Cambodia releases endangered royal turtles in revival bid

Fri, November 26, 2021

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Cambodian conservationists released 51 critically endangered royal turtles back into the wild on Friday, in a drive to bolster a species thought to be extinct two decades ago.

Also known as the southern river terrapin, the large river turtles are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's red list of threatened species, and the European Union is helping to fund the revival programme in Cambodia https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-turtles-idUKKBN22W1S3

The turtles, collected between 2006 and 2015 immediately after hatching and reared in a conservation centre, were released into the Sre Ambel river in Cambodia's coastal province of Preah Sihanouk.

"With the increasing number of adults in the wild through this release, we do hope that this species will breed in the wild and that annual nests will increase in the next few years," Wildlife Conservation Society's Ken Sereyrotha said.

The turtles, 31 females and 20 males between 6 and 15 years old, are implanted with a microchip and have an acoustic transmitter attached to their shells.

The royal turtle was believed extinct in Cambodia until 2000 due to sand dredging, illegal fishing, and loss of habitat. It was designated the country's national reptile in 2005.

Video: Cambodia's endangered royal turtles released into wild | World News | Sky News

Fresh hopes for species’ survival as 51 royal turtles released into the wild

Mom Kunthear | Publication date 26 November 2021 

Fifty-one royal turtles were released into the wild, in northern Preah Sihanouk province’s Kampong Seila district on November 26, by the Wildlife Conservation Society Cambodia Programme (WCS) and relevant government officials.

The event was accompanied by a ceremony, attended by Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries officials, local authorities, WCS representatives, Buddhist monks and locals.

WCS country director Ken Serey Rotha commented that conservationists had believed that royal turtles were extinct in the Kingdom, a presumption he said was rebuffed by a study back in 2000.

Also known as the southern river terrapin and by its scientific name Batagur affinis, the royal turtle is listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as “critically endangered”, and was designated as Cambodia’s national reptile by a 2005 royal decree, according to the NGO.

Serey Rotha noted that November 26’s event marks the sixth of its kind under the associated conservation project, bringing the total number of freed royal turtles from 96 to 147.

He also credited the ministry’s Fisheries Administration (FiA) for working with the WCS on rare-species conservation.

Speaking at the ceremony, Kampong Seila district deputy governor Prak Sovann urged commune- and village-level authorities and the general public to join hands in the conservation of royal turtles.

“If we can protect these habitats, they’d provide enchanting eco-tourism spots,” he said. “Sightseers would visit the royal turtles in their own spaces, as well as the beautiful forests here in Kampong Seila.”

Sovann said he was committed to protecting the species and ensuring viable populations “at all costs”, and called on the public to report trapped turtles to the authorities, who will then prepare them for release back into the wild.

FiA director-general Pum Sotha said royal turtles are now only found in Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia, of which the Kingdom has the largest population.

“We must all come forward to protect them, and not merely be content with having the most, but failing to look after them,” he said.

Sotha also requested local authorities, the WCS and EU to look into building statues and other monuments across the Kingdom that are dedicated to the royal turtle and bear inscriptions that indicate the rarity and importance of the species.

Cash coming to Tahoe animal center where burned cub escaped

 This July 31, 2021, file photo provided by Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care shows a bear cub that was taken in for treatment after it suffered burns in a California wildfire, to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. A private donor's pledge to match $500,000 in contributions for a $1 million expansion at a Lake Tahoe wildlife rescue center is bringing smiles back to staff and volunteers who've been on an emotional rollercoaster since the bear cub recovering from severe wildfire burns made a much-publicized escape back into the wild. 

(Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care via AP, File)

SCOTT SONNER
Fri, November 26, 2021

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Private donors' new pledge to match $500,000 in contributions for a $1 million-expansion at a Lake Tahoe wildlife rescue center is bringing smiles back to staff and volunteers, who have been on an emotional rollercoaster since a bear cub being treated for severe wildfire burns made a much-publicized escape this summer.

The Lake Tahoe Wildlife Center has been making repairs directed by California regulators since Tamarack — named after the wildfire that blazed across more than 100 square miles (259 square kilometers) in the Sierra and severely burned the cub's paws — tunneled under an electric fence and fled back to the wild.

It was the first escape in the 45-year-history of the center in South Lake Tahoe, California.

Two days later, volunteers spotted and photographed a cub clinging to a tree 40 feet (12 meters) up in a nearby forest. They became convinced it was the 6-month-old escapee, decided to leave him alone and now believe he’s doing just fine.

The contribution the Bentley Foundation and MH Buckeye announced this week may just be the happy ending they’ve been looking for.

“We’ve turned the corner,” center spokesman Greg Erfani told The Associated Press. As of Wednesday, they were only $180,000 short of the $1.05 million needed to begin construction in the spring and finish by the end of 2022.

“It’s going to build the first animal hospital in the Lake Tahoe area,” he said.

The center has continued to rescue smaller animals and recently released seven rehabilitated coyote pups. But it's been prohibited from accepting big game including bears since the California Department of Fish and Wildlife declared in October that it had to make improvements to its enclosures and fencing.

“Upon completion, CDFW will perform a site inspection and evaluate (the center's) request to renew its agreement to temporarily possess and rehabilitate injured and orphaned black bear cubs," department spokesman Peter Tira said in an email to AP on Wednesday.

Erfani said supply-chain challenges have delayed immediate repairs but the center should be fully up and running by next month, bears and all.

The expansion includes the hospital with two large recovery rooms, surgery and X-ray areas, individual care buildings for different species and a small dormitory for staff providing round-the-clock care — all at the place young Tamarack briefly called home.

The tale of his rescue-turned-escape began July 26 when a homeowner in Markleeville, California, spotted the cub crawling on his knees because his paws were so badly burned.

Photos of the bandaged black bear at the rescue center flooded social media and drew mention in international news coverage of the devastating fire that forced thousands of evacuations.

“Tamarack was sort of the first 'feel good’ story that came out of the fire. It was all destruction and heartbreak, and then there’s this little guy that had survived,” Erfani said this week. “Then, of course, that little stinker was not going to be caged. He just wanted out.”

The center announced his escape Aug. 3, warning anyone who spotted him to stay away and report sightings to wildlife officials.

Another flurry of publicity followed, less flattering than before.

“We got lambasted on social media. People were being nasty,” Erfani recalled. “It was very emotional for us because we had connections with him. A lot of people were really upset.”

Meanwhile, the center was doing everything it could to corral the cub, even sending up heat-seeking drones sometimes used to find lost hikers, Erfani said. “We spent a lot of time and money trying to find him. Our fear was that he wouldn’t be able to survive, so we didn’t give up.”

