A new study led by scientists from the University of Exeter has found that the risk of seabed creatures being exposed to plastics depends on how they feed and interact with their environment, rather than simply reflecting pollution levels in their local area.

All ocean plastic ends up sinking to the seafloor, a richly biodiverse habitat. The marine species who live in this unique environment burrow into the sediment and process food in a variety of ways that determine their levels of plastic exposure, a press release from the University of Exeter said. 

“We know very little about the global seafloor and the species living there, but the impact of plastic pollution is growing even in parts of the deep ocean never seen by humans,” said Dr. Adam Porter, postdoctoral research fellow with the University of Exeter’s Convex Seascape Survey — a five-year project that examines ocean carbon storage — in the press release.

The research team found that seabed creatures living in parts of the ocean with high plastic pollution levels — particularly the Mediterranean and Yellow Seas — had ingested the most plastics.

“The Mediterranean and Yellow Sea animals were the most contaminated in all the studies we looked in. The Mediterranean has repeatedly been identified as likely one of the most contaminated places on Earth given the population numbers surrounding it, its semi-enclosed nature (i.e. not much outflow relative to the N. Atlantic) and the number of rivers that run in also. The Yellow Sea samples are from an area highly polluted – again likely due to regional circulation patterns and proximity to the highly populated cities along the coasts of S.E. Asia,” Porter told EcoWatch in an email.

The highest plastic levels were found in Blue and Red Shrimp (Aristeus antennatus), who live in the northwestern parts of the Mediterranean, and another shrimp species, Crangon affinis, from China’s South Yellow Sea. Each of the Blue and Red Shrimp were found to have 164 microplastics, while individual Crangon affinis had ingested 294 microplastics.

In 93 percent of studies, microplastics were found in animals living on the seafloor.

“We know that species experience sub-lethal (stress/inflammation/false satiation (feeling full) etc.) and indeed lethal effects from ingesting plastic; but this must be caveated with the understanding that these experiments often use high concentrations in order to find the tipping point at which a particular type of plastic becomes lethal,” Porter told EcoWatch. “However, there are a huge number of studies that show that plastics cause internal abrasions, block gut passages, cause inflammation responses due to having plastic in their guts and generally cause harm. This coupled with all the other threats animals on the seafloor face may just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Many earlier studies had focused on mussels and other filter-feeding bivalves, the press release said.

“Contrary to previous thinking, it turns out that many filter feeders have fairly effective methods of releasing unwanted particles rather than ingesting them,” Porter said in the press release.

The researchers found that predators, seabed scavengers called deposit feeders — as opposed to filter feeders — and omnivores were the most likely to take plastic into their bodies. Especially susceptible were marine animals like crabs, as well as starfish, sea urchins, brittlestars, sea cucumbers and squid.

The study, “Microplastic burden in marine benthic invertebrates depends on species traits and feeding ecology within biogeographical provinces,” was published in the journal Nature Communications.

“Organisms living in the seabed, such as clams, worms and shrimps may not seem that important, but they are essential for regulating and recycling the planet’s resources and form the base of the food web,” said co-author of the study Jasmin Godbold, a marine ecology professor at the University of Southampton, in the press release. “Our findings suggest that previous assumptions about the risk of exposure to plastic in our oceans are likely, for better or for worse, to be far from the reality. Irrespective of the amount of plastic pollution, some species are relatively unaffected, whilst others are disproportionately vulnerable.”

The findings of the study will assist scientists and policymakers with filling in knowledge gaps and focusing their actions as details of the Global Plastics Treaty are finalized.

“The only true conservation strategy is to stop producing so much plastic – especially single-use plastic. Such items may only be used for minutes or even seconds, but they persist in the ocean for hundreds of years,” said study co-author Tamara Galloway, a marine scientist and ecotoxicology professor at the University of Exeter, in the press release.

Porter agreed that the best way to stop the damage plastics are doing to marine ecosystems is to bring an end to our reliance on them.

