Waiting for others to act may be the best way to learn but, sometimes, taking…
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Savannah Seydel, vice president of sustainability and impact at Better Earth, a maker of compostable…
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There are lots of good reasons to spend time in nature. From the fresh air…
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The holiday season is a time of joy, celebration, and giving. Foodies and cooking enthusiasts…
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The European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA) have partnered to use satellites to address climate crisis threats and illegal logging in European Union (EU) forests.
The commission has proposed a new law where the EU would use Copernicus Sentinel satellites to collect forest data in order to stay on top of threats like logging and wildfires exacerbated by climate change, reported Reuters.
“As world leaders grapple with the urgency of climate action, the role of space-based technology and data has become increasingly critical,” a press release from the ESA said. “Access to actionable information is fundamental to fight climate change, to support knowledge-based policies and initiatives and their implementation, and to ensure that this is balanced with sustainable economic development and societal benefits.”
EU member countries would also be required to measure on-the-ground trends, including the volume of trees and ancient forest locations.
“We need to see the trends, need to predict better, we need to see how they are responding to climate change,” Virginijus Sinkevicius, EU Environment Commissioner, told Reuters. “At this moment there are no comprehensive monitoring requirements to provide an overall picture of the state of our forests.”
According to Brussels, data provided by EU member states currently has long delays and gaps, which get in the way of the ability to prepare for climate threats.
Extreme heat and drought in the EU have increased the risk of destructive wildfires. More than two million acres was lost to forest fires last year, according to government data, Reuters reported.
Sinkevicius said the new satellite data will help keep track of illegal logging and other threats across borders.
Europe’s forests are essential for storing carbon dioxide and helping to meet nations’ climate goals, as well as for flood protection.
Last year, 43 percent of land affected by wildfires in Europe was in the network of Natura 2000 protected areas, which cover many habitats and threatened species, reported Euronews Green.
EU forest protection group Fern said the new law was “a potentially golden opportunity,” but added that it should also require EU nations to take steps to boost the health of forests, Reuters reported.
“Space, and in particular Earth observation, offers a unique perspective on how to tackle climate challenges faced by humanity,” said Kurt Vandenberghe, the European Commission’s director-general for climate action, in the press release. “Space technologies are crucial for reaching climate neutrality and climate resilience by 2050. Through our joint initiative, we are committed to exploring and enhancing opportunities for the development and broader implementation of space-based solutions dedicated to climate action.”
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Companies in Nigeria and Germany have signed two agreements: a $500 million renewable energy memorandum of understanding (MoU) and a gas export accord.
According to Ajuri Ngelale, spokesperson for Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, the renewable energy MoU is seeking investments in projects all over the country, primarily in rural communities, reported Reuters.
Farouk Gumel, Chairman of Union Bank of Nigeria, confirmed a $500 million commitment for the green energy projects and pointed out the necessity of including rural communities and attracting more people to participate in the formal economy, Africa Business Insider reported.
The other party to the renewable energy MoU is Germany’s DWS Group.
A liquefied natural gas (LNG) export accord was also struck between Johannes Schuetze Energy Import AG of Germany and Nigeria’s Riverside LNG.
The agreement to bring LNG from Nigeria to Germany would put a stop to 50 million cubic feet of natural gas flares in Nigeria each day, Africa Oil+Gas Report said.
“The project will supply energy from Nigeria to Germany at 850,000 tonnes per annum, expanding to 1.2Million tonnes per annum,” said CEO of GasInvest David Ige, as reported by Africa Oil+Gas Report. “The first gas will leave Nigeria for Germany in 2026, and there will be further expansion.”
Nigeria is home to the largest gas reserves in Africa at 200 trillion feet. However, the country burns off approximately 300 million cubic feet each day because of a lack of adequate processing facilities, Reuters reported.
Since President Tinubu was elected, a gas subsidy was stopped and restrictions were lifted on foreign exchange trading. Tinubu is looking to make Nigeria more appealing to investors in order to invigorate an economy that has enormous inflation, record debt, slow growth and the theft of its biggest export, crude oil.
President Tinubu was in Berlin for the G20 Compact with Africa summit.