It paid off with the sighting of the cub clinging to the tree.

“We could tell he had all the same markings. But he appeared safe, and once released into the wild, we don’t bring them back,” he said.

“He wasn't happy being contained, pacing a lot. So, when we got him to a point where he could climb, that’s all he really needed. Once he got that defense ... his instincts kick in.”

Tamarack wasn’t like older bears who — because of issues including drought-driven food shortages — abandon the woods to rummage through garbage and sometimes break into Lake Tahoe homes.

“They become ‘urban’ bears," Erfani said. "Until the fire, (Tamarack) was from the backcountry, out in the wild. He never saw a house, never saw a car.”

“We like to believe he’s out there now in the wild, living the bear’s life.”

Consumers are open to electric vehicles, but face a steep learning curve



Joann Muller
Sat, November 27, 2021

Data: IHS Markit Data; Note: Chart: Thomas Oide/Axios

Americans are more open than ever to trading in their gas cars for electrified vehicles — but they're flummoxed by the confusing array of green options arriving in showrooms.

Why it matters: Getting up to speed on the differences among hybrids, plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles will be a challenge for car buyers — and salespeople, too — as we transition away from gas-powered vehicles over the next decade.

What's happening: Overall car sales are down, but sales of electrified vehicles — hybrid, plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles (EVs) — nearly doubled in the third quarter, to 10.4% of total sales from 5.5%, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Pure EVs, which have no combustion engine, were still just 3% of the total, partly because of their price tag: nearly $60,000 on average, before rebates, says KBB parent, Cox Automotive.

Until EV prices come down, hybrids and plug-in hybrids are a more affordable option for many car buyers.

Yes but: While consumers are more aware of these alternatives, they don't fully understand them, says Toyota, which introduced the Prius 25 years ago and dominates the U.S. market for hybrids.

75% of consumers surveyed by Toyota believe hybrids need to be plugged in, for example. That's not true.

Two-thirds of consumers surveyed think a battery-electric vehicle has an engine — also not true.

"After 25 years, consumers are still very confused," said Mike Tripp, VP of vehicle marketing and communications at Toyota North America.

Here's a quick primer on some terms buyers are likely to encounter:

Start-stop technology — this common fuel-saving system automatically shuts down and restarts a gasoline engine when the vehicle stops.

Mild hybrid — sometimes called e-assist, it's a gas-fueled car with an electric motor for added oomph during acceleration. The electric motor can't power the car on its own, but it can boost fuel economy as much as 20%.

Full hybrid — Toyota's Prius is a good example: The car has both a battery-powered electric motor and a gasoline engine, which operate independently or together. The e-motor can add power to supplement the engine, lowering fuel consumption.

Plug-in hybrid — With a larger battery and a more powerful motor, a plug-in hybrid can go 10-50 miles on electricity. That means you don't need to buy gas for short trips around town. When the battery is depleted, it operates as a regular full hybrid.

Battery-electric vehicle — The car must be plugged into the electric grid to recharge the battery, or it won't run. Most cars take 8-12 hours to recharge fully, although faster options are available. Today's BEVs usually get at least 250 miles between charges.

What's next: The number of electrified models is projected to explode over the next five years.

In 2020, there were 24 battery-electric models for sale in the U.S.; by 2025, IHS Markit projects that number will be 146.

Add various types of hybrids to the mix, and there will be 220 new or redesigned electrified models introduced between 2022 and 2025.

The bottom line: The EV era is going to take time to mature.

Get smarter, faster on climate technology with our free, 5-video short course.

Editor's Note: Cox Enterprises, the parent of Kelley Blue Book and Cox Automotive, is an investor in Axios.

A broken supply chain isn't a problem for the logistics industry. It's a moneymaking opportunity


Sam Dean
Fri, November 26, 2021

Shipping containers are piled high at the port of Los Angeles. (Mario Tama / Getty Images)

Thirty-thousand high-end snow globes are trapped in San Pedro Bay, split between two shipping containers on two ships in the idle flotilla offshore.

One ship arrived in late September; the other in late October. They've been stuck at anchor ever since.

Liz Ross, co-founder of CoolSnowGlobes, says that at this point in the season, all is lost. Her snow globes — representing $1.5 million in sales — needed to get to customers before the holidays.

But Wan Hai Lines Ltd., the Taiwanese shipping corporation that owns those vessels, is making a record profit this year. So is every major ocean shipping company, trucking company and warehouse company, as consumer demand has led to a 20% jump in imports.

The supply chain, defined as the system of moving goods from factories and farms to end consumers, is tied into knots and failing to deliver. But supply chain companies, each a private entity that hopes to make as much money as possible out of the surge in consumer demand, are having their best year ever. At the moment, that means there's little financial incentive to resolve the supply chain crisis quickly.

"Right now consumers are screaming because they don’t have the product and the price is going up," said Christopher S. Tang, a distinguished professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies supply chains, "but the big players are quietly happy."

This begins on the boat.

Most imports come to the U.S. in shipping containers, and just nine shipping companies control 80% of all global container shipping. Those companies have further consolidated into three major alliances — 2M, Transport High Efficiency Alliance and the Ocean Alliance — in the last decade, giving them unprecedented power in the market.

"To a certain extent they've become a cartel," Tang said. "There's not that much competition, so they can jack up the price more."

A look at San Pedro Bay, where dozens of ships have been idling for weeks, might give the impression that these companies are under duress. How can having $100-million ships tied up at anchor be good for the bottom line?

The shipping companies' financial reports show that they're finding a way. A.P. Moller-Maersk, the Copenhagen-based shipping giant, is on track to make more than $16 billion in profit in 2021 — three times as much money as its previous best year ever in 2014, and the most profit ever booked by any company in Danish history. Cosco Shipping, the Shanghai-based company that competes with Maersk for the top spot in the industry, made $12.6 billion in profit from container shipping in the first nine months of 2021, and reported that its revenue had doubled since 2020, thanks to the supply chain squeeze.

Wan Hai Lines, which is not in one of the major alliances, booked $2.48 billion in profit in the first nine months of 2021, 19 times what it made in the same period last year. Taken as a whole, the ocean shipping industry is on track to make more profit in 2021 than it has in the last decade.

The main source of this skyrocketing revenue is freight fees. In 2019, shipping a container from China to the West Coast cost less than $2,000, on average. At the height of the logistics crunch this summer, rates soared above $20,000 for that same container, before falling below $15,000 in the latter half of November. Demand went up, supply went down as backlogs grew, and prices surged.

