indigenous
“According to our criteria and classification system:
- A total of 39 of the top 50 emission offset projects, or 78% of them, were categorised as likely junk or worthless due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cuts.
- Eight others (16%) look problematic, with evidence suggesting they may have at least one fundamental failing and are potentially junk, according to the classification system applied.
- The efficacy of the remaining three projects (6%) could not be determined definitively as there was insufficient public, independent information to adequately assess the quality of the credits and/or accuracy of their claimed climate benefits.
“Overall, $1.16bn (£937m) of carbon credits have been traded so far from the projects classified by the investigation as likely junk or worthless; a further $400m of credits bought and sold were potentially junk.” – keep reading
Infographic: How are carbon offsets supposed to work?
We can’t just sit around and wait to see what will happen next. We need positive action.
I’ve read a lot of Climate Adaptation Plans and Strategies over the past the last few years, but He Toka Tū Moana Mō Maketū (Maketū Climate Change Adaptation Plan) is hand-down the best. It’s clearly laid out, outlines the community’s priorities, and can readily serve as a template to help every community around Aoteara develop their own Climate Adaptation Plans. Most important of all:
It’s iwi led, community driven, it’s a plan that’s been decided by those who live here. – Elva Conroy, Kaitohotohu / Facilitator (Video; to listen Watch on Youtube)
Winner of the 2023 Supreme Planning Awards, the Maketū Climate Change Adaptation Plan was developed by Ngāti Pikiao Environmental Society, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whakaue ki Maketū , Whakaue Marae Trustees, and Conroy and Donald Consultants.
In the words of the Maketu Iwi Collective, ‘we will be resilient like the anchor stone Takaparore – strong and steadfast against the elements and tides of change and uncertainty. Regardless of what happens as a result of a changing environment, we will remain standing’. – New Zealand Planning Institute, April 2023.
Rainier, seasons shifting, with broad disturbances for people, ecosystems and wildlife
Reprinted with permission from The Conversation
Matthew L. Druckenmiller, University of Colorado Boulder; Rick Thoman, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Twila Moon, University of Colorado Boulder
In the Arctic, the freedom to travel, hunt and make day-to-day decisions is profoundly tied to cold and frozen conditions for much of the year. These conditions are rapidly changing as the Arctic warms.
The Arctic is now seeing more rainfall when historically it would be snowing. Sea ice that once protected coastlines from erosion during fall storms is forming later. And thinner river and lake ice is making travel by snowmobile increasingly life-threatening.
Ship traffic in the Arctic is also increasing, bringing new risks to fragile ecosystems, and the Greenland ice sheet is continuing to send freshwater and ice into the ocean, raising global sea level
In the annual Arctic Report Card, released Dec. 13, 2022, we brought together 144 other Arctic scientists from 11 countries to examine the current state of the Arctic system.
NOAA Climate.gov
The Arctic is getting wetter and rainier
We found that Arctic precipitation is on the rise across all seasons, and these seasons are shifting.
Much of this new precipitation is now falling as rain, sometimes during winter and traditionally frozen times of the year. This disrupts daily life for humans, wildlife and plants.
Roads become dangerously icy more often, and communities face greater risk of river flooding events. For Indigenous reindeer herding communities, winter rain can create an impenetrable ice layer that prevents their reindeer from accessing vegetation beneath the snow.
Arctic-wide, this shift toward wetter conditions can disrupt the lives of animals and plants that have evolved for dry and cold conditions, potentially altering Arctic peoples’ local foods.
When Fairbanks, Alaska, got 1.4 inches of freezing rain in December 2021, the moisture created an ice layer that persisted for months, bringing down trees and disrupting travel, infrastructure and the ability of some Arctic animals to forage for food. The resulting ice layer was largely responsible for the deaths of a third of a bison herd in interior Alaska.
There are multiple reasons for this increase in Arctic precipitation.
As sea ice rapidly declines, more open water is exposed, which feeds increased moisture into the atmosphere. The entire Arctic region has seen a more than 40% loss in summer sea ice extent over the 44-year satellite record.
The Arctic atmosphere is also warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the globe, and this warmer air can hold more moisture.
