Cropped 8 March 2023: High seas; Trees; Wildlife unease

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped. 
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

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Snapshot

A “historic” agreement to protect the ocean was reached after years of negotiations. The UN chief described the deal as “crucial” to addressing climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. 

A forest conference in Gabon focused on protecting the world’s forests, but France, which co-organised the summit, raised eyebrows over plans for biomass power plants in French Guiana. 

Meanwhile, a study found that total ecosystem collapse is “inevitable” if losses in wildlife and biodiversity are not reversed. 

Key developments

‘The ship has reached the shore’

HIGH WATER MARK: On Saturday 4 March, history was made as nations reached an agreement to protect the world’s oceans beyond national boundaries, following decades of talks and 38 straight hours of negotiations. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth Q&A.) A “full day after the official deadline for the talks had passed”, conference president Rena Lee of Singapore “took to the floor of room two of the UN headquarters in New York” and announced that the treaty had been agreed, the Guardian reported. Lee received a standing ovation from delegates “who had not left the conference hall for two days and worked through the night in order to get the deal done”. While the treaty has been agreed, delegates must meet at a later date to formally adopt the text after it goes through technical edits and translation, with Lee making it clear “the text would not be reopened” at that time, the Guardian wrote. UN secretary general António Guterres welcomed the agreement, calling it a “victory for multilateralism…crucial for addressing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution”, Al Jazeera reported.

UNDERCURRENTS: Behind the success of the talks were “a series of questions that held up negotiations” and “a frustration from developing nations” that “they shouldn’t be penalised for problems that largely result from the activities of richer nations”, the New York Times reported. “African member states have not been the reason why we have the marine biodiversity crisis,” Sierra Leone’s Michael Imran Kanu told the outlet, while calling for a strong treaty “so that countries can’t find loopholes to continue overexploiting ocean resources”. Marine genetic resources and how to “fairly share eventual profits” were a key “stumbling block” for the talks, the Guardian wrote as the talks neared their conclusion. The newspaper pointed out that developed nations have the technology and resources to “scour the seas for new products”, but disagree on aspects of benefit-sharing. A delegate from an African country who spoke to the outlet said there was “a lot of insensitivity and privilege” on display as states fought for compromise. 

DEEP DIVE: While the treaty does not have specific conservation targets or mention the 30×30 goal for biodiversity conservation set under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at COP15 in December 2022, many media outlets have focussed on this aspect as one of the main outcomes. What the treaty can do is help nations designate marine protected areas. The treaty also “requires environmental impact assessments for potentially harmful activities, such as proposals to conduct geoengineering experiments in the ocean to combat climate change”, Bloomberg reported. It also “provides for the transfer of marine technology to developing countries”​​. Additionally, “various provisions of the treaty will be put into place by majority vote rather than consensus, which is the case with other UN treaties”, Bloomberg added. 

Tree time

PLANS IN FRANCE: France has been looking for an exemption to allow the European and French space agencies to build and operate two biomass power plants in French Guiana, Mongabay reported. The outlet said that, if allowed, this could result in the “clearcutting of thousands of hectares of intact, biodiverse Amazon rainforest for bioenergy production”. The exemption was introduced as an amendment in an EU renewable energy directive. Mongabay noted that the latest version of this proposal continues to define woody biomass as a carbon-neutral, renewable energy source despite several studies saying otherwise. Almuth Ernsting, a bioenergy expert, told the publication: “By promoting deforestation in part of the rainforest it controls, France risks losing any credibility to global forest preservation and its climate change commitments.”

GABON SUMMIT: This comes on the back of a One Forest Summit co-organised by France and held in Gabon. The summit aimed to strengthen ambition on preserving and sustainably managing forests. French president Emmanuel Macron pledged $52.9m to help reward countries for protecting their forests and biodiversity, reported Reuters, via Voice of America. In an interview with Bloomberg, French ecological transition minister Christophe Béchu said it is “just impossible to respect the Paris Agreement” if the world’s carbon sinks, such as tropical rainforests, are not protected. Meanwhile, Gabon has been pushing for greater compensation for the carbon-sucking power of its own forests. A separate piece in Bloomberg reported that the country “strictly limits logging, palm oil production and other activities that lead to forest destruction”, but can be limited in receiving money for “carbon offsets”. The outlet wrote: “For a carbon offset to fulfil its function of compensating for its buyer’s emissions, it needs to have financed something that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. But, in Gabon, forest protection has been happening anyway.” 