Customers such as Liz Ross pay the shipping companies upfront. In previous years, those companies had a financial incentive to unload their ships as quickly as possible to free up capacity for more voyages. But the eight- to tenfold increase in prices means that a carrier can double its revenue even at 20% capacity. With that amount of money coming in, idle ships at ports such as those in Los Angeles and Long Beach barely scratch the bottom line — and in fact might prove good for business, if they mean that the companies can keep prices high, Tang said.

The ocean carriers also make money from the pileup of containers on the docks. After a container sits at the terminal for a certain number of days, shipping companies begin charging end customers a rental fee for using their box, a charge called demurrage in the industry. On the other side, once a trucker picks up a container and delivers its contents to a customer, the shipping companies also start charging the trucker a late fee, known as detention, if the trucker fails to return the empty container within a certain time frame.

At the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, so many empty containers have piled up that the shipping companies often won't allow truckers to return their empty containers but continue to charge detention fees. Truckers are then stuck with a rising detention tab and an empty container on their trailer, which means they can't go pick up a new import container and get paid for a new job. So the pile of import containers grows, and the only players with the power to remove the empty shipping containers to free up space — the shipping companies — have little incentive to do so expediently.

The ports themselves are owned by the cities of L.A. and Long Beach, respectively, but local governments have few levers at their disposal to change the behavior of private multinational shipping companies. The ports only serve as landlords to the private terminal companies that operate the docks, many of which are partly or wholly owned by the shipping companies and rely on them for their income.

In an attempt to change the financial incentives at play, port officials in October voted in a new fee on containers idling at terminals that could amount to millions in extra charges for the ocean carriers. Port leaders have delayed the fee's implementation, but cargo has been moving off the docks more quickly in recent weeks.

The federal government has turned its attention to the ocean carriers but has not taken any regulatory action as of yet. The Biden administration signed an executive order in July encouraging the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission to investigate "exorbitant fees" charged by the ocean carriers. A recent White House blog post raised the idea of using antitrust laws to regulate the industry and called on Congress to support expanding the commission's budget to meet the regulatory task.

While port truckers, many of whom are independent contractors, have been suffering under the fees and container logjam at the docks, other major players along the supply chain have been reaping profit bonanzas in the supply chain crisis.

DHL's supply chain business and Kuehne & Nagel, two of the world's largest freight-forwarding companies, have both more than doubled their profits this year in their core businesses. Profits at major truckers such as Saia Inc., Schneider National Inc., Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. and J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. have soared in 2021, even with fuel and labor costs on the rise, with many on track to earn nearly double the pre-pandemic profits of 2019. C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc., one of the country's largest warehouse and logistics companies, booked $614 million in profit in the first nine months of 2021, up from $477 million in the same period in 2019, a nearly 30% jump.

Big companies have always had the advantage of scale, said Senthil Veeraraghavan, a professor of operations, information and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school. But now that capacity across the supply chain is stretched to the limit, "the first guys to get squeezed are people who put in small orders."

The last 20 years have seen an explosion of online direct-to-consumer brands and small e-commerce businesses, such as Ross' snow globe company, that rely on imports, while the back end of the supply chain has tended toward consolidation. "These aren’t centralized systems, there’s thousands of companies with millions of people doing their own things," Veeraraghavan said, and it worked to a point, with small importers placing orders more than six months out to get deliveries in time for the holidays. "Then it all collapsed at the same time."

"Year after year we talk about how a little bit of variation in the supply chain propagates all over the spectrum," Veeraraghavan said, "and unlike financial volatility, where stocks move up and down almost instantaneously, this is like a ripple in molasses."

As the demand for imports ebbs in early 2022, freight prices are likely to continue to fall. Companies that tried to expand to meet demand will find themselves with excess capacity on their hands and suffer the financial consequences. The companies that embraced the crunch, delivered goods late and charged high prices can settle into a soft landing at pre-crisis rates.

That's little solace to Ross. She spent 20 years building up her snow globe company from a hobby to a $2.5-million-a-year business, making custom products for clients such as Yves St. Laurent and the Museum of Modern Art. She spent the last three months anxiously watching the bulk of her orders — and it was a strong year for orders — sit stranded a mile offshore.

"We'll be here next year," she said, hoping to break even on her inventory over the course of 2022. "But it's a smack in the face."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

‘It’s critical’: can Microsoft make good on its climate ambitions?


Kyla Mandel
Sat, November 27, 2021

Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

When the UN’s landmark climate report was released in 2018, calling for urgent and unprecedented changes, Microsoft executives were told to “commit it to memory”, said Elizabeth Willmott, who leads the company’s carbon program. “And so we did.”

The report warned the world must reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to avert catastrophic climate change. To achieve this, not only must the emissions released by countries and companies be dramatically curtailed, but billions of tons of carbon dioxide must be sucked out of the atmosphere.

These findings directly informed Microsoft’s climate policy, said Willmott. In January 2020, the company announced that it would be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 it would have removed from the atmosphere all the carbon it has emitted since it was founded in 1975. By making this pledge, the company joined a small group of businesses, including Ikea and the software company Intuit, committed to going further than net-zero.


Microsoft is often ranked as a leading business on climate action. Its policies – from making it easier for people to repair their devices to launching software to help companies measure and manage carbon emissions – have been praised for going beyond the company’s own operations to the footprint of its suppliers and customers.

“Being a large, well-known brand, and putting a stake in the ground, talking publicly for years about the importance of climate change, is really critical,” said Simon Fischweicher, head of corporations and supply chains for the environmental non-profit CDP North America.

President of Microsoft Brad Smith as the company announced its carbon negative plan at Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, on January 16, 2020. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

However, Microsoft has also been criticized for actions that appear to contradict its bold rhetoric on climate, including membership of trade associations that lobby against climate legislation, contracts with oil and gas firms and donations to politicians who obstruct climate policy.

These connections make it “complicit” in efforts to push against climate action, said Bill Weihl, a former sustainability executive at Google and Facebook and the founder of the advocacy group ClimateVoice.

Scaling up goals

Microsoft has been operating as a carbon-neutral company for nearly a decade, a feat it has achieved through buying carbon offsets as well as securing renewable power directly from clean energy companies and installing onsite renewable energy, such as solar panels at its offices.

Since 2012, Microsoft has also implemented an internal carbon fee, currently set at $15 a metric ton, making business units pay for emissions related to their operations and electricity, as well as from business air travel.

“The money gets collected and spent,” said Willmott, whose carbon management team uses the money to fund initiatives such as buying clean energy and carbon offsets. “I have to pinch myself regularly because that was something we dreamed about and didn’t think was actually going to happen.”