“The key is to stop plastics from entering the environment. It’s too big a job to clean up, plastic is forever in our ecosystem now; we just need to stop any more getting in. Plastic is such a useful product, but our use or abuse of it is what has caused the situation we see today; using a product that lasts hundreds of years to carry water around for a matter of minutes or hours, only to be too often discarded. Unfortunately, at the rate plastics are entering the marine environment the seafloor looks to only experience increasing microplastic concentrations which may have realised or unintentional consequences for life on the seafloor,” Porter told EcoWatch.

The post Microplastic Levels in Seabed Creatures Depend on Feeding Patterns and Location, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

Earth Day is a wonderful occasion for seniors to connect with nature and their community…

The post Earth Day for Seniors: Six Activities for Connection and Well-being appeared first on Earth911.

When U.S. homeowners buy subsidized flood insurance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, they make a commitment to build back better after flood disasters, even if it costs them. FEMA’s notorious 50 percent rule stipulates that if a home in a flood zone suffers damages worth more than half its value, it must be torn down and rebuilt so it’s elevated above flood level. This can cost homeowners hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it prevents the American public from footing the bill for the repeated destruction of vulnerable homes — at least in theory.

Enforcement of the 50 percent rule largely falls to local officials in flood-damaged regions, who are charged with ensuring that their constituents aren’t rebuilding in flood zones. In exchange for this diligence, the federal government subsidizes low-cost flood insurance for homes in communities that certify their compliance with the rule, goosing red hot real estate markets in Florida and other scenic but climate-threatened regions.

As Florida continues rebuilding from 2022’s devastating Hurricane Ian, however, the Biden administration may be signaling that this era of easy money is over. Late last month, FEMA sent an explosive letter to local officials in Lee County, Florida, where over 750,000 people live near some of South Florida’s most prized coastal land. FEMA claimed that almost 600 homeowners in the city of Cape Coral and other nearby towns had rebuilt vulnerable homes in the flood zone over the 18 months since Hurricane Ian, violating the 50 percent rule as well as local construction laws. 

The agency had long given the county and its cities a 25 percent discount on flood insurance in recognition of the county’s efforts to control flood risk, which saved residents millions of dollars a year. The letter threatened to yank away that discount, arguing that the county’s lax approach to the Hurricane Ian rebuild had negated those earlier efforts. The message was clear: After decades of risky construction in floodplains, the feds were putting their foot down. 

This new effort to penalize floodplain construction is yet another sign that the long-hidden costs of climate change and development are starting to catch up with homeowners in coastal states — and at the very same time that housing costs more broadly are increasing for many Americans. FEMA has already raised flood insurance premiums across the country in recent years to keep up with mounting risk, and private home insurance companies have also hiked premiums for wind insurance in several states along the Gulf Coast. 

The crackdown in Lee County represents an attempt by FEMA to shift the cost burden of climate risk away from the federal government (and the public that funds it) and onto local homeowners. This will test the strength of the area’s white-hot real estate market, potentially forcing many homeowners to walk away from their waterfront properties. As the federal government and private insurers both try to reduce their exposure to climate change, Lee County and its cities could be canaries in the coal mine for a housing market disfigured by mounting flood risk.

The reaction from these canaries has been swift and furious. Elected leaders from the county and the city blasted FEMA as “villains” and accused the agency of hampering Florida’s hurricane recovery at the behest of President Joe Biden. Lee County’s board of commissioners mulled suing the agency at a tense meeting a few days after the announcement. Local TV stations ran dozens of stories about the impact FEMA’s decision would have on homeowners, who are already dealing with a steep rise in both flood insurance and traditional property insurance, which covers wind damage. 

“It’s almost like revenge politics,” said Cecil Pendergrass, a Lee County commissioner, during the county meeting after the announcement. “Our citizens, our taxpayers are being held hostage here.”

FEMA soon put its decision on pause, giving the county an extra 30 days to prove it hadn’t let homeowners break the 50 percent rule or build in the floodplain. It is unclear whether Lee County or cities like Cape Coral will be able to do that. Federal and local officials declined to provide Grist with details about the post-Ian violations, citing privacy concerns, but if homeowners have already rebuilt their destroyed properties, the county won’t be able to fix that within a month.

The bigger question for communities around the country is whether FEMA is changing how it enforces the 50 percent rule in an effort to force homeowners out of flood-prone areas.