TREE SCIENCE: Meanwhile, the Times reported on a new study, published in Nature, which showed that deforestation can cause reduced rainfall levels. The study estimated that a projected 40% decline in forest cover in the Congo Basin over the next 80 years would result in 10% less rainfall in the area. A co-author of the study, Prof Callum Smith, told the Times that this rainfall reduction will “impact people living nearby through increased water scarcity and depressed crop yields”. Another new study found that the northern hemisphere’s boreal forests could be a “time bomb” of carbon after wildfires in 2021 released a record level of emissions into the atmosphere. CNN reported that boreal forests – which cover swathes of Canada, Alaska and Russia – usually make up 10% of worldwide wildfire-related emissions. In 2021, this rose to 23%, the study outlined. These forests are carbon-dense, CNN noted, and they release 10-20 times more carbon for each unit of area burned by wildfires compared to other ecosystems. 

In the wild

WILDLIFE RISKS: It was World Wildlife Day last week and a recent study found that total ecosystem collapse is “inevitable” if losses in wildlife and biodiversity are not reversed. The lead author of the study, Dr Yuangeng Huang, told the Guardian: “We are currently losing species at a faster rate than in any of Earth’s past extinction events. It is probable that we are in the first phase of another, more severe mass extinction.” Meanwhile, the Times said that a rise in tourism numbers in Kenya is putting wildlife at risk. The newspaper examined the increase in “‘Ferrari safaris’ – vehicles racing to see nature’s most Instagram-worthy events, such as a big cat’s successful kill or a mother with young”. Separately, a new report found that more than half of Britain and Ireland’s native plants have declined since the 1950s, the Independent reported. 

ACT ON NATURE DEAL: Governments need to put forward “money and plans” to take immediate action on the global nature agreement reached at COP15 last year, the new acting UN biodiversity chief said. The Guardian reported that David Cooper, the acting executive secretary for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said: “The key thing at this stage is to ask what the agreement means for the agricultural sector, infrastructure, health, urban development and economic development.” The UN biodiversity deal reached at COP15 in Montreal in December set a mission to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and protect 30% of land and ocean by 2030. Cooper took over the role from Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, who was appointed as the deputy UN environment chief in late December. 

NEW FAO LEAD: Meanwhile, a new director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization is set to be elected later this year. Three candidates are vying for the organisation’s top role, including current director-general Qu Dongyu, China’s former vice-minister of agriculture and rural affairs. He was elected as FAO director-general in June 2019. The other contenders are Hamid Khalaf Ahmed, an advisor to the Iraqi prime minister, and Dilshod Sharifi, chief of the external economic cooperation department at the Tajikistan ministry of economic development and trade. The four-year term will start in August after a candidate is elected in July.  

News and views

FELL SCOOP: A new investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found that environmental auditors around the world have been approving “green labels” for products associated with deforestation and human-rights violations. One of the stories in the series looks at “blood teak” from Myanmar and the demand for that wood in the $8.5bn luxury yacht industry. It found that despite EU sanctions, teak and timber “worth almost €45m has entered the EU since the military coup”, with Italy becoming “the hub of the teak trade in Europe”, Deutsche Welle reported. 

WAITING FOR RAIN: Parts of Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda have experienced their sixth consecutive failed rainy season, Al Jazeera reported, with drought trends now worse than they were during the 2011 famine. Tens of thousands of people so far have died during this drought, which has lasted almost three years – the longest on record in Somalia. A report by Africanews highlighted the displacement situation in the Horn of Africa. Shamsa, a Somali woman seeking asylum in Kenya, told the publication: “I won’t go back to Somalia. The challenges continue, there is still drought. I lost my animals, the farm dried up and my house collapsed.”

JET-ZERO: Up to 68% of farmland in the UK would be needed to grow enough biofuel crops to meet current demand for jet fuel, a new report said, calling into question current net-zero aviation ambitions. Business Green said that the Royal Society report cautioned that there is no “single, clear, sustainable alternative to jet fuel able to support flying at today’s scale”. The report analysed different decarbonisation routes, including green hydrogen, biofuels, ammonia and synthetic fuels. Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss highlighted further details of the report in a Twitter thread. 