Under the ground, the wetter, rainier Arctic is accelerating the thaw of permafrost, upon which most Arctic communities and infrastructure are built. The result is crumbling buildings, sagging and cracked roads, the emergence of sinkholes and the collapse of community coastlines along rivers and ocean.
Wetter weather also disrupts the building of a reliable winter snowpack and safe, reliable river ice, and often challenges Indigenous communities’ efforts to harvest and secure their food.
When Typhoon Merbok hit in September 2022, fueled by unusually warm Pacific water, its hurricane-force winds, 50-foot waves and far-reaching storm surge damaged homes and infrastructure over 1,000 miles of Bering Sea coastline, and disrupted hunting and harvesting at a crucial time.
Arctic snow season is shrinking
Snow plays critical roles in the Arctic, and the snow season is shrinking.
Snow helps to keep the Arctic cool by reflecting incoming solar radiation back to space, rather than allowing it to be absorbed by the darker snow-free ground. Its presence helps lake ice last longer into spring and helps the land to retain moisture longer into summer, preventing overly dry conditions that are ripe for devastating wildfires.
Snow is also a travel platform for hunters and a habitat for many animals that rely on it for nesting and protection from predators.
A shrinking snow season is disrupting these critical functions. For example, the June snow cover extent across the Arctic is declining at a rate of nearly 20% per decade, marking a dramatic shift in how the snow season is defined and experienced across the North.
Even in the depth of winter, warmer temperatures are breaking through. The far northern Alaska town of Utqiaġvik hit 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 C) – 8 F above freezing – on Dec. 5, 2022, even though the sun does not breach the horizon from mid-November through mid-January.
Fatal falls through thin sea, lake and river ice are on the rise across Alaska, resulting in immediate tragedies as well as adding to the cumulative human cost of climate change that Arctic Indigenous peoples are now experiencing on a generational scale.
Greenland ice melt means global problems
The impacts of Arctic warming are not limited to the Arctic. In 2022, the Greenland ice sheet lost ice for the 25th consecutive year. This adds to rising seas, which escalates the danger coastal communities around the world must plan for to mitigate flooding and storm surge.
In early September 2022, the Greenland ice sheet experienced an unprecedented late-season melt event across 36% of the ice sheet surface. This was followed by another, even later melt event that same month, caused by the remnants of Hurricane Fiona moving up along eastern North America.
International teams of scientists are dedicated to assessing the scale to which the Greenland ice sheet’s ice formation and ice loss are out of balance. They are also increasingly learning about the transformative role that warming ocean waters play.
This year’s Arctic Report Card includes findings from the NASA Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission that has confirmed that warming ocean temperatures are increasing ice loss at the edges of the ice sheet.
Human-caused change is reshaping the Arctic
We are living in a new geological age — the Anthropocene — in which human activity is the dominant influence on our climate and environments.
In the warming Arctic, this requires decision-makers to better anticipate the interplay between a changing climate and human activity. For example, satellite-based ship data since 2009 clearly show that maritime ship traffic has increased within all Arctic high seas and national exclusive economic zones as the region has warmed.
For these ecologically sensitive waters, this added ship traffic raises urgent concerns ranging from the future of Arctic trade routes to the introduction of even more human-caused stresses on Arctic peoples, ecosystems and the climate. These concerns are especially pronounced given uncertainties regarding the current geopolitical tensions between Russia and the other Arctic states over its war in Ukraine.
Rapid Arctic warming requires new forms of partnership and information sharing, including between scientists and Indigenous knowledge-holders. Cooperation and building resilience can help to reduce some risks, but global action to rein in greenhouse gas pollution is essential for the entire planet.
Matthew L. Druckenmiller, Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder; Rick Thoman, Alaska Climate Specialist, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Twila Moon, Deputy Lead Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It comes as no surprise. Following COP 26, in December last year it was evident that the carbon budget to stay under 1.5C already was bankrupt. Some simple arithmetic clearly demonstrated that.
Since COP26, the ‘Don’t-Look-Up’ mentality, or perhaps the ‘war-in-Ukraine’ and ‘post-Covid-economy’ have become diversionary topics. The latest UN GAP Report begins with a clear admission, and an admonition. Nations have shaved just 1% off their projected greenhouse gas emissions for 2030, at a time when reductions need to be 45% to have even a chance to keep temperatures under 1.5C. In short, there is no credible no credible pathway in which global temperatures under that 2.8C, and “...uncertainties in the climate system mean that warming of up to 4C cannot be fully ruled out.”