“The floodplain management community is tracking this very closely,” said Susanna Pho, the founder of a flood risk firm called Forerunner, which helps flood-prone communities with FEMA compliance.

Lee County has long been a poster child for risky waterfront development. The city of Cape Coral sits on artificial filled land in what used to be a swampy section of Florida shoreline, with no barrier between the city’s urban landscape and the Gulf of Mexico. When hurricanes strike, as Ian did in 2022, they can push as much as 15 feet of storm surge through the city, inundating thousands of homes. Nearby cities such as Bonita Springs, which also caught a penalty from FEMA, aren’t much safer.

The 50 percent rule is supposed to reduce this risk over time by ensuring that flood-prone homeowners don’t rebuild the same vulnerable properties over and over. If a county determines that a home has suffered what FEMA calls “substantial damage,” it must force the homeowner to tear it down and elevate a new home above flood level, often on concrete pilings. If a county doesn’t comply, FEMA can kick it out of the federal flood insurance program, rendering homes more or less uninsurable, or downgrade its discounts as it did with Lee County. This rule acts as a de facto tax on risky property: Flood insurance payouts max out at $250,000 per home, which means homeowners are often on the hook for tearing down their houses and building new ones.

The problem is that determining what counts as “substantial damage” is a complicated process. Local officials conduct basic “windshield assessments” in the first few weeks after a storm, logging damage information that they can see from the street as they clear debris. They only do detailed examinations for the 50 percent rule when homeowners request permits to rebuild. But many homeowners never request permits from their city or county. Instead, they come back and patch up homes that they should be tearing down and rebuilding at higher elevations, and the local government either never catches them or looks the other way.

This mandate puts local governments in a tough political situation: They have FEMA on one side, urging them to enforce strict flood rules, and displaced homeowners on the other side, trying to get back in their homes without going broke. It’s unclear how much Lee County and its cities knew about the hundreds of rebuilt homes that FEMA alleges were noncompliant after Ian, but attempts to flout the 50 percent rule have been a scourge for the agency going back decades.

Albert Slap, a coastal planning consultant in Florida, said he understood why Lee County or cities like Cape Coral might have allowed homeowners to repair their homes without elevating.

“It’s pretty clear that the motivation is voters,” he said. “The people who got damaged are voters, and they’re going, ‘If you make me build back better, I’m not gonna be able to do it, and I’m leaving. I voted you guys into office and you’re screwing me.’”

Lee County says it followed normal protocol after Hurricane Ian, conducting basic damage assessments in the immediate aftermath of the storm and inspecting homes only later on when homeowners requested permits. Flood and disaster experts who spoke to Grist said this protocol is more or less standard across Florida and other hurricane-prone states, which raises the question of whether FEMA is changing the way it enforces the 50 percent rule and cracking down harder on rogue rebuilds.

FEMA didn’t answer questions about its enforcement strategy. In response to questions from Grist, a spokesperson said the agency is “committed to helping communities take appropriate remediation actions” to fix the rebuild violations. A spokesperson for Lee County said the county “will work with its partners at FEMA during a 30-day extension period.”

Adam Botana, a Republican state representative whose district encompasses much of Lee County, said he had faith that Lee County and other local governments would address the violations that FEMA identified and take action against homeowners who rebuilt without following FEMA regulations.

“Nobody likes the 50 percent rule, but I understand there have to be rules,” he told Grist. “Some municipalities may be a little more lax than others, but we have to keep everybody in line.” He added that he thinks the county will be able to prove many of the alleged violations didn’t take place.

Even if Lee County manages to contest the decision, homeowners in Southwest Florida are almost guaranteed to suffer more financial pain as a result of this enforcement effort. If FEMA stays the course and removes the discount, it will raise flood insurance costs for homeowners in unincorporated parts of the county between $14 and $17 million per year, equating to a $300 annual hit for each flood insurance customer in the area. But if Lee County cracks down on the 50 percent rule and FEMA restores the discount, homeowners who rebuilt in flood zones may have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to elevate their homes.

