Team leader Stefanie Rog — a conservation biologist and senior program manager with Fauna & Flora International, which funded the study — recorded an astounding variety of species at the Peam Krasop sanctuary and adjacent Koh Kapid Ramsar wildlife reserve in Cambodia. Some of the animals they encountered included the critically endangered Sunda pangolin; endangered long-tailed macaques, large-spotted civet and hairy-nosed otters; the vulnerable fishing cat; and 74 fish species, a press release from Fauna & Flora said.
“We found 700 different species in these mangrove forests but we suspect we have not even scratched the surface,” Rog said, as The Guardian reported. “If we could look at the area in even greater depth we would find 10 times more, I am sure.”
Mangrove forests are found in tropical and subtropical coastal areas. They are specially adapted to flourish in both salt and brackish water, but 40 percent of them have been decimated in the past few decades due to land use changes such as agriculture and development.
Mangroves provide a variety of ecosystem services, such as acting as fish nurseries and reducing the impact of storm surges and the resulting damage to coastlines.
“We found young barracudas, snappers and groupers in the waters here,” Rog said, as reported by The Guardian. “They are clearly important breeding places for fish and provide local communities with food as well as providing stock for commercial fisheries.”
The survey was led by Fishing Cat Ecological Enterprise and Fauna & Flora, along with the Royal University of Agriculture’s faculty of fisheries and aquaculture and the Ministry of Environment.
The survey team conducted their field research during the dry and wet seasons of 2023. They set 57 camera traps across the protected area over 4,000 trap nights, the report said.
The experts also carried out targeted surveys that focused on reptiles, bats, amphibians, juvenile fish, invertebrates and plants.
“[T]hese results evidence an important array of wildlife in need of protection,” the report said. “Overall, priority should be given to maintaining forest condition and cover within the sanctuary, since the loss of older, larger trees (which typically provide more cavities, hollows and crevices) particularly threatens foliage-roosting species, whereas fragmentation of mature forest stands erodes the connectivity between suitable habitat. Cleared areas of mixed mangrove that have been abandoned should be left to regenerate naturally, as these areas are connected to natural seedling recruitment. Protection and patrolling activities should be conducted regularly in order to make sure that no further disturbance to these areas takes place.”
The rare fishing cat has webbed toes, which the large feline uses to swim through waters surrounding the mangroves, from which they hunt for fish and rats.
A fishing cat in the Peam Krasop wildlife sanctuary. Fauna & Flora / FCEE
“It’s very rare to see a fishing cat and we have only found out that they are in the forest from the photographs taken by our camera traps,” Rog said, as The Guardian reported. “Mangroves are places of roots and mud and they are difficult for humans to get into, which is why they provide precious sanctuaries for these vulnerable animals.”
The survey found 150 bird species, 15 of which are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List as near-threatened or endangered.
“A mangrove forest relies on all the interconnected relationships between species and if you start taking away some of those species, then slowly you will lose the functioning of the forest,” Rog said, as reported by The Guardian. “[Mangrove forests] are so much more than just an ecosystem that provides a carbon-saving service or coastal protection. They are actually beautiful in their own right. For me, there is no better feeling than to be in this unique, mythical forest, knowing there is still so much more to explore – that there is another world waiting for further discovery.”
The researchers said calling attention to some of the incredible diversity of species who live in this watery wonderland can help support conservation and future investigation of a uniquely rich ecosystem.
“The results provided in this report, while an incomplete picture of the area’s biodiversity, highlight the conservation value of the Peam Krasop/Koh Kapik mangrove forests, and can serve to underpin stronger management of the area, as well as inform initiatives such as eco-tourism and further research,” the report said.
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.
President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to Fort Myers, Florida, after 2022’s Hurricane Ian. The Biden administration is seeking to penalize Lee County and its cities for rebuilding in flood-prone areas after the storm.
Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images
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 coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZandGrist, a nonprofit environmental media organization. Sign up forWBEZ newslettersto 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.