It’s a “powerful mechanism”, says Fischweicher, to push a company to think more deeply about the impact of its activities: “To pay a fee, you start to think about: ‘What can I do to reduce that so I have more money in my budget?’”

But the company has recognized that much more is required to tackle the climate crisis and the plan to go carbon negative was a big step up in ambitions.

Microsoft has laid out milestones for reaching the target. By 2025, it aims to reduce the emissions from its direct operations to “near zero” through gains in energy efficiency and using 100% renewable energy. By 2030, it has committed to reducing by at least 50% its direct emissions and those from its supply chain.

The company’s supply chain – more than 58,000 suppliers provide everything from office furniture to the metals and plastics used in its products – makes up the bulk of its emissions. Last year, the company implemented a carbon reporting requirement for suppliers and it extended the internal carbon fee to cover supply chain emissions.

But in order to remove more emissions than it produces, the company will rely heavily on carbon removal projects. These include nature-based initiatives such as funding reforestation projects, but the company is also pinning its hopes on technology. Microsoft is investing $1bn to support emerging technology that can reduce, capture and remove carbon from the air.

As part of this, the company has invested in and purchased carbon removal from Climeworks, which operates the world’s largest direct air capture plant, in Iceland, removing CO2 from the air and trapping it in rock underground.

Climeworks direct air capture plant near Reykjavik, Iceland. Photograph: Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty Images

In 2020, Microsoft removed 1.3m metric tons of carbon through a range of initiatives from nature based programs to carbon capture technology.

However, these projects face obstacles. Relying on forests and soil to trap endless amounts of carbon is increasingly difficult in the face of worsening wildfires, pests and changes in land use. And carbon removal technology is not anywhere near the scale needed. There are 19 direct air capture (DAC) plants in operation globally, capturing just over 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. The International Energy Agency has estimated that reaching net zero by 2050 would require the world to scale up DAC to capture more than 85m tons each year by 2030 and around 980m tons a year by 2050.

It’s a challenge that Microsoft is grappling with. The number and type of projects currently available is “far short of what we need”, said Willmott. By 2030, the company estimates, it will need to remove 5m to 6m tons of carbon. This means the technology will need to be considerably scaled up to meet Microsoft’s demands alone, she said, “and that’s to say nothing of the fact that there’s a real spike in corporate demand”.

Related: Climate crisis: do we need millions of machines sucking CO2 from the air?

It’s not just the amount of viable carbon capture projects that’s lacking, Willmot said; there’s also a quality issue. The industry doesn’t fully distinguish between avoided emissions and those that are actually removed from the atmosphere, she said. More robust quality standards would go a long way to making sure “it’s not quite a wild, wild west that it is today”, Willmot said.

“[Microsoft is] opening up new conversations about historical emissions without having all the answers,” said Aoife Brophy, departmental research lecturer in innovation and enterprise at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. “Leaders on climate need to acknowledge the complexity of the problem and be transparent about the fact that there are not always clear solutions.”

Microsoft’s focus on historical emissions could also help spur a deeper conversation, she said, about “responsibility for the past, and may lead to much better ways to think about issues like climate justice that have not yet been adequately addressed by companies”.

A wider influence

The modern corporate sustainability movement requires companies to also consider their impacts on customers, peers and society more broadly. This shift in perspective, said Fischweicher, “is a really critical turning-point moment … because what you’re also talking about is shifting your business model overall”.

To Microsoft’s critics, this means the company should reconsider its work with oil companies. The same week that Microsoft made its carbon-negative announcement, it sponsored an oil conference in Saudi Arabia. A 2020 Greenpeace report digging into tech companies’ work with the oil and gas industry – such as providing software to support fossil fuel extraction – found that its contract with ExxonMobil “could lead to emissions greater than 20% of Microsoft’s annual carbon footprint”.

The company also spent about $200,000 during the 2020 US election cycle supporting politicians with a history of climate denial. And this October, Microsoft – along with other corporations – was criticized by the watchdog group Accountable.US for its membership of trade organizations with a history of fighting climate crisis legislation, including the Business Roundtable and the US Chamber of Commerce. Most recently, these groups have lobbied against climate legislation included under Joe Biden’s reconciliation bill.

Related: Apple and Disney among companies backing groups against US climate bill

“I feel really strongly that we need to be able to work with everyone to make this transition to a low-carbon economy in the future,” said Willmott, responding to these criticisms. “I really think it’s important not to villainize any particular sector, or villainize any particular entities, but rather really work hard from within to shape the journey.”

Weihl, whose organization ClimateVoice is calling on Microsoft and others to devote one-fifth of their lobbying dollars to climate policy in 2021, remains skeptical. “Companies are putting their narrow self-interest ahead of actually addressing the climate crisis at scale,” he said. “Silence and unwillingness to publicly distance themselves [from these groups] is not neutrality, it’s complicity.”

Whether it’s Microsoft’s customers and affiliations or the type of work it does, experts agree the company’s size and political heft as well as its position within trade groups give it immense power – and it’s all about how the company chooses to use it.

“Tech companies shape how we engage with the world, and the information we see on a daily basis,” said Brophy. “We need to think of impact beyond measuring emissions and consider ways in which technology can be used to create change across different systems.”

Microsoft’s climate commitments are laudable, she said, but ultimately success will require collective action. “The biggest challenge is that Microsoft’s goals cannot be achieved by Microsoft alone,” said Brophy. “But that’s exactly what we need to see companies across industries doing more of: coming out and being bold, recognizing that they need to be systems leaders.”

The corporate world’s race to net-zero hinges on tiny villages in the DR Congo


Leticia Labre
Sat, November 27, 2021

The call came while Jean-Robert Bwangoy was on a trip to the United States two years ago. A measles epidemic was tearing through Mai Ndombe—Bwangoy’s hometown in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “More than a hundred children died in one day,” he recalls.

A few hours and several phone calls later, a chartered plane loaded with medicine and supplies including motorbikes, gas, and cash, touched down in the forest. Over the next three weeks, Bwangoy and his team criss-crossed the jungle, transporting provisions and leading health professionals to the villages. Gradually, the epidemic abated.

Bwangoy, 58, is neither a government official nor a charity worker. Rather, he is the DRC country director for Wildlife Works, an American conservation company that promotes a market-based approach meant to transform the fight against climate change in places like Mai Ndombe. The heavily-forested interior of the DRC is often called one of the lungs of the Earth for its ability to absorb the planet's carbon emissions.