“Since 1999, we have witnessed changes in democratic governance, with peaceful transfers of power within and between parties. Democracy in Nigeria has proven to be flexible and resilient,” Tinubu said, according to Africa Oil+Gas Report. “Shake off any remnants of the military era syndrome; we have moved beyond that. Despite challenges faced by other African nations, Nigeria stands firm, and we are your partners.”
Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz said the country will invest heavily in African green energy projects to the tune of four billion euros until 2030, reported Reuters. Scholz pointed out that the investments could help Germany in its transition to becoming carbon neutral.
“Africa is our partner of choice when it comes to intensifying our economic relations and moving toward a climate-neutral future together,” Scholz said, as The Associated Press reported.
If Germany is to achieve net zero by 2045, the nation will need to ramp up its imports of green hydrogen, including from Africa, Scholz said at the 10th German-Nigerian Business Forum that preceded the G20 Compact with Africa earlier this week, reported Reuters.
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The U.S. Coast Guard is searching off the Louisiana coast for the source of a leak in a 67-mile-long pipeline that has spilled over 1 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
When the leak started has not been specified, but it was first reported by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at 9:10 a.m. on Nov. 16, according to The Hill. The pipeline is owned by Main Pass Oil Gathering Company, which closed the pipeline earlier that same day around 6:30 a.m., as reported by The Guardian.
Main Pass Oil Gathering Co. is owned by Third Coast Infrastructure, a company based in Houston, that has joined a Unified Command with the Coast Guard and the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office to respond to the crude oil spill. However, officials have not yet determined a responsible party for the spill.
“Overflight teams observed visible oil Friday moving southwest away from the Louisiana shore. Three skimming vessels are working to recover oil on the surface,” the Coast Guard shared in a statement. “On Saturday and Sunday, overflights observed intermittent surface sheens. Additional surface observations are ongoing with two Coast Guard cutters on scene and additional overflights.”
According to officials, the spill, which happened about 20 miles out from the mouth of the Mississippi River, has not yet affected the shoreline, Nola.com reported. But some pelicans have been found with oil on their bodies, and officials are concerned about how the spill could impact vulnerable wildlife in the area.
“There are endangered and threatened species in Louisiana waters. Most of the coastal Louisiana is wetlands and marshes, and that’s typically considered really sensitive to oil,” Doug Helton, emergency operations coordinator for NOAA, told WWL-TV. NOAA is assisting with the spill response.
Matt Rota, the senior policy director for Healthy Gulf, said one of the biggest concerns is how the oil spill may impact endangered sea turtles.
This incident is larger than the average oil spill, The Hill reported. In the past 50 years, about 44 oil spills have each leaked over 420,000 gallons of oil in the U.S., and many other smaller oil spills of one oil barrel or less occur each year. At an estimated 1.1 million gallons, this oil spill is much larger, although an oil spill of any size still threatens the environment.
The cause of the leak remains under investigation, but the incident comes amid increasing scrutiny of fossil fuel development in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have been particularly concerned about the critically endangered Rice’s whale, a recently discovered type of baleen whale that lives in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Continued oil and gas development in the Gulf represents a clear, existential threat to the whale’s survival and recovery,” scientists shared in a 2022 letter to the Biden administration, as reported by CBS News. “The government’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill estimates that nearly 20% of Gulf of Mexico whales were killed, with additional animals suffering reproductive failure and disease.”
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Happy (almost) Thanksgiving, Looking Forward fam! However you celebrate this holiday, if you celebrate it, we hope you’re taking time this week to savor the company of family and friends, the changing of the seasons — and of course, food, glorious food.
Cooking a feast, whether it’s for two people or 20, can come with some stressful considerations. What to make? How much to make? How to budget time and money? And, since you’re here reading this newsletter, you may also be thinking about how to prepare delicious, celebratory meals that uphold your dedication to a clean, green, just world.
Food writer and recipe tester Caroline Saunders has given this some thought. Saunders worked at Grist for a number of years before heading to pastry school at Le Cordon Bleu Paris to pursue her passion for climate-friendly desserts. She started a podcast and a newsletter on the topic, and this week, we asked her to share some of her favorite tips and recipes for building climate awareness into holiday cooking.
