It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
FUNDAMENTALISM KILLS
At least 210 coronavirus cases are linked to a South Korean religious settlement.
Nearly half of the residents at the facility in the city of Cheonan tested positive for Covid, an outbreak that comes as South Korea’s case levels surge.
People wearing face masks on a street in Seoul last week.Credit...Jeon Heon-Kyun/EPA, via Shutterstock
South Korean officials said on Tuesday that they had shut down a religious facility in the city of Cheonan after 210 of its 427 residents tested positive for the coronavirus this week, an outbreak that comes as the country’s cases surge to record highs.
At least 191 of the settlement’s residents who contracted the virus were unvaccinated, said Lee Sunhee, the director of the infectious disease control team for Cheonan, in South Chungcheong Province. Officials did not release the name of the religious organization, citing disease control laws meant to protect privacy.
Churches around the world have been at the center of several outbreaks throughout the pandemic. In South Korea, the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which many South Koreans consider a cult, was associated with more than 5,000 cases that drove the country’s first virus wave. Officials have blamed the church for obstructing efforts to fight the pandemic by failing to provide a full list of its members to the government.
South Korea has since largely avoided major outbreaks and begun slowly reopening to some visitors. While cases have surged to record levels in the past two weeks — reaching 4,116 daily infections on Tuesday, the highest since the pandemic — they have remained relatively low compared to much of the world: six daily cases per 100,000 people, compared with 29 in the United States, 36 in Singapore and 159 in Austria.
“The situation itself is not so bad nationwide,” said Kwon Jun-wook, deputy chief at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and director of the Korea National Institute of Health, last week, adding that it was “not severe enough to warrant halting the reopening.”
But officials have said the number of severe cases has imposed a burden on the country’s health system. Intensive care units have reached 77 percent capacity in and around Seoul over the past week, the director of K.D.C.A, Jeong Eun-kyeong, said on Monday.
Because of rising Covid hospitalizations, the government planned to secure more than 260 beds for people with severe illnesses, the Central Disaster Management Headquarters said on Wednesday.
The members of the religious settlement in Cheonan lived and worshiped together. About 70 of them had participated in a large kimchi-making event on Nov. 15 and 16, said Kim Eunchong, an official in the infectious disease control division of the province’s health office.
Mr. Kim said that these cases have made the settlement the site of the largest cluster of coronavirus cases that the province has ever recorded — and some residents have yet to be tested.
John Yoon reports from the Seoul newsroom of The New York Times. He joined The Times in 2020. @johnjyoon
COVID-19 vaccines should be prioritized for poor before kids, WHO says
By Stephanie Nebehay Reuters Posted November 24, 2021 10:38 am
The logo and building of the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, 15 April 2020. Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP
As children and adolescents are at lower risk of severe COVID-19 disease, countries should prioritize adults and sharing vaccine doses with the COVAX program to bring supplies to poorer countries, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.
Some rare cases of heart inflammation called myocarditis have been reported in younger men who received vaccines based on mRNA technoloy – Pfizer BioNtech and Moderna – but these were generally mild and responded to treatment, it said.
Although that risk had not been fully determined, it was less than the risk of myocarditis linked to SARS-CoV-2 infection, it said.
The WHO’s interim guidance was issued as more regulatory agencies authorize certain vaccines for use in children, including the United States, China, European Union, India and Israel, and most recently Canada last week.
“As children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults, unless they are in a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers,” the WHO said. Children can experience “long COVID-19” with prolonged symptoms but this was still under investigation, it said.
Several risk factors for severe COVID-19 in children have been reported including older age, obesity and pre-existing conditions including type 2 diabetes, asthma and heart disease, it added.
Maintaining education for all school-aged children should be an important priority during the pandemic, although transmission mitigation measures might be needed in schools, the WHO said.
Given vaccine supply constraints, immunization programs should focus on protecting groups at high risk of hospitalization and death, the WHO said.
“As many parts of the world face extreme vaccine shortages, countries with high coverage in at-risk populations should prioritize global sharing of COVID-19 vaccines before vaccinating children, adolescents,” it said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Jon Boyle and Alex Richardson)
WHO says all countries remain vulnerable to intense transmission of COVID-19
Two-meter COVID-19 rule is 'arbitrary measurement' of safety
Visualisation of the spread of droplets when coughing. The droplets are color-coded by size. Red = large, green = medium, blue = small, purple = very small. Credit: Shrey Trivedi et al, University of Cambridge
A new study has shown that the airborne transmission of COVID-19 is highly random and suggests that the two-meter rule was a number chosen from a risk 'continuum', rather than any concrete measurement of safety.