This new penalty comes on top of a much larger rate hike that FEMA has rolled out over the past few years as part of an effort to fix issues with the flood insurance program. This new system, called Risk Rating 2.0, will triple insurance costs in Lee County by the time it takes full effect, raising the average annual premium from around $1,300 to almost $4,000, with some of the most extreme bills ballooning well over $10,000 per year. Florida’s private insurance market for wind damage is also in a tailspin: More than 30 private carriers have pulled back from the state over the past two years, thanks in part to mounting hurricane risk. Those that have stuck around have doubled or tripled their prices.

Lisa Miller, a veteran Florida political consultant and former state insurance regulator, said the burden of rising costs shouldn’t trump the need to ensure that Lee County homes are resilient to future disasters.

“When I hear someone tell me they don’t want to pay $12,000 a year, I remind them, ‘We live in Florida,’” she said. “Our catastrophe risk is higher than almost anywhere in the world. What matters is, the homes that were repaired when they should have been torn down and rebuilt — will they withstand the next storm? That’s the question.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline FEMA is making an example of this Florida boomtown. Locals call it ‘revenge politics.’ on Apr 16, 2024.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Sign up for WBEZ newsletters to get local news you can trust.

Earlier this month, Paulina Vaca stood at the corner of Pulaski Road and 41st Street, one of Chicago’s busiest intersections for truck traffic. 

“I’m seeing a sea of trucks,” said Vaca, who works with the Center for Neighborhood Technology, or CNT. In less than 60 seconds, she counted eight trucks.

That was just the beginning. In less than one hour, about 430 trucks passed through the intersection she was monitoring in Archer Heights, a mostly Latino community on the Southwest Side of the city. She was joined by José Miguel Acosta Córdova, who works for a community group known as the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization. 

The two organizations recently put out a report measuring the extent of the city’s truck traffic, counting trucks moving through one nearby suburb and 17 Chicago neighborhoods. Using sensors installed in 35 spots, they tracked the number of medium- and heavy-duty trucks that went past in a span of more than 24 hours. Over the course of a day, more than 5,100 trucks and buses were recorded in Archer Heights — the most of any neighborhood. 

That data points to key questions that Chicago and Illinois need to answer, said Acosta Córdova. 

“When are there too many warehouses and when are there too many trucks?” he asked.

That’s a question that goes beyond Chicago, which happens to be the largest freight hub in North America. Black and brown communities living near the industrial corridors of many urban areas are disproportionately paying for it with their health.

Vaca and Acota Córdova are not alone in their research on local traffic. Across the country, local groups are increasingly finding ways to quantify the extent of localized air pollution, transforming real-time data into useful information that neighbors can use to inform day-to-day decisions, like whether or not to stay inside.  

While state and federal agencies do actively monitor air quality, their networks are limited, according to a United States Government Accountability Office report published last month. The national ambient air quality monitoring system is not designed to pinpoint pollution hotspots. More and more, localized data is exactly what frontline communities are calling for in order to protect and advocate for themselves.  

“They want to know better than what their pollution level probably is,” said James Bradbury, the director of research and policy analysis at the Georgetown Climate Center, a nonpartisan research institution that studies federal and state climate policies. 

“They would like to have more granular and specific information that informs what’s happening in their communities,” Bradbury said.

Community air quality monitoring programs are taking off across the country, he added. 

From Newark, New Jersey, to the Bay Area, local organizations are counting trucks and installing small networks of air quality sensors to fill the gap left open by state monitoring systems. As of 2022, the federal government had funded over 130 community air monitoring projects nationwide to the tune of $53.4 million. 

Freight continues to be a major economic juggernaut in the Chicago region, and it comes at a significant health cost. The Respiratory Health Association ranked Illinois fifth out of all states for the highest number of deaths from diesel engine pollution per capita in 2023. 

Diesel is what, in large part, moves freight around, according Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for the Respiratory Health Organization. 

“What comes out of the tailpipe of those engines is a collection of air pollutants: everything from nitrogen oxides to fine particulate matter, and even carbon dioxide,” Urbaszewski said. Exposure to these pollutants are associated with a host of medical issues, ranging from respiratory to cardiovascular health impacts.

Acosta Córdova said Illinois needs to adopt tighter truck regulations that are already in use in California and several other states. These policies would raise emission standards for tailpipe pollution and set a path for zero-emission trucks. 

