From April 23 to 29, the United Nations Environment Programme’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee is holding its fourth session to develop a legally binding international treaty on plastic pollution in Ottawa, Canada.

However, countries are divided over what the contents of the landmark agreement should be.

“This process is without doubt an accelerated and ambitious one, because we don’t have decades to act,” said Inger Andersen, UN Environment Programme’s executive director, as Reuters reported.

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Plastics production globally accounts for approximately five percent of fossil fuel emissions, but could increase to 20 percent by the end of the century if left unchecked, a report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States said last week.

In 2022, nations agreed to come to a legally binding accord by December of 2024 that tackles the entire plastics lifecycle.

As talks began, there was pushback from some governments and petrochemical interests in response to calls for bans or production limits on some fossil fuel chemicals.

“We have to face those challenges and work with them. Compromise is an important word that we need to take into account,” said chair of the summit, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, who is also Ecuador’s vice foreign affairs minister, as reported by The Guardian. “This is a negotiation, there are regions and countries with a specific position that we understand. We know plastic pollution is affecting the environment, we know it’s affecting human health because of the substances in plastics.”

Valdivieso said delegates would be divided into working groups to discuss issues that had yet to be resolved, such as what should be included in the treaty and how to carry it out, Reuters reported.

“Time is not our best ally,” Valdivieso said, as reported by Reuters. “We need to start negotiating on opening day.”

Most plastic ends up in landfills and the environment, polluting waterways and harming humans and wildlife. Nearly a fifth globally is burned, releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

“Only 10% of it gets recycled, something needs to be done and that is why these negotiations are so important. We need to have the whole life cycle approach,” Valdivieso said, as The Guardian reported.

It remains to be seen whether countries like Saudi Arabia and China, which have argued against production limits and bans, will be able to be persuaded by the majority of countries who want them, reported Reuters.

Negotiators from the U.S., the largest plastic waste producer, have suggested requirements to deal with single-use plastics and specific chemicals that have caused public health concerns.

“It is very important we are negotiating this treaty now. The world is in a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. But while there are agreements in place for the first two, we have no legislation, no global agreement on plastic pollution,” Valdivieso said, as The Guardian reported.

The post Negotiators Divided as UN Plastics Treaty Talks Begin in Ottawa appeared first on EcoWatch.

In its new Global EV Outlook 2024, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said electric vehicle (EV) sales will reach 17 million this year — up from 14 million in 2023.

In 2024, EVs are projected to make up roughly one out of nine cars sold in the United States, one in four in Europe and 45 percent of total car sales in China, an IEA press release said.

“Electric cars continue to make progress towards becoming a mass-market product in a larger number of countries,” the report said. “Tight margins, volatile battery metal prices, high inflation, and the phase-out of purchase incentives in some countries have sparked concerns about the industry’s pace of growth, but global sales data remain strong.”

More than one-fifth of cars sold globally in 2024 are predicted to be electric, with growing demand set to substantially reduce oil consumption used for road transportation over the coming decade, the press release said.

The pace of EV sales means road transportation’s oil demand is expected to peak around 2025, according to the IEA report, as Reuters reported.

The report added that around six million barrels of oil per day would be cut from oil demand by 2030, with an 11 million barrel reduction by 2035 if countries meet their stated climate and energy policies.

By 2030, EVs are projected to make up nearly one in five cars on the roads in the U.S. and European Union and one in three in China.

In the first quarter of this year, EV sales went up approximately 25 percent compared to 2023, which was similar to the same period in 2022, but from a wider base. Global EV sales from January through March 2024 were roughly equal to all EV sales in 2020.

Last year, nearly two-thirds of EVs sold in China were less expensive than their internal combustion engine (ICE) equivalents.

“Electric cars are generally getting cheaper as battery prices drop, competition intensifies, and carmakers achieve economies of scale,” the report said. “In most cases, however, they remain on average more expensive than ICE equivalents.”