A team of engineers from the University of Cambridge used computer modeling to quantify how droplets spread when people cough. They found that in the absence of masks, a person with COVID-19 can infect another person at a two-meter distance, even when outdoors.
The team also found that individual coughs vary widely, and that the 'safe' distance could have been set at anywhere between one to three or more meters, depending on the risk tolerance of a given public health authority.
The results, published in the journal Physics of Fluids, suggest that social distancing is not an effective mitigation measure on its own, and underline the continued importance of vaccination, ventilation and masks as we head into the winter months in the northern hemisphere.
Despite the focus on hand-washing and surface cleaning in the early days of the pandemic, it's been clear for nearly two years that COVID-19 spreads through airborne transmission. Infected people can spread the virus through coughing, speaking or even breathing, when they expel larger droplets that eventually settle or smaller aerosols that may float in the air.
"I remember hearing lots about how COVID-19 was spreading via door handles in early 2020, and I thought to myself if that were the case, then the virus must leave an infected person and land on the surface or disperse in the air through fluid mechanical processes," said Professor Epaminondas Mastorakos from Cambridge's Department of Engineering, who led the research.
Mastorakos is an expert in fluid mechanics: the way that fluids, including exhaled breath, behave in different environments. Over the course of the pandemic, he and his colleagues have developed various models for how COVID-19 spreads.
"One part of the way that this disease spreads is virology: how much virus you have in your body, how many viral particles you expel when you speak or cough," said first author Dr. Shrey Trivedi, also from the Department of Engineering. "But another part of it is fluid mechanics: what happens to the droplets once they're expelled, which is where we come in. As fluid mechanics specialists, we're like the bridge from virology of the emitter to the virology of the receiver and we can help with risk assessment."
In the current study, the Cambridge researchers set out to 'measure' this bridge through a series of simulations. For example, if a person coughed and emitted a thousand droplets, how many would reach another person in the same room, and how large would these droplets be, as a function of time and space?
The simulations used refined computational models solving the equations for turbulent flow, together with detailed descriptions of droplet motion and evaporation.
Visualisation of the spread of droplets when coughing. The droplets are color-coded by size. Red = large, green = medium, blue = small, purple = very small. Credit: Shrey Trivedi et al, University of Cambridge
The researchers found that there isn't a sharp cut-off once the droplets spread beyond two meters. When a person coughs and isn't wearing a mask, most of the larger droplets will fall on nearby surfaces. However, smaller droplets, suspended in the air, can quickly and easily spread well beyond two meters. How far and how quickly these aerosols spread will depend on the quality of ventilation in the room.
In addition to the variables surrounding mask-wearing and ventilation, there is also a high degree of variability in individual coughs. "Each time we cough, we may emit a different amount of liquid, so if a person is infected with COVID-19, they could be emitting lots of virus particles or very few, and because of the turbulence they spread differently for every cough," said Trivedi.
"Even if I expel the same number of droplets every time I cough, because the flow is turbulent, there are fluctuations," said Mastorakos. "If I'm coughing, fluctuations in velocity, temperature and humidity mean that the amount someone gets at the two-meter mark can be very different each time."
The researchers say that while the two-meter rule is an effective and easy-to-remember message for the public, it isn't a mark of safety, given the large number of variables associated with an airborne virus. Vaccination, ventilation and masks—while not 100% effective—are vital for containing the virus.
"We're all desperate to see the back of this pandemic, but we strongly recommend that people keep wearing masks in indoor spaces such as offices, classrooms and shops," said Mastorakos. "There's no good reason to expose yourself to this risk as long as the virus is with us."
An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of ocean warming at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard, and found that the Arctic Ocean has been warming for much longer than earlier records have suggested. Credit: Sara Giansiracusa
The Arctic Ocean has been getting warmer since the beginning of the 20th century—decades earlier than records suggest—due to warmer water flowing into the delicate polar ecosystem from the Atlantic Ocean.
An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of oceanwarming at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard.
Using the chemical signatures found in marine microorganisms, the researchers found that the Arctic Ocean began warming rapidly at the beginning of the last century as warmer and saltier waters flowed in from the Atlantic—a phenomenon called Atlantification—and that this change likely preceeded the warming documented by modern instrumental measurements. Since 1900, the ocean temperature has risen by approximately 2 degrees Celsius, while sea ice has retreated and salinity has increased.