Jean-Robert Bwangoy (center in yellow shirt), Wildlife Works’ country director for the DRC, poses with the children in Ibali village of Mai Ndombe, where Wildlife Works has just completed construction of a clinic. Courtesy of Filip Agoo/Wildlife Works


Organizations like Wildlife Works have recently taken on even further global importance in light of the deforestation pledges made earlier this month at the COP26 climate meetings—the kind of international pledges, a cynic might point out, that is regularly made with increasing desperation and then broken again and again. The question now is whether an outfit like Wildlife Works can succeed where governments have repeatedly failed to minimize the emission of millions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) by saving and growing forests—all financed not by government shame-induced largesse, but by the most market-friendly of tools, the forest carbon-credit.
Forests, front and center

If we're to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5C, emissions from deforestation will have to decrease by 70-90% by 2030, research by McKinsey shows. Global Forest Watch has found that pristine, old-growth forests absorb twice the amount of CO2 than previously logged ones with young, regrown trees.

The voluntary carbon markets have become a central tool for channeling capital towards this kind of forest protection. On these markets, the tradable unit is a carbon credit, which is equal to one ton of CO2 kept in the ground or removed from the atmosphere. Entities called “project developers” generate emission-reduction credits through activities ranging from forest conservation to renewable energy, then sell the credits to companies. Project developers use the revenues from the credits they sell to finance their work, while companies use the credits they buy to become carbon neutral.

This process is called offsetting, and not every climate-hawk is a fan. Louise Casson, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK, decries the marketplace for credits as a tool corporations could use to avoid eliminating their own fossil-fuel use. “Achieving our climate goals means polluters doing all they can—[and] they can all do a lot more,” she said.

But other advocates like Jeremey Manion, director of forestry carbon markets at the Arbor Day Foundation believe that staving off catastrophe means using offsets alongside other climate strategies, rather than excluding them: “When designed and implemented correctly, verified carbon credit projects are an immediate instrument to fund forest protection.”

A $50 billion market

Corporations that use the offset see it as an immediate and essential tool. “We responded to our employees and customers who wanted us to act right away,” says Amelia DeLuca, managing director for sustainability at Delta Air Lines, which used forest carbon credits to offset emissions, and became the first globally carbon neutral airline in 2020.

“When we included messaging about our carbon neutrality initiatives on the checkout page, there was a conversion lift, demonstrating how being environmentally friendly resonates with consumers,” said Chelsea Mozen, director of impact and sustainability at Etsy, which became carbon neutral in 2019 and was the first global ecommerce platform to offset 100% of carbon emissions from shipping.

The State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets (SOVCM) estimates that the carbon credits market is well on its way to topping $1 billion this year, an all-time record. Furthermore, the carbon credits bought and sold through mid-September represent the equivalent of around 240 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions—tCO2e, for short. These are tiny sums compared to multi-trillion-dollar stock- and commodities markets—or the magnitude of climate change. But given that the total emissions of companies that have made carbon neutral pledges was at 3.5 gigatons as of 2020 (a gigaton is a billion tons), carbon markets seem poised for a blast off.

Indeed there are already indications of this. The SOVCM’s partial 2021 numbers are double that of last year's total in terms of traded value. One of the markets’ benchmarks, the CEC price assessment produced by S&P Global Platts, shows that carbon-credit prices have surged by more than 500% in the first nine months of 2021. McKinsey projects that to meet the Paris Agreement goal, the markets could grow by 15 times, and be worth more than $50 billion by 2030.

Forest carbon credits

Among the various types of credits on the voluntary carbon markets, forest carbon credits, also called REDD+ credits—short for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation or Forest Degradation—are the most richly valued. Carbon market indices by S&P Global Platts show that REDD+ credits were trading in August at twice the value of other types of carbon credits: roughly $12 versus $6.50 on average over the past month.

“The trend is directly related to the social and biodiversity benefits that REDD+ projects deliver; beyond CO2 avoided,” explains Gerald Prolman, CEO of Everland, a conservation marketing company with a large portfolio of REDD+ projects. Such credits have been certified to go beyond climate action and have co-benefits that address other UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) such as no poverty, zero hunger, and decent work and economic growth—attributes highly sought by the markets.

A registry maintained by Verra, the non-profit organization that develops the quality standards against which 70% of projects are certified, shows the mix of companies that retire REDD+ credits—the industry term denoting when carbon credits have been used to offset emissions and therefore represent the most direct link between expenditure and impact—is a diverse one. Some come from high-emissions industries like Chevron and Shell. Others are from luxury sector firms like Gucci and Chanel. Yet others are from food and beverage companies like Ben & Jerry’s and BrewDog, and entertainment industry giants, like Disney and Netflix.

Expenditures are usually confidential, but a few companies see benefits in being transparent. DeLuca says Delta Air Lines spent $30 million and retired 13 million tCO2e of REDD+ credits in 2020. Its REDD+ purchases support projects in Indonesia and Cambodia that together account for almost a million acres of forest, and are home to around 25,000 forest dwellers and endangered species like the Asian elephant and Bornean Orangutan.

And in its 2020 performance update, cosmetics giant Chanel disclosed that it was investing $55 million in nature-based solutions which include REDD+ between 2019 and 2024 in order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2019.

Collectively, companies on Verra’s registry retired around 22 million REDD+ credits in 2020, worth approximately $110 million using reference prices by OPIS. McKinsey estimates that REDD+ could supply emission reductions of up to 2.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) annually—between 4% and 12% of reductions needed from now to 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement goal.

Congo REDD+

Wildlife Works founder Mike Korchinsky is seen as something of a pioneer in the REDD+ space. Even hesitated when Bwangoy invited him to invest in a project in the Congo. The largest country in Central Africa, the DRC contains most of the Congo Forest, the world’s second largest tropical forest and last remaining [IM2] terrestrial carbon sink. The country is also incredibly rich in natural resources, and supplies much of the raw materials that power cellphones and electric vehicles. However, endemic political instability and corruption scare most foreign investors away.

But a visit to Mai Ndombe in 2009 won Korchinsky over. “I saw there was a lot of need, and a lot of capacity, too,” he says.

It took Korchinsky and Bwangoy another two years to secure community consent, and to negotiate with locals and the central government in Kinshasa on how to divvy up the proceeds from the sale of carbon credits—requirements unique to REDD+ projects that ensure benefits flow to those closest to the trees.