Vaca said that this new trucking data she and her colleagues compiled won’t surprise longtime residents of the city’s industrial corridors. But it is hard evidence that she hopes will help convince elected leaders that air pollution is an issue of life or death. 

Read Next

The EPA’s push to clean up trucking goes way beyond 18-wheelers

Jake Bittle

“Having these numbers, it’s really crucial to then advocate for more electric vehicles,” Vaca said. “To use this to advocate against permitting more industry in areas where it’s already overburdened.” 

More than 1,000 lives and over $10 billion could be saved annually if the Chicago region electrified approximately 30 percent of all light and heavy-duty vehicles, according to a study published last fall by researchers at Northwestern University. 

“We found that the majority of the health benefits from those reductions in pollution occur in environmental justice communities or communities of color, or disadvantaged communities in Chicago,” said Daniel E. Horton, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Northwestern.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced finalized federal emissions standards for heavy vehicles that would require manufacturers to limit pollution from heavy trucks beginning in 2030. It’s estimated the new policy will prevent a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere. But Acosta Córdova said the guidelines do not go far enough to address the climate crisis. In Illinois, it’ll be years before residents see relief from freight driven air pollution.

“The biggest thing we want to see out of this is more data collection,” Acosta Córdova said. “But, also eventually, [we want] a full transition to zero emission trucks.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Monitoring a ‘sea of trucks’ in Chicago on Apr 16, 2024.

Did you know that you can save resources and reduce your environmental impact by using…

The post We Earthlings: Why Use Recycled Paper? appeared first on Earth911.

According to a new analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), more than $100 billion of developing countries’ debt could be made available to spend on nature restoration, protecting ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs and climate change adaptation.

The research is part of IIED’s “hidden handbrakes” campaign, designed to reveal and explain unseen obstacles to climate action.

“Many of the countries most threatened by rising temperatures have huge debt burdens, and are forever paying interest to wealthier nations that have contributed much more to the climate crisis,” said Laura Kelly, IIED’s director of research group Shaping Sustainable Markets, in a press release from IIED.

Kelly explained that enormous amounts of money are going to fund big polluters in a way that is fundamentally unfair.

“Money that could help restore damaged ecosystems and protect vulnerable communities from floods or drought is instead flowing to banks and polluters in the rich world,” Kelly said. “The IMF and World Bank should recognise that the current way of lending just doesn’t work for people or the planet. Our broken financial system must move on from colonialist, 20th-century thinking if it’s going to serve everyone fairly.”

IIED, a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, looked at the likelihood of debt-for-nature exchanges in some of the 49 developing countries most vulnerable to defaulting on external debts, according to available data.

Estimates from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were used as the basis for the analysis, reported Reuters. The figures showed that the countries owed a total of $431 billion to the IMF, wealthier nations and hedge and pension funds.

Countries that could benefit from the debt-for-nature exchanges included Sri Lanka, Pakistan and The Gambia, which Kelly said was at “huge risk” of rising sea levels and needed to invest in wetland preservation and flood prevention.

When an agreement is reached between a nation and its creditors, part of the debt owed can be forgiven in exchange for reaching “specific, measurable and traceable” results in nature or climate projects, IIED said.

IIED calculated that approximately $103.4 billion could be made available for debt-for-nature swaps. These types of exchanges have already been used in Gabon, Ecuador, Belize and Cabo Verde.

“The debt, biodiversity and climate crises are closely linked in the world’s poorest countries, which also tend to be the most vulnerable to climate disasters and to have emitted relatively little greenhouse gas,” IIED said. “Most so-called climate finance is provided as loans, rather than grants, which means low-income nations are pushed further into debt even as they try to battle climate change – a hidden brake on progress. Research has found poorer countries spend far more servicing their debts than they receive in funds to fight climate change.”

IIED believes more of the exchanges should be used to relieve debt burdens of developing countries, along with other tools. It added that, for some countries, outright debt cancellation may be the best choice.

“They should be considered as part of layered solutions on a per-country basis, alongside agreements that pause debt repayments when disasters strike, or ‘parametric’ insurance that can cover payments while recovery takes place,” the press release said.