These uncertainties are the dangerous tipping points explained in more detail on this website.
If you’re not up to reading the full report, Carbon Brief has an in depth analysis. While the report also offers solutions, the window is closing on fingernails barely clinging to the sill.
“Every year, the negative impacts of climate change become more intense. Every year, they bring more misery and pain to hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Every year, they become more a problem of the here and now, as well as a warning of tougher consequences to come. We are in a climate emergency.
“And still, as UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2022 shows, nations procrastinate. Since COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, new and updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) have barely impacted the temperatures we can expect to see at the end of this century.
“This year’s report tells us that unconditional NDCs point to a 2.6°C increase in temperatures by 2100, far beyond the goals of the Paris Agreement. Existing policies point to a 2.8°C increase, highlighting a gap between national commitments and the efforts to enact those commitments. In the best- case scenario, full implementation of conditional NDCs, plus additional net zero commitments, point to a 1.8°C rise. However, this scenario is currently not credible.
“To get on track to limiting global warming to 1.5°C, we would need to cut 45 per cent off current greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. For 2°C, we would need to cut 30 per cent. A stepwise approach is no longer an option. We need system-wide transformation. This report tells us how to go about such a transformation. It looks in-depth at the changes needed in electricity supply, industry, transport, buildings and food systems. It looks at how to reform financial systems so that these urgent transformations can be adequately financed.
“Is it a tall order to transform our systems in just eight years? Yes. Can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions by so much in that timeframe? Perhaps not. But we must try. Every fraction of a degree matters: to vulnerable communities, to species and ecosystems, and to every one of us. Most importantly, we will still be setting up a carbon-neutral future: one that will allow us to bring down temperature overshoots and deliver other benefits, like clean air.
“The world is facing other crises. We must deal with them. But let us remember that they also offer opportunities to reform our global economy. We have missed the opportunity to invest in a low-carbon recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, we are in danger of missing the opportunity to boost clean and efficient energy as a response to the energy crisis. Instead of missing such opportunities, we must capitalize on them with confidence.
“I urge every nation and every community to pore over the solutions offered in this report, build them into their NDCs and implement them. I urge everyone in the private sector to start reworking their practices. I urge every investor to put their capital towards a net-zero world. The transformation begins now. ”
– Inger Anderson, Executive Director, UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2022
This is fast emerging as a critical issue for billions of people. As part of its week-long series on the topic, Carbon Brief hosted a free webinar (video below) on whether it is likely to be the defining issue at the next round of UN climate talks, COP27.
See this interactive article: Should developed nations pay for ‘loss and damage’ from climate change?
It comes after Carbon Brief published this interactive article ‘Should developed nations pay for ‘loss and damage’ from climate change? addressing the key questions surrounding loss and damage, a timeline detailing how the issue has featured at UN talks, a feature profiling victims of “non-economic loss and damage”, and an article asking various stakeholders to comment on how it links to climate justice.
“In a landmark decision, a United Nations committee on Friday found Australia’s former Coalition government violated the human rights of Torres Strait Islanders by failing to adequately respond to the climate crisis.”
This decision sets a precedent that has direct implications for Aoteora. For the first time:
“Significantly, deep Indigenous cultural and ecological knowledge, rather than Western climate science, proved key to this UN decision. This marks a departure from broad international climate politics where Indigenous laws, cultures, knowledges and practices are often sidelined or underrepresented.”
“The Torres Strait Islanders ‘Group of Eight’ claimed Australia failed to take measures such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and upgrading seawalls on the islands. The UN upheld the complaint and said the claimants should be compensated.
“This decision is a breakthrough in Indigenous rights and climate justice, including by opening up new pathways for Indigenous communities – who are often on the frontline of the climate crisis – to defend their rights.
“The Albanese government, which has stated its commitment to work with the Torres Strait on climate change, must now meet this moment of possibility and challenge.
“…The evidence was backed by findings from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which called for urgent action to protect the vulnerable region.
– Professor, Environment and Development Sociology, The University of Queensland