The IEA added that the need for more charging infrastructure to meet rising demand would present an important challenge, with a need for charging networks to increase six-fold by 2035.

“Ensuring that the availability of public charging keeps pace with electric vehicle sales is crucial for continued growth, according to the report. The number of public charging points installed globally was up 40% in 2023 relative to 2022, and growth for fast chargers outpaced that of slower ones,” the press release said. “[P]olicy support and careful planning are essential to make sure greater demand for electricity from charging does not overstretch electricity grids.”

Fatih Birol, IEA’s executive director, emphasized that, rather than slowing down, the EV market was still growing

“The continued momentum behind electric cars is clear in our data, although it is stronger in some markets than others,” Birol said in the press release. “Rather than tapering off, the global EV revolution appears to be gearing up for a new phase of growth. The wave of investment in battery manufacturing suggests the EV supply chain is advancing to meet automakers’ ambitious plans for expansion.”

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Extreme heat stress is affecting much of Europe at record rates, according to a new report from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

According to the European State of the Climate 2023 report, temperatures in Europe were consistently high, with higher than average temperatures for 11 months last year. The report also noted that for 2023, Europe experienced its warmest September on record.

Further, the report found that there is an increasing number of days with heat stress in Europe, alongside a decreasing number of days with cold stress. There were a record number of days in 2023 with “extreme heat stress,” defined as days with a temperature that feels higher than 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit).

While the number of days with extreme heat stress is rising, so too are the number of deaths linked to heat stress. According to the report, heat-related deaths increased by an estimated 94% in Europe over the past 20 years.

The findings revealed increasing heat waves as well, with a reported 23 of the 30 most severe heat waves in Europe happening since 2000, and five of the most extreme heat waves happening in just the past three years.

“If humans continue to burn oil, gas and coal, heatwaves will continue to get hotter and vulnerable people will continue to die,” Friederike Otto, a climate scientist with Imperial College London who was not a report contributor, told The Guardian. Otto also told the publication that the number of deaths could possibly be even higher because of fossil fuel emissions.

The report showed other extreme events linked to climate change happening in Europe during 2023, such as a loss of about 10% of the remaining volume of glaciers in the Alps, fewer than average snow days in parts of Europe and record-high sea surface temperatures around the continent.

“In 2023, Europe witnessed the largest wildfire ever recorded, one of the wettest years, severe marine heatwaves and widespread devastating flooding,” Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S, said in a statement. “Temperatures continue to increase, making our data ever more vital in preparing for the impacts of climate change.”

Overall, Europe was revealed in the report to be the fastest-warming continent, heating up about twice the average rate of the rest of the world.

While the report did reveal concerning data linked to climate change and raise concerns over public health, it also included some good news linked to renewable energy. As WMO reported, Europe reached a record 43% proportion of renewable electricity generation.

With the increase in storm activity in late fall and early winter, there was added wind power production potential, according to the report. Increased precipitation and river flow also boosted energy generation potential from hydropower. Some parts of Europe also benefited from higher than usual solar energy generation potential.

The report highlighted that reducing emissions and curbing climate change, in part through a focus on renewables, will be important in avoiding worsening heat waves, ice melt, flooding and other extreme events.

“Robust environmental information, underpinned by data from the European Union’s Copernicus Earth Observation Programme, is revealing significant changes across our planet,” Mauro Facchini, head of unit for Earth Observation at the Directorate General for Defence Industry and Space of the European Commission, said in a statement. “The data presented in the European State of the Climate are alarming, but this research is also a vital tool in our aims to transition towards sustainable energy, reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, and become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.”

The post Extreme Heat Stress in Europe Hit Record Levels in 2023, Report Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

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.

For years, Maureen Penjueli, who is Indigenous iTaukei from Fiji, has watched her home country survive devastating cyclones and flooding caused by unusually heavy rainfall. She watched as the coastal village of Vunidogoloa was forced to relocate inland to escape rising seas, and as the long-time head of the nongovernmental advocacy group Pacific Network on Globalization, Penjueli knows climate change will mean more extreme weather events for her Pacific island home. 