Of the nations looked at in the report, 29 are members of the Least Developed Countries Group, which are represented in United Nations climate negotiations as a bloc. The report concluded that the debt-for-nature swaps could make as much as $33.7 billion available for these nations — much more than the $6.1 billion given to them in 2021 for climate finance.

According to figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the 49 countries in the IIED analysis received a total of $13.8 billion in 2021 for climate finance, which IIED pointed out was “significantly less” than what was needed.

“The amount of money that could be freed up through swaps also vastly outweighs the roughly $700 million pledged to the COP28 ‘loss and damage’ fund so far,” IIED said.

The post More Than $100 Billion in Debt-for-Nature Swaps Could Help Fight Climate Crisis, Report Says appeared first on EcoWatch.

The built environment, particularly office buildings other urban facilities, are responsible for 39% of the…

The post Earth911 Podcast: Making Billions of Square Feet of Commercial Space Sustainable with CBRE’s Rob Bernard appeared first on Earth911.

This story is published as part of the Global Indigenous Affairs Desk, an Indigenous-led collaboration between Grist, High Country News, ICT, Mongabay, Native News Online, and APTN.

In 2019, Makanalani Gomes stood on the slopes of Mauna Kea, the tallest mountain in Hawaiʻi, face-to-face with Honolulu riot police. For decades, Native Hawaiians like Gomes watched — and protested — as their sacred mountain was bulldozed and excavated for the construction of telescopes and other astronomical facilities. After the observatories were built, they abandoned construction equipment and debris, littering Mauna Kea’s summit.

Gomes and other activists spent months sleeping on the mountainside, in the cold, successfully blocking construction crews from heading up the slope to build the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope, and to date, the project remains in limbo.

“We are in the fight of our lives and in the front lines every day,” Gomes said.

This week, Gomes will continue her work fighting for Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty when she speaks at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York — the largest gathering of Indigenous leaders, activists, and policymakers on the planet. Beginning on Monday, the 23rd annual event runs until April 26 and will focus on “emphasizing the voices of Indigenous youth” like Gomes, who is now one of three co-chairs of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus. 

“We are intrinsically of our lands and of our waters, of our mountains and of our oceans, and then laying down our bodies in turn to preserve what we have left,” she said. “So I think that’s what I’m looking forward to, is just being with people who understand the walk that we walk and the honor and privilege that we do it with.”

The forum was established more than two decades ago as a permanent advisory body for Indigenous Peoples at the U.N., and is a uniquely influential venue for attendees to ensure their perspectives are heard. Indigenous Peoples and nations can’t vote at the U.N. like member states, but the forum has the ability to make official recommendations as an adviser to the Economic and Social Council, one of the six main U.N. bodies that helps facilitate multinational agreements on sustainable development. The forum has 16 members that serve three-year terms, with eight nominated by state governments and eight by Indigenous organizations. 

“The importance of the Permanent Forum is that it puts pressure on other parts of the United Nations to take appropriate action regarding Indigenous Peoples,” said Andrea Carmen, executive director of the International Indian Treaty Council. 

The existence of the forum is itself a product of Indigenous advocacy. Mililani Trask, a longtime Native Hawaiian activist and one of the first members of the Permanent Forum, said advocates used to have to sit and listen while U.N. members discussed issues relevant to them. She said that Indigenous advocates wanted a permanent space where they could speak on the floor. 

“Once we were established as a body, it shifted the balance of power,” Trask said. It meant “we have a basis in working with governments in partnerships instead of going to the gun.”

Trask also said that the forum elevated Indigenous expertise. 

“When the forum came into existence, it was the first time that non-white Indigenous international legal experts came to the forefront,” Trask said. Member states “didn’t think that we had any.”

She said the advisory body had a huge influence on the eventual adoption of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples five years later in 2007. The U.N. document outlines the rights of Indigenous Peoples and has been a key tool for Indigenous advocates who seek to hold states and corporations accountable for human rights violations. It’s not legally binding, but it provides an international standard that Indigenous people can point to when their rights are violated. 

Just two years ago, the venue enabled the Yaqui Nation in Mexico to regain their sacred Maaso Kova from a museum in Stockholm, Sweden. The deer head is used in ceremonial dances and was taken as part of the colonial enslavement and suppression of the Yaqui people. The return of the Maaso Kova in 2022 was what The New York Times reported as the “first successful repatriation of cultural artifacts to an Indigenous group overseen by the United Nations under its Declaration of Indigenous Rights.” 