The results, reported in the journal Science Advances, provide the first historical perspective on Atlantification of the Arctic Ocean and reveal a connection with the North Atlantic that is much stronger than previously thought. The connection is capable of shaping Arctic climate variability, which could have important implications for sea-ice retreat and global sea level rise as the polar ice sheets continue to melt.
All of the world's oceans are warming due to climate change, but the Arctic Ocean, the smallest and shallowest of the world's oceans, is warming fastest of all.
"The rate of warming in the Arctic is more than double the global average, due to feedback mechanisms," said co-lead author Dr. Francesco Muschitiello from Cambridge's Department of Geography. "Based on satellite measurements, we know that the Arctic Ocean has been steadily warming, in particular over the past 20 years, but we wanted to place the recent warming into a longer context."
Atlantification is one of the causes of warming in the Arctic, however instrumental records capable of monitoring this process, such as satellites, only go back about 40 years.
Using the chemical signatures found in marine microorganisms, researchers have found that the Arctic Ocean began warming rapidly at the beginning of the last century as warmer and saltier waters flowed in from the Atlantic – a phenomenon called Atlantification. Credit: Sara Giansiracusa
As the Arctic Ocean gets warmer, it causes the ice in the polar region to melt, which in turn affects global sea levels. As the ice melts, it exposes more of the ocean's surface to the sun, releasing heat and raising air temperatures. As the Arctic continues to warm, it will melt the permafrost, which stores huge amounts of methane, a far more damaging greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The researchers used geochemical and ecological data from ocean sediments to reconstruct the change in water column properties over the past 800 years. They precisely dated sediments using a combination of methods and looked for diagnostic signs of Atlantification, like change in temperature and salinity.
"When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant," said co-lead author Dr. Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. "But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity—it really sticks out."
"The reason for this rapid Atlantification of at the gate of the Arctic Ocean is intriguing," said Muschitiello. "We compared our results with the ocean circulation at lower latitudes and found there is a strong correlation with the slowdown of dense water formation in the Labrador Sea. In a future warming scenario, the deep circulation in this subpolar region is expected to further decrease because of the thawing of the Greenland ice sheet. Our results imply that we might expect further Arctic Atlantification in the future because of climate change."
The researchers say that their results also expose a possible flaw in climate models, because they do not reproduce this early Atlantification at the beginning of the last century.
"Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there's an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification," said Tommaso. "We rely on these simulations to project future climate change, but the lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle."Arctic sea ice succumbs to Atlantification
The ice sheet had a total loss of 166 gigatons of ice from September 2020 through August 2021.
The loss occurred from events such as rain hitting Greenland's Summit Station and melting where the glaciers meet warmed ocean waters.
Other factors include “calving,” where icebergs break off, and “basal melting,” which occurs when the underneath of the ice sheet slides over the ground.
The ice sheet did experience a close to average snowfall this past year, which helped delay the melting season, according to the summary.
However, the ice sheet also experienced rainfall that even hit the Summit Station, which scientists believe hasn’t seen rain since at least the 1880s.
The ice sheet also experienced the highest lost from calving and ocean melt since satellites began documenting the phenomenon in 1986.
Scientists warn the loss from calving and melting from the ocean will not be able to be compensated by cool summers and an increase in snowfall forever.
“2020/21 was a comparably ‘normal’ year. The new normal, that is,” Martin Stendel, a polar researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute and one of the authors of the article, told The Washington Post. “But that does not mean it was good in this sense.”
CANADIAN INEQUALITY
Rich parents are giving their kids $145K or more to get into Toronto's real estate market
People trying to get into Toronto's hot real estate market really just need rich parents, it seems.
The National Bank of Canada says that Toronto residents need an annual household income of at least $205,342 to afford a home in the city these days. So most people getting into the housing market need a bit of help. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to "the bank of mom and dad."
But rich parents are more likely to give their kids a helping hand these days, according to a new Pollara Study report from IG Wealth Management.
The report defines "rich" as people who have an "accumulated, investable wealth of at least $1 million."
Overall more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of wealthy parents say they wanted to see their children "get ahead,” according to the report.
These parents were most likely to help cover education expenses. But the second most common financial relief these parents provided was to help kids buy their first home.