Still, Penjueli is skeptical when she hears “clean energy” touted as a solution to the climate crisis. She thinks of the clear blue waters surrounding Fiji and how companies are eager to scrape the seafloor for potato-shaped nodules rich with minerals that could be used to build electric cars in wealthy countries, and she worries her iTaukei people will face consequences from any deep-sea mining pollution.

“It’s super critical that people understand that the transition is anything but just, and anything but equitable,” said Penjueli. 

That’s why this month, Penjueli flew from Suva, Fiji, to New York City to meet with fellow Indigenous activists ahead of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, the largest annual global gathering of Indigenous peoples. Officially, this year’s forum is focused on self-determination for Indigenous youth, but climate change looms large: On opening day, the outgoing UNPFII chair shared a new report on the green transition, raising another alarm about the risks Indigenous peoples and their lands face not only from climate change, but also the projects intended to counteract global warming.

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“The current green economy model is a problem rather than a solution for many Indigenous Peoples,” the report said. “The concept of a transition to a green economy maintains the same extractive logic that causes States and the private sector to overlook the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples in pursuit of national interests.” 

In Guatemala, a court recently found that a nickel mine is violating Native land rights; In Norway and the U.S., Indigenous peoples have weathered ongoing fights with green energy developers; and Indigenous Igorot from the Philippines are worried about displacement from nickel mining.

“We actually support the transition away from fossil fuels to green energy and we need to do it fast,” said Joan Carling, who is Igorot from the Philippines and serves as executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Indigenous Peoples Rights International. ‘“But if we do it fast by ignoring and violating the rights of Indigenous peoples, we will not be able to address the climate crisis effectively.”

More than half of the world’s minerals that could serve as alternative energy sources and help countries stop burning fossil fuels — known as transition minerals — are located on or near lands and territories managed by Indigenous peoples, according to a 2023 study in Nature Sustainability. These include lithium, cobalt, nickel, uranium, and many other critical minerals that would require extractive mining with myriad environmental impacts. 

Those impacts are why Carling helped organize the Conference on Indigenous Peoples and the Just Transition, the two-day gathering that Penjueli attended just prior to the forum. After a weekend of discussions, the group came up with a statement urging state governments, investors and corporations, and energy utilities and regulators to respect Indigenous rights.

They called for a ban on deep-sea mining, as well as any mining at sacred sites and reminded government officials that Indigenous peoples have the right to consent to projects on their land freely and before projects get underway, and that they also have the right to say no. Lack of consent has long been a problem with development and many see the green energy industry continuing the same trend of not doing enough to inform Indigenous communities about upcoming projects, and prioritizing profits over human rights. 

The group’s statement was part of a broader message repeated throughout the auditoriums, conference rooms, and hallways of the United Nations this last week: The “green economy” isn’t working for Indigenous peoples. “Clean energy” isn’t actually clean. And the world’s shift to a mineral-based energy economy is coming at the expense of Indigenous peoples and their lands. It’s a message that’s been shared many times before but is gaining urgency as the energy transition accelerates, fueled by billions in funding from China, the U.S., United Kingdom, and European Union.

In the U.N.-commissioned report on the greening economy, experts called for compensation for Indigenous peoples’ communities who are affected by pollution and environmental destruction from green energy operations. They said long-term economic planning should take place when mining begins in case the operations affect other industries that Native peoples rely on — for example, if pollution from deep-sea mining harms fisheries, an economic driver in many Pacific island countries. Experts also called for sharing project revenues after obtaining consent.

“If an Indigenous Peoples’ community chooses to engage in benefit-sharing, any such agreement should be based on future annual revenues so that the community receives half or more than half of the percentage of total revenues for the duration of the project,” the report said. 

They emphasized the need for direct funding for Indigenous peoples who are managing lands and territories that are home to 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity and urged state governments and corporations to see Native peoples as partners and not obstacles to the transition away from fossil fuels.