Andrea Carmen, who is also Yaqui, said it wouldn’t have happened without the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. 

The forum doesn’t accept human rights complaints, or initiate investigations, like the special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples. But veteran attendees like Carmen say it is an opportunity to meet high-level officials from the U.N. and state governments, bring awareness to important issues, and create community with other Indigenous Peoples from around the world. The latter is what Gomes is most looking forward to as she prepares her remarks to open Tuesday’s discussion on self-determination and Native youth.

“So many of us, although we’re young people, we’ve already experienced being land defenders and water defenders and literally using our physical bodies to defend Earth Mother,” she said. 

This year’s focus will be on how to strengthen those self-determination rights with an eye toward Indigenous youth like Gomes. Gomes is hopeful that the theme will result in more youth attending for the first time. Bryan Bixcul, who is Maya Tz’utujil from Guatemala and works as an advocacy coordinator at the nonprofit Cultural Survival, is one of them. 

“A lot of things are being discussed at the international level, but the implementation happens at the national level,” said Bixcul.

Among other events, he’s looking forward to a conversation on the first day of the forum about ongoing efforts to replace fossil fuel energy production with cleaner alternatives like solar and wind that release fewer carbon emissions. Indigenous Peoples’ territories are critical to the success of the energy transition as land they manage holds an estimated 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity, but new mining projects and conservation areas have frequently overlooked their rights. Last year, the Permanent Forum commissioned a group of experts to meet and discuss the green energy transition and its effect on Indigenous Peoples. The resulting report is on the agenda for this year’s forum and spells out a long list of ways that governments and corporations can and should respect Indigenous rights, such as passing laws to require clean energy projects to respect the right for Indigenous people to consent to projects on their land. 

Bixcul is also helping to organize a workshop for youth on April 18 to help build solidarity and learn effective advocacy strategies to bring back home. Side events like this are a critical part of the gathering this week and next because they facilitate discussions and connections between activists who have to abide by official time limits for speeches during the main agenda. 

“We think it’s very important for communities to outline their priorities — their self-determined priorities — so that as they are facing threats, now or in the future, they are prepared to be engaged in these conversations with corporations,” he said. 

One tangible output of the forum will be a report that summarizes recommendations collected during the forum, which advocates can reference as they continue their work in their home countries and in other United Nations bodies. For example, in last year’s report, the Permanent Forum condemned the use of the term “Indigenous Peoples and local communities,” arguing that Indigenous Peoples should be separated from local communities instead of being lumped together, which could diminish the former’s rights. The IPLC acronym continues to be used, but Indigenous advocates have repeatedly pointed to the forum’s statement to bolster their argument for its disuse. They’re concerned that the language could have major implications for who gets access to global funding to mitigate climate change and whether Indigenous people get a say in land decisions, including the expansion of conservation areas.

Last year’s forum also called for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, to conduct a special report led by Indigenous experts to analyze climate change’s effects and opportunities for Indigenous peoples. The recommendation wasn’t immediately taken up by IPCC, but Carmen from the International Indigenous Treaty Council said that’s typical.

“These things take some time,” she said. 

Many of the topics at this year’s Permanent Forum aren’t new: Last year, there was a particular focus on climate, and planned sessions on land defenders and militarization have been discussed before. But one agenda item that wasn’t there last year is a meeting with the president of the General Assembly to discuss the outcome document from the 2014 World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, a report from the General Assembly meeting a decade ago that lists a series of commitments by U.N. member states to Indigenous rights, such as implementing policies that promote the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

Carmen said such a high-level meeting hasn’t happened for a few years and plans to use the opportunity to ask about the creation of a new U.N. body dedicated to the repatriation of Indigenous items. 

The Permanent Forum can be challenging to navigate for Indigenous youth, especially those who are from more rural areas, need visas, or face language barriers. But Gomes said she has been inspired by how many Indigenous people attend despite such hurdles. 

“We find a way to navigate in these systems that weren’t designed by us, or for us,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Your guide to the 2024 UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on Apr 15, 2024.