Almost three of four individuals surveyed said that they either had acted, or were likely to help their kids buy property. A few indicated they would foot the entire amount for a new home but most said they would provide 25 per cent or less of the total purchase price.
The average amount of a gift to assist with a home purchase was approximately $145,000, the report stated.
Where are these rich parents? The survey found the highest percentage (33 per cent) in highest in British Columbia with Ontario coming in a close second at 30 per cent.
While wealthy parents didn't mind dishing out for a first home, enthusiasm waned when it came to their next home (24 per cent) or a vacation property (10 per cent).
The Pollara Study was conducted between Aug. 5 and 12 this year.
New restoration works shore-up Iraq's historic Arch of Ctesiphon
Iraq's 1,400-year-old Arch of Ctesiphon, the world's largest brick-built arch, is undergoing restoration work as part of efforts to return it to its former splendour, authorities said Wednesday.
The famed sixth-century monument, located around 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of the capital Baghdad, is the last structure still standing from the ancient Persian imperial capital Ctesiphon.
Restoration work on the arch, also known as Taq-i Kisra from its Persian name, was carried out in 2013 after a massive slab fell off due to damp caused by heavy rain.
But the new bricks too have begun to fall following downpours last year.
A first phase of "emergency" works that began in March are due to end next month, said David Michelmore, a conservation expert working with a team of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania.
"What is falling down at the minute is not the original Sassanian construction, it's the modern repairs," he told AFP.
"There was quite a lot of reconstruction done in 2013-2014 and probably all of this will need to be taken down and replaced," he said.
Construction of the arch began in AD 540 during the Persian Sassanid dynasty's long wars with the Byzantine Empire. It formed part of a palace complex started three centuries earlier.
At 37 metres (122 feet) tall and 48 metres (158 feet) long, it is the largest brick-built arch in the world.
Iraqi Culture Minister Hassan Nazim said the works aimed to "consolidate" the site, which is near the bank of the Tigris River and is at risk of groundwater infiltration.
The current phase is financed thanks to a budget of $700,000 from the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), said Laith Majid Hussein, director of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.
He lamented "numerous mistakes" in the previous restoration, including the installation of a heavy "layer of cement on the arch".
The next stage would be a "total restoration" that would help strengthen the structure and prevent any collapse, he said.
In 2004, the Global Heritage Fund said that, as a result of disrepair, the arch was "in danger of collapse".
Those warnings proved prescient -- in late 2012, a slab about two metres (six feet) in length fell off.
tgg/lg/jsa
AFP
World Bank warns over looming plunge in Iraq water resources
Iraq could suffer a 20-percent drop in water resources by 2050 due to climate change, the World Bank said Wednesday, warning of repercussions on growth and jobs.
People sit near a bridge on the shores of Iraq's Shatt al-Arab waterway where the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge
Water is a crucial issue for the oil-rich country of 40 million that is facing an acute energy crisis, compounded by increasingly severe droughts and low rainfall.
"Without action, water constraints will lead to large losses across multiple sectors of the economy and come to affect more and more vulnerable people," the World Bank's Saroj Kumar Jha said in a statement accompanying a new report.
"By 2050, a temperature increase of one degree Celsius, and a precipitation decrease of 10 percent would cause a 20 percent reduction of available freshwater" in Iraq, the report said.
"Under these circumstances, nearly one-third of the irrigated land in Iraq will have no water by the year 2050."
Economic modelling showed that "real GDP in Iraq could drop by up to 4 percent, or $6.6 billion compared to 2016 levels", according to the report.
Demand for unskilled labour in the agricultural sector could fall by 11.8 percent, and by 5.4 percent for non-agricultural activities.
Water scarcity "is linked to small-scale forced displacement in Iraq", the World Bank warned, particularly in the country's south.
In 2014, Iraq prepared a 20-year, $180-billion plan to manage its water crisis.
But it was stillborn as the Islamic State group seized a third of the country the same year and money was diverted to fight the jihadists.
In 2018, financing for the water ministry accounted for less than 0.2 percent of the country's overall budget, with just $15 million.
"The current state of infrastructure has led to salinity affecting approximately 60 percent of the cultivated land and a 30–60 percent reduction in yield," the report said.