For even more, check out Saunders’ story on the emerging genre of climate cookbooks
“When I have family or friends coming into town, I end up cooking in two streams,” Saunders says. The first stream is before the main event. For this lead-up time, Saunders emphasizes recipes that are easily riffable and can use whatever’s on hand to avoid waste and extra trips to the store.
For example, a grain salad and accompanying “fridge-door dressing” from Perfectly Good Food by Margaret and Irene Li, a cookbook that focuses on flexible cooking and kitchen confidence as an approach to zero-waste. “What those recipes do, and what all the recipes in that cookbook do, is get you to think in categories of ingredients and get you to try to remember some key ratios,” Saunders explains. The dressing, for instance, starts with two parts oil to one part acid. “You can go tangy, you can go creamy, but the point is that it makes you look at your fridge and say, ‘I have some basic sense of where to begin and I can just use what I have.”
Another recipe she loves, in a similar vein, is a halloumi, broccoli, and chickpea bake from One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones. “It’s something where you can switch up the vegetables, the beans and pulses, you can swap the halloumi for tofu, and it all is doable on one tray in the oven really fast.”
Planning for a special feast offers an opportunity to think about what ingredients you want to put center stage — and how. That spotlight could be placed on a star from the plant or fungi kingdoms instead of a turkey or ham. “To the extent that there is some psychological appeal of a perfect, sexy main and a simplicity appeal of a one-ingredient main, mushrooms might be a good contender,” Saunders says. She’s also considering a recipe amusingly titled “A Rutabaga Pretending to Be Ham,” from the cookbook Eating for Pleasure, People, & Planet by Tom Hunt.
But climate-friendly swaps don’t have to be limited to replacing meat. “I like the idea, especially at these holiday cooking moments where you’re putting a little bit more time and attention into your cooking, to go beyond the basics of leaning into plants and using what’s on hand,” Saunders says, “to also think about biodiversity, and how eating a variety of things that grow relatively near you can actively contribute to restoring biodiversity and strengthening regional food systems.”
For example, she cites a wild rice pilaf with apples, cranberries, and pecans that Indigenous chef Mariah Gladstone contributed to the U.N.’s cookbook, For People and Planet. Starring an ingredient from your region, like wild rice in the Great Lakes area, can be a way to contribute to the health of local economies and ecosystems.
A meringue recipe from “Eating for Pleasure, People, and Planet” that stars whipped aquafaba — chickpea water — an ingredient that usually gets dumped down the drain. Caroline Saunders
Saunders also looks for ingredients that she can plan to feature in a variety of ways — like canned chickpeas. For part of her holiday menu, she’s planning to crisp some up to go on top of a carrot soup — and then she’ll use the water from the can, known as aquafaba, to whip into a meringue with blood orange and chocolate, another recipe from Eating for Pleasure, People, & Planet. “I love moments like that,” she says. “With a little bit of advanced planning, you can figure out, ‘Will I have a leftover portion of an ingredient that could be used in something else?’”
I personally will eat leftovers until the day I die (of food poisoning) — but if you’re staring at your post-holiday fridge wondering what you’re going to do with the various Tupperwares and wrapped-up bits and bobs, Saunders has some suggestions to help you avoid sending that food to the landfill. “I think about a couple of scaffolding-type recipes that you could graft savory leftovers onto and sweet leftovers onto,” she says. On the savory side, things like stuffing, vegetables, and dinner rolls could be thrown together with eggs in a strata — a type of bready, eggy casserole dish that could make a crowd-pleasing brunch for whoever might still be kicking around the day after a holiday dinner. Saunders recommends this easily customizable recipe from the food blog Two Kooks in the Kitchen.
On the sweet side, any fruit leavings — apples that didn’t make it into the pie, cranberries that didn’t make it into the sauce — can be swapped into your favorite blueberry muffin recipe to go along with your strata brunch.
And if you’re fully maxed out on desserts, Saunders has a simple solution: the freezer. “In two months, you will no longer be tired of apple pie and you will be super thrilled to fold it into some vanilla ice cream while you watch The Great British Bake Off.”