DRC OIL: An investment firm is set to put in a $400m bid to turn oil concessions in the Congo Basin and Virunga National Park into conservation projects, the Guardian reported. Biodiversity fintech company EQX Biome sent an expression of interest to the Democratic Republic of the Congo government for the 27 oil exploration blocks up for auction, the newspaper said. Some of the permits are available in endangered gorilla habitat, parts of the world’s largest tropical peatlands and areas of the Congo Basin rainforest. The Guardian said that the company is proposing to prevent oil exploration in different areas by setting up conservation projects and selling carbon and biodiversity credits. 

TIPPLE TROUBLE: Tequila and Mezcal face an “uncertain future” as rising temperatures and land degradation threaten the bat that pollinates the agave plant, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported, via Euronews Green. AFP said that suitable environments for the Mexican long-nosed bat will be reduced due to climate change. This will significantly cut down on their interaction with agave plants, which will likely make the plants more vulnerable. Meanwhile, the Guardian reported that some winemakers in Spain are trying out different grape varieties to combat the effects of rising temperatures on fruit ripening. Increased heat has left “winemakers rushing to harvest in hopes of protecting the carefully concocted balance between the fruit’s sugars and acidity”, the newspaper said. 

Extra reading

• We must stop treating grasslands as wastelands – Sutirtha Lahiri, Scientific American
• Collagen craze drives deforestation and rights abuses – Elisângela Mendonça, Andrew Wasley and Fábio Zuker, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
• The vertical farming bubble is finally popping – Adele Peters, FastCompany
• Phosphorus saved our way of life – and now threatens to end it – Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker

New science

Future warming from global food consumption
Nature Climate Change

Food consumption could add nearly 1C to global temperature rise by 2100 – with three-quarters of this warming driven by high-methane foods such as red meat, dairy and rice, a new study found. Researchers looked at greenhouse gas emissions from current food consumption and their annual emissions over time, broken down by GHG, based on five population projections, then used a climate model to assess the impact of these emissions on surface air temperature change. The findings showed that more than half of the anticipated warming could be avoided with healthier diets, cutting food waste and improving production practices. The study concluded that current food production and consumption is “incompatible with sustaining a growing population while pursuing a secure climate future”.

Combining socioeconomic and biophysical data to identify people-centric restoration opportunities
npj Biodiversity

A new study demonstrated “a people-centric approach” to restoration to assist decision-makers in finding sites for country-specific restoration projects that consider different socio-environmental conditions. Researchers focused on India, which has one of the highest restoration targets globally, and examined poverty as quantified by land tenure and living standards. They found that out of the 579 districts they considered, 116 of the poorest districts had high biophysical restoration potential: places that offer the maximum biodiversity and carbon sequestration value. They also found that land tenure in these places was mostly private, making them ideally suited to agri-pastoral restoration instead of carbon and forest-based restoration projects. The authors wrote that this shows the need for restoration projects that are led by developmental and environmental conditions, instead of prescriptive priorities.

Historical and citizen-reported data show shifts in bumblebee phenology over the last century in Sweden
Biodiversity and Conservation

New research found that bumblebees in Sweden have been taking their first flight an average of five days earlier over the last two decades. Researchers examined 10 bumblebee species from two datasets – one from museum collections and the other from citizen science observations. The findings showed that the global temperature rise has had a “clear and strong effect on the advancement of queen flight period”. Agricultural land-use changes during the 20th century also drove species to emerge earlier, the study concluded, adding that certain bumblebee species might not be able to track temperature and resource changes in some landscapes, which may lead to a “higher likelihood of local extinctions”.

In the diary

• 6-10 March: Pacific Week of Agriculture and Forestry 2023
• 22-24 March: Global workshop on reporting on progress towards the global forest goals and targets of the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2030
• 14-16 March: International Conference on GMO Analysis and New Genomic Techniques
• 28 March: [Webinar] Reporting on net zero targets: How to tell real ambition from greenwashing | Clean Energy Wire and NewClimate Institute

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to [email protected].