On a positive note, the World Bank said Iraq's economic outlook had improved "on the back of the recovery of global oil markets", adding its GDP was projected to grow from 2.6 percent this year to more than six percent in 2022–2023.
tgg/bfi/lg/hc
Vaccines alone are not enough to control COVID spread, WHO warns
WHO says vaccines reduce COVID-19 transmission by 40%
The World Health Organization has warned vaccines alone will not be enough to stop the spread of COVID.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, said he was concerned there was a “false sense of security” in some countries due to the jabs, amid a surge in infections across Europe.
"Vaccines save lives, but they do not fully prevent COVID-19 transmission,” he said.
“Data suggest that before the arrival of the Delta variant, vaccines reduced transmission by about 60%. With Delta, that has dropped to about 40%".
Dr Tedros added: "In many countries and communities, we are concerned about a false sense of security that vaccines have ended the COVID-19 pandemic, and that people who are vaccinated do not need to take any other precautions".
A woman receives a vaccine in the Netherlands. (Getty Images)
His warning comes as the UK ramped up its booster vaccine programme.
A total of 50,827,554 first doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been delivered by 23 November, Government figures show.
This is a rise of 26,822 on the previous day.
Some 46,208,819 second doses have been delivered, an increase of 22,002.
A combined total of 16,004,629 booster and third doses have also been given, a day-on-day rise of 365,152.
Labour said the vaccination programme has “lost momentum” and warned the UK was not hitting the rate needed to ensure everyone eligible gets a booster by Christmas.
Labour shadow health minister Alex Norris told the Commons: “The vaccination programme has lost momentum over the summer and autumn, and to ensure that everyone eligible gets their booster jab by Christmas we need to be vaccinating half a million people a day and currently we are not near that figure."
Health secretary Sajid Javid said Labour should “not talk down our world-successful vaccination programme” and added the booster rollout is the “most successful” in Europe.
People wearing protective face masks in Prague. (Getty)
Meanwhile, coronavirus infections broke records in parts of Europe on Wednesday, with the continent once again the epicentre of a pandemic.
Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Hungary all reported new highs in daily infections as winter gripped Europe and people gathered indoors in the run-up to Christmas, providing a perfect breeding ground for COVID-19.
Austria has already locked down its population this week for at least 10 days, becoming the first to reimpose such restrictions.
It will also require the whole population to be vaccinated from 1 February.
France will announce new COVID containment measures on Thursday as the infection rate surges nationwide.
Italy is expected to restrict access to some indoor venues for people who have not been vaccinated.
Many German regions have already started to impose tighter rules amid the country's worst COVID surge yet.
Top Israel court rejects Gaza doctor's appeal for damages from 2009 war Israel's Supreme Court rejected Wednesday an appeal from a Palestinian doctor who sought compensation for the killing of three of his daughters and a niece during the 2008-2009 Gaza war.
Izzeldin Abuelaish, a gynaecologist who now lives in Canada, filed a civil complaint in 2010 after the January 2009 incident that killed the four young females, ranging in age from 13 to 20.
Israel's top court called the incident a "tragic event" but said it was not awarding compensation because the law affords "substantial immunity" to the state in times of conflict.
"Our heart goes out to the petitioner, a bereaved uncle and father to three girls who were killed prematurely," the court said.
"At the same time, the severe consequences caused to the petitioner have no remedy and solution in the process at hand."
Abuelaish, who speaks Hebrew and was educated at Harvard University, worked in an Israeli hospital during the conflict.
The deaths occurred when his family home in Gaza was hit by Israeli tank fire. The case gained attention after he called an Israeli television station shortly after the deaths.
Israel's army had said it was targeting Islamist militants in the area amid the conflict that began after Hamas took over the enclave in 2007.
The Abuelaish family has always categorically denied any Hamas members were in the home.
Speaking outside the Jerusalem court last week where his appeal was heard, Abuelaish called on Israel to show "the moral, ethical and human courage" to admit wrongdoing.
"The biggest challenge in our world is individual responsibility. They have to overcome this fear, or arrogance, or greed, or denial. They have to acknowledge it and I am determined," he said.
Speaking to AFP after the appeal was rejected, Abuelaish's lawyer Hussein Abu Hussein said he had advised his client that a legal victory was unlikely given precedents set in similar Israeli cases.
But Abuelaish wanted to "exhaust every possible legal option", the lawyer said.
After moving to Canada with his remaining children following the deaths, Abuelaish wrote a book entitled "I Shall Not Hate" about reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Born in Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp, he now teaches public health at the University of Toronto.