After it was agreed that communities would get 25% of all sales, that government taxes of $0.50 per hectare per year or $150,000 annually would be paid regardless of project sales, and that any surplus would be split evenly between the national and local government, and Wildlife Works takes its cut only after project costs were covered. In 2011, the Mai Ndombe REDD+ project was born.
Bigger than the Big Apple

Located in the western central region of the DRC, the project covers an area almost four times the size of New York City and is home to around 180,000 people scattered across 55 dense jungle villages. Employing some 400 local biologists, agronomists, foresters, community organizers, construction engineers, aqua culture experts, and data scientists, the project has three goals: reduce deforestation, increase biodiversity, and empower the community.

To reduce deforestation, 12 of the company’s scientists camp throughout the forest three weeks a month, 11 months a year. They monitor 400 plots of land, each with a 15-meter radius, where they measure and label every tree.

The scientists use “d-tapes” to get the circumference of a tree and laser-based hypsometers to gauge its height, then calculate how much carbon it is storing from the atmosphere based on its biomass. “When we compare plot cards from different years, we can see whether trees have grown, fallen, or new ones have come up,” says head forester Dyems Mbalaka.

Wildlife Works foresters use "d-tapes" to take tree measurements, which are then used to calculate the tree’s biomass and carbon storage. Courtesy of Filip Agoo/Wildlife Works

To complement the forestry team’s efforts, the agronomy team led by Gauthier Kimpese has introduced sustainable crops such as high-yield cassava and onions, which are Congolese staples that the community grows on marginal land without encroaching on primary forest.

“But by far our best invention is animal enclosures,” Kimpese says.

In the past, villagers planted crops in primary forest an hour’s walk from home, to protect them from village animals. Wildlife Works worked with them to create animal enclosures of a few hectares each, away from the villages. “Now the gardens can be closer to the villagers, and the goats, pigs, and sheep have much more open space to roam and eat; and while they do that, they pasteur and fertilize the land,” Kimpese says.
Hippos and bonobos, too

To boost biodiversity, biologists also patrol the forest floor. The Congo Forest is known for wildlife like elephants, hippos and leopards. It is also the home of bonobos, an endangered species, and our closest genetic cousins found only in the dense jungle south of the Congo River where Mai NDombe is.

“We keep track of wildlife species, and abundance,” says lead biodiversity expert Mathieu Bolaa. They also make note of signs of poaching and dismantle animal traps. The cameras they’ve installed sometimes catch poachers in action. Bruno Ilonga, the project manager and a local community leader then prints out copies and posts them like “Wanted” signs throughout the area. Ilonga uses positive reinforcement, too: “I commiserate with the poachers about how hard their jobs are, then we hire them and retrain them as conservationists.”

“When we started, all the animals had either been eaten or chased away. Since then, the elephant population has gone from zero to around 100, and the bonobo population has doubled. Recently, we’ve even had sightings of pangolins, one of the most trafficked mammals,” Bwangoy adds.

When Wildlife Works asked the communities what benefits they wanted from the project, the overwhelming priority was education. “We want the children to have a better future,” says Basabo Booto, chief of the indigenous Batwa Pygmies in the project area. Before Wildlife Works, the children studied under the trees, recalls Seraphin Mputela, elementary school principal in the village of Nsongo: “If it rained, there was no school. If it rained for 100 days, there was no school for 100 days.”

Basabo Booto is chief of the Indigenous Batwa Pygmies in the village of Ikita in Mai Ndombe, DRC. Booto hails the voluntary carbon markets for bringing education and health care benefits, plus the regeneration of the forest. Courtesy of Filip Agoo/Wildlife WorksMore

Wildlife Works has committed to building 28 schools; 10 have been built, and two are underway. “In each village, we hire locals, and use building as a way to teach them new skills, which they can use to earn after the school is finished,” says head engineer Charly Nkuku. Carbon credit revenues also cover teachers’ salaries, school supplies for the 8,500 students in the system, and national exam fees.

Work on the project has avoided the release of some 13 million tCO2e to date. Communities have received their cut of the proceeds, and government taxes have been paid. So far, project costs have exceeded revenue. But this year, for the first time in 10 years, the project expects to be profitable thanks to the growth in corporate demand for carbon credits.

Continued opposition

Despite the benefits REDD+ projects have delivered, they face opposition. “REDD+ has a history full of problems. Scheme after scheme has been unable to prove that it’s led to genuine or permanent reductions in carbon emissions. Companies trying to offset their pollution by putting a price on nature have also harmed land rights for marginalized communities and biodiversity in the Global South,” says Casson of Greenpeace UK.

Specific to Mai Ndombe, a report by Rainforest Foundation UK accuses Wildlife Works of not having properly consulted local communities, and not delivering enough benefits.

“REDD+ is the world’s best—and, frankly, last—hope to withstand the powerful forces that are driving deforestation: big agriculture, big logging, and big mining. It channels finance to communities to preserve their forests, while maintaining local ecosystems and preserving biodiversity. If we don’t preserve our standing forests, it’s game over,” responds Robin Rix, chief policy and markets officer at Verra.

Back in Mai Ndombe, community leader Sakoul Engokulu dismisses the criticism.

“It's like the wind that comes through our villages and brings nothing. Not even in colonial times did we see the schools and clinics we have now. We’ve been forgotten by our government. Logging companies destroyed our forest and scared the animals away with their noisy machines,” he said. “This is the first time anyone has stayed to help us.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

California’s carbon-offset disaster reveals why COP26 was a big disappointment

Le Dong Hai Nguyen
Sat, November 27, 2021

Delegates gather in the Action Zone at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, Thursday, Nov. 11, 2021.

As world leaders gathered in Glasgow last week for the 26th UN climate conference (COP26), one issue had dominated the negotiation table: Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which aims to set a global framework for carbon offset trading. The basic idea behind this is carbon emitters can “offset” their pollution by buying “credits” from projects that claim to reduce carbon emission by planting forests or investing in renewable energy elsewhere. That way, without actually cutting emissions, a polluting company could still proudly call itself “carbon neutral” by buying a number of offset credits supposedly equivalent to its carbon emission.

Yet, the climate summit’s focus on carbon offsetting has led to massive protests from environmental activists, including Greta Thunberg, who denounced it as nothing more than “greenwashing.” While I am no fan of sensational buzzwords in climate change discourse, I agree with Thunberg here.

The idea of carbon offsetting sounds good on paper—after all, a ton of carbon is a ton of carbon, regardless of where and what that came from. However, its disastrous track record here in the Golden State has set a worrying example of how this will play out as COP26 opened the door to carbon trading on a global scale.


Launched in 2013, California’s cap and trade program, the nation’s first economy-wide carbon market, allows polluters such as oil companies to buy offset credits from forest owners who pledge to reduce or delay timber harvesting in exchange. The $2 billion program has nonetheless created incentives for forest-growing companies to rack up millions in revenue by inflating “ghost credits” that do not reflect real climate benefits.