The report’s authors also criticized how the terminology surrounding the movement away from fossil fuels obfuscates the problems of the transition. “The term ‘just economy’ is no more than a slogan from the perspective of most Indigenous Peoples,” the report said. 

Darío Mejia Montalvo, outgoing chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said that such terminology hides Indigenous peoples’ lack of involvement in these changes. 

“Indigenous peoples do not believe that many of the measures to mitigate and adapt to climate change that have been suggested will ultimately solve climate change, because the final result of these policies ultimately ends up harming Indigenous peoples,” he said. 

That’s what Penjueli fears. She worries about the lack of knowledge about the environmental effects of removing minerals from the ocean floor and wonders what would happen if something goes wrong: Where would Fiji come up with the money for an environmental cleanup and restitution? And what would happen to the fish that her people rely on to eat?

She says it doesn’t make sense for the world to switch from a strategy of bottomless consumption through burning fossil fuels to a similar consumption model based on mineral mining. Already, reports describe the waste of critical minerals: Even as more mines are dug and more lands cleared, millions of metric tons of copper and aluminum are being discarded every year in landfills instead of being repurposed for renewable energy development. The European Council, which sets political priorities in the European Union, has set a nonbinding goal that by 2030, a quarter of “critical raw materials” consumed should be recycled materials, but experts say more could be done to repurpose these valuable minerals. 

But what’s most frustrating to Penjueli is the idea that her people must sacrifice to save the world. It reminds her of how other Pacific peoples were told to sacrifice for world peace, when global powers tested nuclear weapons. 

“It’s super problematic that we supposedly have to carry the burden of this transition,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous advocates at the UN say the green transition is neither clean nor just on Apr 23, 2024.

Clean energy, like so many commodities in this country, is neither distributed evenly nor equally. Disadvantaged communities have far fewer solar panels arrayed across their rooftops than areas with higher incomes. The federal government just took a major step toward crossing that chasm.

On Monday, President Joe Biden announced the 60 organizations that, under the administration’s Solar for All program, will receive a combined $7 billion in grants to bring residential solar to low-income neighborhoods. The funding will flow into state, municipal, and tribal governments as well as nonprofits to support existing programs for low-income solar and battery storage installations and spur new ones. Such efforts are expected to bring affordable clean energy to 900,000 households.

While the climate and environmental benefits of this effort are critical, the households poised to benefit will feel the most immediate impacts on their pocketbooks.

“Low-income families can spend up to 30 percent of their paychecks on their energy bills,” Biden said while announcing the funding in Virginia. “It’s outrageous.”

That reality is central to the administration’s program, which will cut energy costs for those families who monitor their spending to ensure they can make it to the end of the month. By bringing rooftop and community solar to communities in need, Solar for All could save energy-burdened families on average $400 a year.

The 60 recipients were selected by dozens of review panels composed of experts from across the executive branch. The Environmental Protection Agency will finalize contract details in the days and weeks ahead, and awardees are expected to receive the funding in summer to begin implementing their efforts.

Without the low-income solar programs that will be established and expanded with these funds, most families can’t afford to place energy-producing panels atop their homes. Most rooftop installations cost tens of thousands of dollars, and even with a long-term loan and the promise of a year-end tax credit to help cover a steep upfront cost, that places the technology out of reach for many Americans.

As Solar for All brings energy savings to low-income and disadvantaged families nationwide — advancing Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to ensure that at least 40 percent of climate investments directly benefit frontline communities — it will also accelerate progress toward the administration’s goal of achieving 100 percent clean energy nationwide by 2035. The EPA estimates that the $7 billion will underwrite 4 gigawatts of solar installations nationwide, enough to power more than 3 million homes. All told, the program is expected to prevent over 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from ever entering the atmosphere while also creating 200,000 jobs and affording tribal nations an improved path to energy sovereignty.

