been summoned by an advertisement that circulated on social media earlier in the day. The ad was emblazoned with the three-arrow insignia of Antifa.

"Fascists are organizing in your area," read a release apparently directed to members of Antifa in the area of the university, which is approximately 40 miles north of Dallas. "Tonight the young conservatives have invited groyper influencers & white nationalists such as Lance Johnston to a pro life 'vigil' in supporting christo-fascist abortion legislation."

Explaining they were expecting only 10 or 20 protesters, Neidert told Fox News that she and her fellow demonstrators were caught off-guard by the size of their opposition.

"They harassed us, they were throwing things at us," she said. "They were chanting things. They brought all sorts of instruments that they were playing to drown out whatever we were saying. They brought their megaphones, they brought whistles."

Neidert said some of the protesters tried to pick fights with the pro-life students, told them to kill themselves, and followed them to their cars to harass them.

In one of the videos obtained by Fox News, the pro-life students chant, "Christ is king!" to which a protester responds by chanting, "F*** your God!"

In another video, a protester screams through a megaphone that she "loves sacrificing children."

Neidert noted that some protesters also expressed hatred for Gov. Gregg Abbott, R-Texas, who recently signed a controversial law banning abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.

UNT spokesperson Leigh Anne Gullett told Fox News in a statement: "A few hundred students with opposing views gathered on campus Monday evening to exercise their free speech rights. The gathering ended without incident."

Demonstrations by YCT against abortion have been repeatedly vandalized. In March 2020, the group placed 1,000 pink flags on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, each flag representing approximately 60,000 of the babies aborted each year in the United States. Within 12 hours, all the flags had been removed.

In October 2020, video captured students plucking up flags from a similar display at UNT.

Neidert has come to fear for her safety on campus, where she said other students often recognize her and flip her off.

"I think they just really hate anybody who doesn't agree with everything that they believe," she said of her opponents. "And they just really don't know how to cope with other people who have different beliefs. So they want to silence us and say that we're wrong, because they just don't understand that some people believe differently."

In July 2020, alleged practitioners of witchcraft sent Neidert direct messages on Twitter that threatened her with hexes and references to the devil.

The threats came in response to an initiative by which YCT encouraged students to celebrate National Coming Out Day by "coming out" as conservatives. They also made a point about affirmative action by holding a bake sale that charged different prices based on the customer’s ethnicity.

Neidert, a Christian, described the threats as "pure evil, especially when they make references to Satan and they think it’s funny.

"It’s not funny, and I’m definitely more concerned for them than I am for myself, if they think that’s okay," she added.

COP26: A climate solution lies right under our feet but it may not be on the agenda

By Lauren Kent, CNN Photographs by Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou, CNN 18 hrs ago

Forests have long been celebrated as the natural heroes in the fight against the climate crisis. They are so good at absorbing and storing carbon dioxide, a consortium of environmental groups are calling on the world to plant one trillion trees over the next decade.

© Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN

 Ben Sweeney is working to restore species-rich grasslands at Plantlife's Ranscombe Farm nature reserve.

But while we are looking up at the treetops for climate solutions, some campaigners are urging the world to look down, where another answer lies -- right under our feet.

Forests, peatlands, deserts and tundra can all absorb and hold stocks of carbon-dioxide (CO2). Of all the carbon held in land-based ecosystems, around 34% can be found in grasslands, data from the World Resources Institute show. That's not much less than the 39% held in forests.

"Whether you look at the Serengeti, the Cerrado in Brazil, whether you look at what's left of the prairies in North America or the steppes of Mongolia -- every single one of our major, iconic grassland habitats is under threat at the moment," Ian Dunn, chief executive of the British conservation organization Plantlife, told CNN.

There's also plenty of it in the United Kingdom, which will host world leaders and climate negotiators in just over a week at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland. Among several items on the agenda is how to protect forests and plant more trees to help slash global emissions.

But Plantlife, among other groups, is campaigning for grasslands to be protected at an international level and part of any deal that emerges in Glasgow.

While leaders meet in the Scottish city, Plantlife is working to restore more than 100,000 hectares of meadows, including one on the other side of the United Kingdom, in the southern English county of Kent.

The Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve looks just like your typical patch of English countryside, with its soft rolling hills and grazing cattle. The grass here looks ordinary, browned in patches from the autumn weather. But come spring, the rare orchids, bellflowers and rock roses will bloom in a celebration of this grassland's biodiversity.

Restoring species-rich ecosystems like this takes time, said Ben Sweeney, Ranscombe Farm's manager, who has been working on this grassland since 2010.

"It will take a couple of decades," he said.