Even worse, forest owners who originally had no intention of deforestation can now hold the authorities hostage by threatening to chop down trees—unless they were granted carbon credits that can then be sold to polluters. This is precisely what happened in 2015, when the Massachusetts Audubon Society, whose stated mission is to manage and safeguard over 40,000 acres of crucial wildlife habitat in western Massachusetts, threatened to log nearly 10,000 of its preserved forests over the next few years. In exchange for not doing this, the society was issued more than 600,000 credits from the California Air Resources Board. This means more than half a million tons of carbon dioxide from polluting companies that purchased the society’s offset credits can now legally enter our atmosphere.

Wearing a face mask as protection against covid-19, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg arrives at Central station in Glasgow, Scotland on Oct. 30, 2021, ahead of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference.

Imagine how this fiasco would play out now that COP26 has approved a global mechanism to trade carbon offsets. If California could allow carbon credits to be overestimated or even created out of thin air, how can we be sure that governments elsewhere in the world, many of whom are authoritarian states plagued by corruption, would not repeat this same error? The inflation of offset credits might come not just from the forest-growing companies but also from the monitoring authorities themselves. And every time a falsely accounted credit is used, net emissions climb up, undermining the whole idea behind carbon offsetting.

Even if the issue around offset credit measurement is magically resolved somehow, another serious dilemma plagues the scheme. Because most of the lands available for carbon sequestration schemes are situated in the Global South—and the cost of doing so is much cheaper there—carbon capture companies will flock to developing countries to purchase land and grow trees. This put the local community that inhabited the land and depended on it for their livelihood in direct competition with powerful private interests from the developed world. This had happened in 2014, when endeavors to buy and conserve forest land by Green Resources, a Norwegian-based company whose buyers of its offset credits include the Swedish Energy Agency, led to forced evictions and food scarcity for thousands of people in Uganda. One could only imagine how many more of these cases will arise in the future, now that COP26 has given the green light to a global carbon market.

Far from being a “win-win-win-win” scenario—for the environment, for the local communities where the offset projects are based, for the carbon capture companies, and for the polluting companies—that proponents of carbon offsetting have proclaimed, the only winners at COP26 are the last two.

Let’s tell it like it is. Carbon offsetting in its current form is not just green-washing; it is another form of colonialism—but in green.

Le Dong Hai Nguyen studies international economics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Le Dong Hai Nguyen is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and studies international economics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Email him at ln406@georgetown.edu

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California’s carbon offset disaster and the disappointment of COP26

Opinion: To achieve Glasgow's climate goals, end old-growth logging at home



Register-Guard
Sat, November 27, 2021

After two weeks of often tense negotiations, the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow have concluded. What remains is to make sense of the commitments the United States, and the international community, made to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

The short answer: not enough. Climate plans submitted by 151 nations would limit warming to 2.5 degrees Celsius. But to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists predict we must keep warming to under 1.5 degrees, which requires cutting worldwide carbon emissions in half by the end of this decade.

That’s a tall order.

Nations will gather again in 2022 to submit stronger emissions-reduction targets. In the meantime, the major emitters, including the U.S., must ramp up fossil fuel emissions cuts. Additional measures require signatories to curb the potent greenhouse gas methane, as well as phase out fossil fuel subsidies and "phase down" coal use.

For the first time, the Glasgow Pact explicitly recognizes the role of natural systems in reducing emissions and drawing down atmospheric carbon. In a side agreement, the U.S. committed to ending domestic deforestation by 2030. This is a big move: Ongoing deforestation in the United States has left us with the most disturbed forests on the planet. As leading climate scientists recently wrote in The Hill: "Very little old growth remains in the United States, and much of what is left of these towering trees has been targeted for logging. But forests on federal lands from coast to coast have been slowly maturing and will become old growth in the decades ahead if protected from chainsaws."

Therein lies the problem. Even as national representatives in Glasgow negotiated our planet's future, federal agencies at home announced a series of timber sales that would log large tracts of Western Oregon’s invaluable mature and old-growth forests. Much like its proposed Flat Country logging project above the McKenzie River, which faces broad community opposition, the Willamette National Forest's Quartzville-Middle Santiam project would log forests up to 150 years old. And two large, new timber sales on Bureau of Land Management-administered forests in the Coast Range propose logging stands up to 240 years old.

Our region’s forests are among the most carbon-rich ecosystems in the world, and logging them in the face of the climate crisis is inexcusable. In Science New, just-published research maps the location and density of Earth’s "irrecoverable carbon" — carbon locked in ecosystems that is vulnerable to release from human activities, which, if lost, could not be restored to those ecosystems by 2050. Areas of exceptionally high density of irrecoverable carbon include the Pacific Northwest, the Amazon and the Congo.

Though the popular movement to plant young trees is laudable, not all trees are equal when it comes to carbon sequestration. Older trees store up to 70% more carbon than logged and replanted forests. Large trees like those our federal government would log should not be for sale; they are too desperately needed for their climate mitigation potential, not to mention their role in providing the last refuges for much of our region’s dwindling biodiversity and safeguarding drinking water sources.

The timber sector is Oregon’s largest carbon emitter, and projects like those proposed by federal agencies are a big reason why. With a nationwide coalition of climate and conservation groups, we have called on the Biden administration to place a moratorium on logging federally managed, mature and old-growth forests nationwide. It’s time for our domestic actions to align with our international commitments for the good of our entire planet.

Rebecca White directs Cascadia Wildlands' forest defense work across Oregon and the Cascadia bioregion. She writes a monthly column for The Register-Guard.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Opinion: To achieve Glasgow goals, end old-growth logging at home

U.S. oil drilling review proposes higher fees, development curbs


FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland testifies to Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in Washington

Jarrett Renshaw, Valerie Volcovici and Nichola Groom
Fri, November 26, 2021, 6:21 AM·3 min read


(Reuters) -The Biden administration proposed a slew of changes on Friday to the nation's federal oil and gas leasing program, including hiking fees on drilling companies and limiting their access to sensitive wildlife and cultural zones.

The recommendations followed a months-long review aimed at ensuring drilling on federal lands and waters benefits the public. But in a sign of the extreme controversy surrounding the issue, environmental groups slammed the proposals as too weak and the industry criticized them as too harsh.


President Joe Biden's administration launched the review earlier this year in what had widely been seen as a step toward delivering on his election campaign promise to end new fossil fuel drilling on federal acreage to fight climate change.