José Miguel Acosta Córdova, left, and Paulina Vaca stand by one of the busiest intersections in Chicago, in a neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Grist / WBEZ /Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
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.
“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.”
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.
Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis has announced plans to invest 780 million euros (about $829 million) for marine conservation and pollution cleanup. The country will pursue 21 marine conservation initiatives with the money.
As reported by Reuters, some of the initiatives will include the development of two marine parks: one will be located in the Ionian Sea, and the other park will be established in the Aegean Sea. The exact borders will be determined following a scientific review, expected to be complete by 2025. The parks will cover about 32% of the country’s waters, Reuters reported.
The prime minister is expected to share more details on the country’s marine conservation plans during the Our Ocean conference, taking place in Athens from April 15 through April 17.
According to the Our Ocean conference website, the conference will focus on sustainable shipping and tourism as well as ways to minimize and clean up marine plastics and microplastics. The conference will also address offshore renewable energy.
“Quietly but methodically, Greece is playing a leading role in the defence against dramatic climate changes, which are proven to affect every region and every activity,” Mitsotakis said, as reported by the eKathimerini newspaper.
With 29,417 islands and over 20,700 kilometers (over 12,862 miles) of coastline, Greece relies on the seas surrounding its islands. Marine conservation is important for the country’s culture and economy, but Mitsotakis also noted that efforts to protect the seas around Greece will contribute to the country’s efforts to curb the effects of climate change.
Marine waters are an important carbon sink, absorbing about 25% of carbon emissions and trapping 90% of heat from these carbon emissions, according to the United Nations. Further, these waters provide about 50% of our oxygen.
In addition to the impacts of climate change, marine waters are threatened by plastic and microplastic pollution, which can disrupt ecosystems as marine life mistake pollution for food. Chemical runoff further threatens marine biodiversity.
Greece plans to address some of these ocean conservation and climate concerns through Marine Protected Areas, sustainable fisheries, offshore wind development, enhanced maritime security, decarbonization of maritime transportation and sustainable tourism models. Greece also plans to reduce plastic pollution by 50% and microplastic pollution by 30% by the end of this decade.
“Decreasing plastic pollution and accelerating the transition to a circular economy is the way forward,” Our Ocean reported in a press release. “The Our Ocean Conference supports the shift towards a more holistic approach to prevent and control anthropogenic pollution that ends up in the ocean. Joint efforts, synergies and cooperation between all involved stakeholders are needed to turn the tide.”
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.
“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.
When the sharing economy took off in the 2010s and upended entire industries, the firmest proponents of the model heralded it as an economic revolution that would help slash emissions. Of all the ideas that emerged and dissolved over the years, shareable electric scooters seemed to possess the most promise for climate. Almost anyone with a smartphone and a credit card could grab one and ride it down the block or across town, eschewing automobiles.
Yet, as the industry matures and Lime — which, with operations in 280 cities worldwide, is the biggest player — moves further into its eighth year, researchers have shown that the eco-friendly dreams of shared micromobility have not materialized without problems. The true climate benefits of these fleets depends upon how companies deploy and manage them, and safety remains a concern as injuries climb. But industry leaders appear intent on ensuring their scooters are as sustainable and safe as possible.
“It’s really important as a company that has set a net-zero target by 2030,” said Andrew Savage, Lime’s head of sustainability, “that we walk the walk, and that we do everything we can to inspire the industries around us to decarbonize as well.”
The sustainability of shared micromobility is an active area of research in a fast-changing industry. Ultimately, researchers see two factors that determine the overall climate impact of e-scooters: how users ride them, and how operators manage them from manufacturing to disposal.