For years, Indigenous communities across America have been using solar and other renewables to liberate themselves from an energy system that pollutes their air and establish something that they own. With $500 million slated specifically for tribal governments, Solar for All can help accelerate those efforts. One such award for over $135 million will go to the Northern Plains Tribal Coalition, a partnership of 14 Indigenous nations brought together by the Native-led nonprofit Indigenized Energy and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.

“This is a once-in-a-generation award that will begin to transform how tribes achieve energy sovereignty,” Cody Two Bears, executive director of Indigenized Energy, said in a press release. “The shift from extractive energy to regenerative energy systems will be the legacy we leave for our future generations.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s ‘Solar for All’ awards $7B to bring affordable energy to low-income families on Apr 23, 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.

Last week, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation began efforts to reestablish the only federal Indian reservation in Illinois, formally confirming the tribe’s governance over its land. The move could have wide-ranging impacts on matters ranging from criminal justice to climate and environmental jurisdiction.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi have spent years purchasing land in northern Illinois where the Shab-eh-nay Reservation once existed, and last week, the nation turned 130 acres of those lands over to the Department of Interior, or DOI, to hold in trust — a bureaucratic process that legally establishes tribal governance and opens tribes up to a range of benefits including tax credits, federal contract preferences, and land use exemptions.

“Now those lands are subject to our laws, our jurisdiction, and the nation determines what — if any — actions will happen on those lands,” said Joseph Rupnick, chairman of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and fourth-generation great-grandson of Chief Shab-eh-nay, the original reservation’s namesake. 

In the early 18th century, as the United States expanded westward, the federal government took massive swaths of land from Indigenous nations throughout the Midwest, including from the Prairie Band Potawatomi, via armed conflicts and nearly a dozen skewed treaties. 

The 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien with the nation reserved land in present-day northern Illinois for Chief Shab-eh-nay and the Prairie Band, where they remained for another two decades. However, in 1849, Shab-eh-nay left the reservation to visit Kansas and on his return found that the state had taken his land and home and illegally auctioned it. “The state of Illinois said he abandoned his land and sold it,” said Rupnick.

Tribes relinquished millions of acres in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin to the federal government by the mid 1800s, and nations in the region were eventually removed from the state to lands west of the Mississippi River. The Prairie Band has spent nearly a century working to reclaim those lands, paying to buy land back acre-by-acre. “Congress never took any action to disestablish that reservation,” said Rupnick. “So in our minds, it still exists.”

Last year, federal legislation was introduced to redress that seizure of Potawatomi land, and companion bills promised cash settlements to the band to reacquire additional lands in and around the original reservation’s boundaries. The proposed bill would also waive the band’s historical claims to the vast majority of its former territory.

“The decision to put portions of the Shab-eh-nay Reservation into trust is an important step to returning the land that is rightfully theirs,” said U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood, a co-sponsor of the bill. “I am so honored to represent the first federally recognized reservation in Illinois.”

Efforts to make the band whole have also been ongoing at the state level, too. 

“It’s well overdue,” said Illinois State Representative Mark Walker, the sponsor of a bill lawmakers are currently considering that would turn over Shabbona Lake State Park, just over 1,500 acres inside the historic footprint of the reservation, to the Prairie Band Potawatomi nation.

That means it’s now up to the tribe to take over jurisdiction of the land, everything from law enforcement to natural resource management. 

“At this time, we have various options for utilizing the trust lands, and no immediate changes have been decided upon,” according to a spokesperson for the tribe. 

In an email statement from DOI, a spokesman confirmed the transfer and continued, “It is the department’s policy to acquire land in trust for tribes to strengthen self-determination and sovereignty, and to ensure that every tribe has protected homelands where its citizens can maintain their tribal existence and way of life.”

“I have pictures of my great-grandmother and my grandmother coming up here in the ’60s trying to fight for this land,” Rupnick said. He wasn’t sure he’d live to see this day. “To have it actually happen today is amazing.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Acre by acre, the Prairie Band Potawatomi bought back their land on Apr 23, 2024.