Under the U.S. federal oil and gas leasing program, the Interior Department must hold regular auctions for the drilling industry to boost domestic energy self-sufficiency and raise money for public coffers.

The Interior Department report, however, said the current program "falls short of serving the public interest" and called for new rules to boost royalty rates, bonding rates, and other fees for producers. Current law requires a minimum royalty rate of 12.5% for oil and gas produced on federal acreage, a level that has not changed in about a century.

The report also proposed new rules to avoid leasing "that conflicts with recreation, wildlife habitat, conservation, and historical and cultural resources," it said.

"Our nation faces a profound climate crisis that is impacting every American," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement announcing the recommendations.

"The Interior Department has an obligation to responsibly manage our public lands and waters – providing a fair return to the taxpayer and mitigating worsening climate impacts."

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the U.S. oil and gas industry, criticized the proposals, saying they would heap costs on domestic energy producers at a time of already-high retail gasoline prices.

Environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity and Food & Water Watch, meanwhile, objected to the proposals as too weak.

"These trivial changes are nearly meaningless in the midst of this climate emergency, and they break Biden's campaign promise to stop new oil and gas leasing on public lands," said Randi Spivak, CBD's public lands director.

"Greenlighting more fossil fuel extraction, then pretending it's OK by nudging up royalty rates, is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” she said.

About a quarter of the nation's oil and gas comes from federal leases and the program raises billions of dollars for federal and state budgets.

LONG DELAYED REPORT

The Interior Department had meant for the leasing report to be released by early summer but repeatedly delayed it without explanation.

The department had also attempted to suspend oil and gas leasing during the program review, but was forced to move ahead with auctions after several oil and gas producing states sued in federal court.

A federal auction of millions of acres in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico this month, for example, generated more than $190 million in high bids, the highest since 2019, with major buyers including Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp, BP Plc and Shell.

Haaland has said she wants to reduce the carbon footprint of the nation's federal lands and waters by encouraging leasing for renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal instead of fossil fuels.

Biden, meanwhile, has set a target to decarbonize the U.S. economy - the world's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter - by the year 2050, in part by encouraging a transition away from fossil fuels to renewables.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia, Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Nichola Groom in Los AngelesWriting by Richard ValdmanisEditing by Frances Kerry and Matthew Lewis)

Ten coastal communities band together to defend against flooding from climate change

Dennis Hoey, Portland Press Herald, Maine
Sat, November 27, 2021, 

Nov. 27—Ten communities on Casco Bay are banding together to develop defenses against coastal flooding caused by climate change.

Over the next two years, the towns of Freeport, Falmouth, Cumberland, Yarmouth, Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough, Portland, South Portland, Chebeague Island and Long Island will invest a half million dollars on projects that harness the power of nature to defend against flooding.

Solutions could include restoring salt marshes and beach dunes, making rain gardens to reduce stormwater runoff and landscaping parks to reduce flooding and runoff, and protecting shorelines using natural materials rather than expensive sea walls.

Funding will be provided by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which announced this week that it has awarded $250,000 to the Greater Portland Council of Governments for the regional initiative. The council raised an additional $250,000 in matching funds from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, foundation grants and donations from municipalities.

"Now is the time to start planning for the solutions that will ensure our coast can be economically, environmentally, and socially resilient to current and future impacts," Sara Mills-Knapp, the council's sustainability program manager, said in a statement. "We know that nature-based solutions to flooding are essential to protecting habitats and communities, and GPCOG looks forward to supporting our municipalities in this important long-term planning effort."

Similar planning for a rise in sea levels and storm surge was undertaken by the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission on behalf of the towns of Kennebunk, Wells and York. The towns released their final report in July.

The assessment found that within the three towns, a total of 3,568 parcels, and over $645 million in property value, are at risk if sea levels rise just 1.6 feet — the level expected in Maine by 2050. The report recommends that towns take action now and start making plans to prepare for flooding.

"Coastal flooding and sea level rise pose significant threats to southern Maine communities, where the region's identity, economy, and population are inextricably tied to, dependent on, and concentrated along its beautiful coastline," the report states. "Sea level rise, and increasingly frequent and severe storms driven by climate change will exacerbate towns' vulnerabilities, exposing people, property, the economy and natural resources to intensifying flood hazards."

The council's project, which will take two years to complete, will attempt to engage people whose livelihoods are affected by coastal flooding. Participants will learn about data collection and analysis and research. The Casco Bay watershed comprises almost 1,000 square miles of land and is home to 20 percent of the state's population.

The $250,000 awarded to GPCOG will come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's 2021 National Coast Resilience Fund. Nationally, the fund will distribute $39.5 million to 49 projects in 28 states and territories across the country, funds that will be used to protect coastal communities.

GPCOG is a regional planning agency funded by grants and 25 dues-paying member communities.

Despite drought, New Mexico project to seed clouds scrapped

Fri, November 26, 2021, 
By Andrew Hay

TAOS, N.M. (Reuters) - A plan to seed the clouds over the mountains of New Mexico to increase snowfall during a historic drought was pulled this week after accusations it could poison people and the environment.

Western Weather Consultants (WWC) of Durango, Colorado proposed siting machines near five ski resorts in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to pump silver iodide vapor into the atmosphere and increase ice crystals and snow. A state agency said WWC this week withdrew its application to deploy the 75-year-old technology that is being widely used to fight extreme drought affecting half the western United States.

WWC did not respond to requests for comment.

Cloud seeding seeks to increase precipitation by adding small particles to the clouds that water droplets form around. These turn into snowflakes and raindrops.

The WWC plan, which would have been paid for with state funds, got preliminary state approval, according to an October state filing.

During a public webinar on Monday, officials for WWC, which provides cloud seeding for Vail and Beaver Creek ski resorts in Colorado among other clients, said the technology was an effective way to boost snowfall and studies showed no negative effects on flora and fauna.

The company said then that the five ski areas in the New Mexico target area were not participating in the project.

Well over half of public comments on the webinar opposed the plan. Callers said silver was a toxic heavy metal that could get into groundwater and the soil.

"The solutions are to stop the destruction which causes us to not have rain and water, not to increase further destruction and further manipulation," said Marquel Musgrave, a member of the Nambe Pueblo Native American community.

WWC withdrew its application the next day, according to a statement by the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission.

"The reason they gave was the timeline was pushed back too far for adequate time for the program,” ISC Deputy Director Hannah Risely-White told the Santa Fe New Mexican.

New Mexico resident Mike Davis, who helped lead opposition to cloud seeding, called WWC's withdrawal a victory.

Researchers point to human-caused climate change as intensifying the most severe drought on record in the southwestern United States.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)