Abuelaish had said any damages awarded would be donated to charity and that he was also seeking an apology from Israel over the deaths.
bur/bs/jsa/hc
Mexican president names first woman central bank chief
Sheets of 500 peso bills are seen at a Bank of Mexico printing facility in the eastern state of Jalisco (AFP/Ulises Ruiz)
Wed, November 24, 2021
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Wednesday nominated Deputy Finance Minister Victoria Rodriguez as the next Bank of Mexico governor, the first woman to head the central bank.
The announcement came a day after former finance minister Arturo Herrera said Lopez Obrador had withdrawn his candidacy for the post, unsettling financial markets.
"For the first time, a woman will be heading the Bank of Mexico," Lopez Obrador told reporters, saying the nomination, which requires approval by the Senate, was part of efforts to promote gender equality.
As deputy finance minister, Rodriguez "has acted with great responsibility so as not to spend just to spend," added the pro-austerity president.
The U-turn comes at a time when Mexico is facing rising inflation that has prompted the central bank to raise its benchmark interest rate for four consecutive meetings, to 5.0 percent.
Like many countries, Mexico is grappling with the impact of rising costs of energy and raw materials, as well as global supply chain bottlenecks as pandemic-hit economies reopen.
Inflation in Mexico reached 6.24 percent in the 12 months to October, more than double the central bank's target of around three percent, and the highest in almost four years.
Gabriela Siller, head of analysis for the financial group BASE, tweeted Tuesday that the surprise withdrawal of Herrera's nomination "creates uncertainty" and could raise questions about the Bank of Mexico's autonomy.
Lopez Obrador pledged to uphold the central bank's independence, describing Rodriguez as a "responsible" person who will act "in accordance with the rules."
In May the president ruled out asking central bank chief Alejandro Diaz de Leon to stay on past the end of the year, saying he would be replaced by an economist with a "social dimension."
The win-wins of climate and biodiversity solutions
We need all efforts, big and small, to solve the biodiversity and climate crises.
The climate is changing, and species are going extinct faster than any time since civilization began. The two crises are not independent. That’s good news — it means there are solutions that benefit both biodiversity and climate.
Nature is already our best defense against runaway increases of greenhouse gas emissions. Earth’s lands and waters currently absorb about 40% of the carbon dioxide human activity and natural processes release into the atmosphere. That can’t continue, though, without our oceans acidifying and plants reaching the limit of what they can absorb.
As an ecologist, I’ve spent nearly three decades working to conserve biodiversity within landscapes largely managed for food and goods production. Now, as special projects director at Project Drawdown, I study how climate solutions can benefit the planet’s biodiversity. Through all of this work, I’ve found that many climate-friendly initiatives also help with conservation. Although some solutions can come with costs or tradeoffs to plants and animals, what’s better for biodiversity is generally better for climate. That means protecting and restoring nature needs to be a critical part of an all-of-the-above set of solutions for reducing the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Stopping or slowing habitat loss, for example, is good for biodiversity and the climate. Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air to grow, and a portion of that carbon is stored in plants and soil. Habitat loss releases the carbon stored in soil and plants, so it’s a major source of emissions. Tropical deforestation alone, mostly to clear land for agriculture, accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If deforestation were a country, it would be the third biggest greenhouse gas emitter, trailing only China and the United States.
Photo: Martyn Fletcher (CC BY 2.0)
Climate solutions can also enhance nature’s role as a carbon sink — its ability to store carbon. A complex habitat structure supports more species and stores more carbon at a greater rate. Protecting, restoring and enhancing biodiversity on managed lands all enhance sinks.
In other words, protecting natural habitat both reduces production of greenhouse gases and boosts nature’s ability to sock them away.
But with so many ecosystems under threat, and the climate crisis getting worse by the day, where do we start?
Protect what’s left
To achieve the most benefits for both biodiversity and the climate, we must start by protecting the Earth’s remaining intact ecosystems.
Protecting all remaining habitat is, of course, important, but destroying intact areas disproportionately affects species loss compared to further destroying fragmented areas. And clearing and degrading intact areas is also a double whammy for climate. The existing carbon stock is emitted and the habitat’s ability to act as a sink is lost.
It’s like the gift that keeps on giving — except it keeps on taking away.
A mountain lion caught on a trail cam at Headwaters Forest Reserve. Photo: Bureau of Land Management.
And the impact compounds over time — when you include the foregone sequestration, the carbon impact over a decade of clearing tropical forest can be six times higher than the immediate emissions alone.