Jeans are a staple in many people’s wardrobes, something we wear all the time and…

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Have you ever noticed that meadows of long grass seem to be teeming with butterflies, bumble bees, beetles, crickets and other insects? Meanwhile, short-cropped, bright green lawns appear devoid of critters in comparison.

A six-year study of butterfly sightings in 600 gardens in the United Kingdom has confirmed that letting your lawn grow wild can significantly increase butterfly and moth numbers.

“Nature is in crisis; 80% of butterflies have declined since the 1970s, so we need to take action now to protect them. We wanted to be able to give tried and tested gardening advice that will benefit butterflies as we know lots of people want to help. This study proves, for the first time, that allowing a patch of grass to grow long will attract more butterflies into your garden,” said Dr. Richard Fox, co-author of the study and head of science at UK nonprofit Butterfly Conservation, in a press release from the charity.

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Fox and fellow Butterfly Conservation researcher Dr. Lisbeth Hordley found that letting long grass in your garden grow can boost butterfly numbers by as much as 93 percent, while attracting a greater variety of species.

The researchers were assisted in their Garden Butterfly Survey by citizen scientists throughout the UK.

The biggest benefits to garden rewilding were found in intensively farmed areas and urban spaces. Gardens with long grass in highly arable areas had as much as 93 percent more butterflies, while urban landscapes saw an increase of 18 percent.

“The potential to provide wild spaces for butterflies and moths to thrive is huge. Gardens make up more than 728,000 hectares in Great Britain — the equivalent of over a million football pitches. If each of these gardens had a space that was allowed to go a little wild, with grass growing long, it would make a huge difference for butterflies and moths, providing spaces for them to feed, breed and shelter,” Butterfly Conservation advised.

The study looked specifically at gardens, but the benefits of wild spaces and long grass for butterflies are likely applicable to other green spaces like parks, small fruit and vegetable patches, the grounds of schools and strips of grass and vegetation between sidewalks and roadways. These areas could become important wildlife refuges if allowed to flourish.

“The simple act of creating wild spaces by allowing a patch of grass to grow long, or a border edge to go wild is free and easy to do, and can significantly boost butterfly numbers, especially in urban and agricultural settings where they are most under pressure. The benefits of each individual wild space are small, but if thousands of people get involved the boost to butterflies could be huge,” Fox said in the press release.

The study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Fox and Hordley found that flowering ivy in particular increased populations of specific butterfly species like Red Admiral, Comma and Holly Blue, which breed in ivy habitat and use it as a source of nectar.

They also discovered that long grass attracts more species with caterpillars who eat grasses, including gatekeepers, meadow browns, speckled woods, small skippers and ringlets, reported The Guardian.

Fox said this pointed to population increases not being just from the availability of wildflower nectar found in the grasses, but because the butterflies were seeking out or breeding in lawns that had been allowed to grow.

“It’s a really positive sign,” Fox said, as The Guardian reported. “What people are doing with long grass in gardens is creating potential or actual breeding habitat. In order to make an impact on the biodiversity crisis we need to be creating places where butterflies and other wildlife can breed. This is simple, doesn’t cost anything and saves you time and effort. If you have a patch of long grass you may have grasshoppers, beetles and ant hills as well – there will be all these spinoffs.”

Butterfly Conservation has a goal of transforming 100,000 areas in the UK to help butterfly populations through its Wild Spaces initiative.

The wildlife nonprofit is asking everyone to support butterfly and biodiversity recovery by creating their own wild spaces, whether large or small. These can be on patios, terraces and balconies or in gardens and shared local spaces.

“Whether you have a large garden, a small patch of grass, a community or school space, or a balcony or window box, anyone, anywhere can help. We hope that our Wild Spaces programme will inspire people across the UK to take action and help to create a national network of butterfly-friendly habitats,” Fox said in the press release.

The post Letting Your Grass Grow Wild Boosts Butterfly Numbers, UK Study Says appeared first on EcoWatch.