Ranscombe Farm protects not only grasslands but also woodlands, rough grazing pastures and crop fields for rare plants.

Sweeney explains that just like with an animal sanctuary, Ranscombe Farm nurtures rare plants in small sections of the reserve, where they are thriving, and can hopefully grow and spread out into bigger habitats soon.

© Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN 

Ben Sweeney walks through one of the carbon-storing grasslands Plantlife has been working to restore.

But even after years of careful management, rangers have not been able to reverse all the impacts that farming and land degradation have had on the site.

In the UK, these vital habitats have been slowly disappearing as a consequence of decades of intensive agriculture, housing development, and infrastructure build-up over the last century. The UK has lost more than 2 million acres of grasslands as urban and woodland areas expand, according to the UK Center of Ecology & Hydrology.

That concerns activists, because grasslands not only store carbon but also serve as a buffer for extreme weather and help prevent soil erosion. Their roots hold together light soil, and the ground cover prevents erosion from wind and water. These habitats help with natural flood management by holding water after extreme weather events, then releasing it gradually.

© Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN

 Cows grazing at Plantlife's Ranscombe Farm Reserve help stimulate plant growth.

The loss of grasslands also threatens the important species that rely on them, like bees, butterflies and other pollinators.

A recent study published by the University of Manchester revealed the UK's grasslands store more than 1.8 billion metric tons of carbon. That's the equivalent of storing the yearly emissions from about 400 million cars.

"But they are pretty much ignored or have been ignored in many sustainability policies," said soil expert and ecology professor Richard Bardgett, the study's lead researcher.

Another study, published in 2018 in IOP Science, concluded that grasslands in California could play a bigger role than forests as carbon sinks, as they are less vulnerable to fires and drought, which parts of the world will experience more of as the Earth continues to warm. That's because grasslands keep most of their carbon locked in their roots underground -- even during drought and fire -- unlike forests, in which carbon is spread up and throughout trees.

Your diet could be linked to grassland destruction

When managed poorly, grasslands can become a net source of emissions, rather than a sink to remove them. Rearing livestock on grassland, too, plays a major role in methane emissions, which is also contributing to the climate crisis.

A global increase in demand for meat and dairy products, as well as soy, is putting pressure on grasslands.

The world's most biodiverse savanna, the Cerrado in Brazil, has been reduced to around half its original size, mainly for the expansion of beef and soy production, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which says the Cerrado loses an area equivalent to the size of São Paulo every three months.

In China, vast expanses of grasslands are in a "state of ecological crisis," according to scientists, caused by overgrazing of the land. Meanwhile, in the United States, the expansion of farmland has led to the prairies of the Great Plains losing an average four football fields every minute, according to a WWF report published in 2020.

While grassland protection is a global concern, there are growing expectations for the UK to show climate leadership ahead of COP26.

Campaigners are disappointed with the omission of grasslands as a nature-based solution in the government's Net Zero Strategy, which is being seen as a potential blueprint for other nations' climate roadmaps.

"The importance of grasslands in carbon capture, improved biodiversity, sustainable food production, water management and societal wellbeing continues to be missed in this report and in government policy," Dunn said.

"We need to be working on a mosaic of habitats."

Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, said that the government's Net Zero Strategy had significant gaps and that its authors, from the government, "don't seem to have fully recognized the role that nature can play."

There's little new for nature in the strategy, he said.

"Instead, old policies are being recycled -- and it's not enough."

The land restoration policies will rely on a modest $880 million (£640 million) Nature for Climate fund, which had already been announced in the Conservative government's election manifesto, Bennett points out.

A Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) spokesperson told CNN it was protecting grasslands at some reserve sites in England, launching a pilot scheme for more sustainable farming practices, and giving more than $55 million (£40 million) in grants for nature recovery projects.

"Biodiversity loss and climate change are global problems requiring global solutions," the spokesperson said.

But Defra did not comment when asked whether grasslands would be discussed at COP26 and sent quotes around the importance of ending illegal logging in forests as a nature-based climate solution.

A group of 38 British lawmakers are also calling for international recognition and protection for grasslands at COP26. In a motion, they want parliament's House of Commons to recognize the role of grasslands for its ability to reduce emissions, reduce flood risk and act as critical ecosystems for pollinators.

They urge "government ministers to use the opportunity of COP26 in Glasgow to seek international recognition and protections for species-rich grasslands, to lead by example in taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change and increase biodiversity and to ensure that those areas of natural beauty are preserved for future generations to enjoy."




 © Li-Lian Ahlskog Hou/CNN
The loss of grasslands threatens the region's biodiversity.