— Claire Elise Thompson
One of my favorite things to do with leftover vegetable scraps (carrot butts, onion skins, stems of any kind) is stash them in my freezer to turn into homemade vegetable stock. When I’ve got a full bag, I just add enough water to cover the stuff, a little salt and pepper, and boil for about an hour. Then strain out the scrappies, and voilà! Cheap soup broth.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A blueprint for climate-friendly holiday cooking on Nov 22, 2023.
Caviar made from the eggs of wild sturgeon is now illegal, as the ancient fish was brought to the edge of extinction by poaching. Caviar can only be traded legally internationally if it comes from farmed sturgeon, reported Cell Press.
The regulations in place to protect the endangered species are being broken, however, according to a team of sturgeon specialists. The experts made the discovery by conducting isotope and genetic analyses on caviar from Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, all nations that border populations of remaining wild sturgeon.
The team found that half of the samples of commercial caviar products they tested were illegal, with some not even containing a trace of the fish.
“In Europe, the Danube is the last river with functional populations of Beluga (Huso huso), Russian (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), stellate (Acipenser stellatus), and sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus) sturgeons. But the intensive exploitation of these populations, along with habitat alterations, has brought them to the brink of extinction,” the researchers, led by Arne Ludwig of the Leibniz-Institute for Zoo & Wildlife Research, wrote in the study.
The study, “Poaching and illegal trade of Danube sturgeons,” was published in the journal Current Biology.
The four wild sturgeon species left in Europe that are able to produce caviar are found in the Black Sea and the Danube River. All of the species have been protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 1998.
“The conservation status of the Danube sturgeon populations renders each individual important for their survival, and the observed intensity of poaching undermines any conservation effort,” the researchers wrote in the study.
Starting in 2000, the species’ CITES listing was accompanied by an international labeling system designed for all caviar products to end illegal trade. However, even with the protections, local accounts were that illegal poaching continued to occur, though no formal investigations were conducted.
In order to find out the actual source of caviar products produced in regions with native sturgeon that are sold commercially, the research team bought caviar in person and online from a variety of vendors, including local restaurants, shops, bars, markets and aquaculture facilities. Five samples were also included that had been confiscated by authorities. They collected and analyzed a total of 149 caviar and sturgeon meat samples.
The researchers analyzed DNA and isotope patterns from each sample and found that, of the samples, 21 percent came from wild-caught sturgeon that were sold in all countries included in the study. The team found that 29 percent violated CITES trade laws and regulations, which included listings of the incorrect country of origin or the wrong species. An additional 32 percent were categorized as “customer deception,” such as samples from fish raised using aquaculture rather than in the wild as the products said.
“Our results indicate an ongoing demand for wild sturgeon products, which is alarming, since these products endanger wild sturgeon populations,” the researchers wrote. “The persistent demand fuels poaching and indicates that consumers do not fully accept aquaculture products as a substitute. In addition, caviar being sold in violation of CITES and EU obligations questions the effectiveness of controls in general and the labeling system in particular.”
The researchers also found that a dish served in Romania called “sturgeon soup” did not contain any sturgeon, but was rather made from Nile perch and European catfish, reported Cell Press.
The researchers suggest that much of the illegal poaching could point to the economic stress being experienced by local fishers.
“The finding of many products sourced from wild populations can be interpreted as an indicator of the high fishing pressure due to the lack of alternative income opportunities for fishermen, as well as a lack of enforcement,” the authors wrote in the study. “At the same time, corruption cannot be excluded as a factor.”
The research team also indicated the likelihood that law enforcement is lacking in these regions, due to illegal poaching not being prioritized by local authorities or because the tools necessary to prove the illegal origin of a fish are not available. Either way, the researchers emphasized that fast action is crucial.
“Although poaching and illegal wildlife trade are often considered a problem in developing countries, these findings bear evidence that a high ratio of poached sturgeon products originates from EU and accession candidate states,” the authors wrote. “The control of caviar and sturgeon trade in the EU and candidate member states urgently needs improvement to ensure that Danube sturgeon populations will have a future.”
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How can we make one of the most recycled materials more sustainable? Meet Jennifer Bogs,…
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