Intact areas have more carbon in the vegetation and soils and a higher species diversity than degraded areas. Intact areas are also better carbon sinks. They store carbon at a faster rate than degraded areas. For example, nearly a fifth of the world’s forests are legally protected, yet they store more than a quarter of the carbon accumulated across all forests every year.
But protection is not on pace with loss. Forest protected areas almost doubled from 1992 to 2015, from 16.6 to 32.7 thousand square miles. During that same time, nearly 200,000 square miles were deforested. If you had a gap like this between savings and withdrawals in your bank account, you would — and should — be very, very worried. We need to accelerate the rate of designating new protected areas.
Protected areas need not be parks. In fact, many of them shouldn’t be parks. Indigenous communities play an essential role in protecting biodiversity and reducing the threat of climate change around the world. Areas managed by Indigenous people are commonly more intact than neighboring private and public lands. Securing land and water rights for Indigenous communities is not just good for nature. It helps protect identity and sovereignty.
Restore what we can
So what about habitats that have been altered by human activity? They’re still important. Restoring disturbed lands and waters to a natural state boosts their ability to conserve biodiversity and increases their potential to suck carbon from the atmosphere and store it in vegetation and soils.
Restorations generally have lower species diversity and a simpler structure than intact ecosystems and are not as effective at storing carbon. However, they’re an essential part of recovering ecosystems where only small fragments remain, such as the grasslands of North America, Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, Mediterranean forests and scrublands in North America, Europe, and Africa, and dry forests of Asia.
Volunteers collect seeds for grassland restoration. Photo: BLM Wyoming.
Unfortunately, the list of endangered ecosystems is much longer than those few examples.
Restorations also are less beneficial than protecting intact land from a climate perspective, since carbon accumulates slowly over decades or hundreds of years. And we can’t assume that today’s acorns will become tomorrow’s oak trees — or, if they do, that those trees will escape harvest, natural disasters or pest outbreaks long enough to serve as meaningful carbon sinks or legitimate sources of carbon offset credits.
Enhance biodiversity on working lands
Of course, not all lands can remain natural. We need space for farms, wood production, roads, homes and businesses. Croplands and rangelands cover 38% of all land on Earth. Forests cover about another third of the land, of which 60% is managed for timber and other forest products. That means about 58% of all ice-free land is used to produce food and forest products.
Several climate solutions that can be implemented on agricultural lands, such as agroforestry and managed pastures, also benefit biodiversity. Although these solutions may provide smaller benefits at the scale of a farm field or forest stand, a little bit of change everywhere can add up to a lot of carbon stored and locally provide species diversity, habitat structure, and ecosystem function. Ocean-based solutions exist too, and researchers are learning more about how they benefit both biodiversity and climate.
Targeting actions
Each ton of carbon is equally important. The potential avoided emissions and carbon stored for several solutions are summarized in two key publications, The Drawdown Review and Natural Climate Solutions.
For biodiversity, some land, water and coastlines are more important than others. How much land and water do we need to protect biodiversity? Truth is, we don’t really know. But very basic rules are true: More is better, bigger is better, more connected is better, and more geographically and climatologically diverse is better.
Initiatives like the Global Safety Net lay out a roadmap for conserving biodiversity, maintaining highly productive agricultural lands, and stabilizing climate by protecting or managing 50% of all ice-free land on Earth. Other efforts have identified critical areas (or frameworks) for protecting marine and freshwater biodiversity.
(Potentially huge) bonus points
Several other climate solutions can indirectly benefit biodiversity. For example, shifting to plant-based diets, reducing food waste, and sustainably intensifying food production on smallholder farms all reduce the need to expand agricultural lands, the biggest cause of habitat loss and degradation.
When these solutions are implemented, agriculture’s land footprint would not only stop expanding — it could shrink. The land used for grazing or growing animal feed could instead be used to restore ecosystems or to produce fiber and fuel.
Big or small, it takes all
We need all efforts, big and small, to solve the biodiversity and climate crises.
Yes, we need a concerted effort among governments, companies and investors for transformational change. But individual efforts, from managing a small fish farm in a mangrove forest to protecting tiny prairie remnants, matter too. Small changes accumulate and help shift the social norm of what we expect from our neighbors, CEOs and presidents.
An all-in, all-of-the-above approach is essential. All we need are the incentive and motivation to start.
The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity or its employees.