A recent survey of the latest research questioned whether the sharing economy is inherently sustainable, including a particular look at e-scooters. The survey found many researchers were repeatedly concerned with the question: “If riders hadn’t rented a scooter, how would they have gotten to their destination?” If someone would have walked instead of ridden, that person increased the emissions associated with that trip. But several studies, including one by the Portland Bureau of Transportation and another, funded by Lime, by a German research institute, have found that though anywhere from a third to well over half of scooter users would have walked instead, enough other trips that would have been taken by car were not. Shared scooters, on the whole, help reduce overall transportation emissions — often preventing 20 grams of CO2 emissions per mile ridden on a scooter.
The picture in urban landscapes, however, can get slightly more complicated when researchers consider how those providing the scooters retrieve them to charge, repair, or redistribute them to where people are likely to use them. Colin Murphy, director of research and consulting at the Shared Use Mobility Center, said that when operators use big cargo vans to manage their fleets, they can negate some of the emissions savings from users.
To address this, Savage said the company is improving its fleet logistics to reduce overall emissions. Lime’s scooters and bikes are now equipped with larger, swappable battery packs, which means they need to be charged less often, and when they do, fleet workers can drive around with a trunk full of battery packs rather than taking the scooter back to a warehouse, effectively cutting logistics emissions in half while ensuring scooters are available more often. Savage said the company has also bought over 140 electric vans to support those operations. Though that’s 10 times the number Lime had a few years ago, it’s still only one van for every two cities it operates in.
Savage said Lime is also working to reduce its impacts in other ways. For instance, in North America, “once vehicles arrive at port,” Savage said, “we are now using emissions-free trucking to get those to our distribution centers.” Beyond that, the company has designed a modular bike that makes it easier to swap out damaged parts, and parts that are beyond repair are often sent for recycling. And it has worked with one company, Gomi, to salvage cells from partially damaged batteries for use in what it says are zero-waste Bluetooth speakers.
But perhaps the most concerning hurdle the industry faces is also the one over which it has, in reality, the least direct control: rider safety. One study, released earlier this year by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that from 2017 to 2020 serious injuries for scooter riders rose threefold, just as revenues for the scooter-sharing industry shot from $10 million to nearly $450 million. This trend only continued into 2021 and 2022, with micromobility injuries increasing an average of 23 percent every year. And these weren’t just scrapes and bruises. The UCLA-led study found that scooter users were, compared to cyclists, more likely to end up with a broken arm or leg, require surgery, or even end up paralyzed. The researchers suspect that may be due, among other things, to riders often lacking safety gear.
Lime insists that it places safety first. But with most American cities designed to promote cars over all other forms of transit, the health of scooter users is, like those of pedestrians and cyclists, at risk once wheels hit pavement. Perhaps it should be no surprise that of the 30 people killed in 2018 while riding an e-scooter, 80 percent were struck by a car. This is why, if society wants to move away from cars as the default, Kailai Wang, who studies urban mobility at the University of Houston, believes urban areas need to invest in upgraded infrastructure like protected bike lanes that can make roads safer for non-automotive transport.
Of course, cars aren’t the only dangers e-scooter users, like cyclists, face. Poor road and sidewalk conditions can lead to serious injuries. And sometimes riders are their own enemy. According to some studies, first-time riders and late-night riders face elevated risks. Murphy, said that these are two areas where scooter-sharing platforms and local policymakers can step in.
For instance, he said that operators could artificially limit the max speed of a scooter during a user’s first few rides as they grow accustomed to the vehicle. In other cases, many cities prohibit e-scooter rides in the wee hours to prevent misuse. But “to the degree that these vehicles provide a real kind of transportation lifeline for some people,” Murphy said, “that’s almost when they’re at their most important.” For someone who ends a late shift after bus services end, an e-scooter might actually be their best, or only, means of getting home. This reality led the Chicago City Council, for example, to consider revising its own late-night prohibition.
As long as people have access to one of these vehicles when they need one, and a safe lane in which to ride it, shared micromobility can help cities move away from car-dependent transportation, slashing emissions in the process, by shifting transit from something material and energy-intensive to something low-impact and electric.
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