Episoder
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Few countries have specific targets about converting to organic farming, and when they have, it's often failed - Sri Lanka dropped its national organic policy within months in 2021, and only three weeks ago, France scrapped its relatively conservative ambition for 15% of farmland.
'Bhutan's challenges and prospects in becoming a 100% organic country', Heinrich-Boell-Stiftung Asia Global Dialogue, 2022Case Studies of Successful Farmers, Agri-enterprises and Farmers' Groups and Cooperatives in Bhutan, 2022'Farmers’ perception on transitioning to organic agriculture (OA) in Tsirang district, Bhutan', Research Journal of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, 2022'Bridging the Gap between the Sustainable Development Goals and Happiness Metrics', International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2019'Gross national happiness in Bhutan: the big idea from a tiny state that could change the world', The Guardian, 2012
Bhutan may be small, but on this issue it's a global outlier. Motivated by its policy to measure development in Gross National Happiness rather than GDP, the South Asian nation has been slowly working towards becoming 100% organic since 2012 - and now has a target date of 2035.
Bertie spoke to Dr Sonam Tashi, an organic agriculture expert and Dean of Research & Industrial Linkages at the College of Natural Resources, Royal University of Bhutan, to hear about how Bhutan's organic transition is going.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Alasdair speaks to Peter Wohlleben about his new book How Trees Can Save the World.
'Climate crisis is exposing hard truths about commercial forestry', Land and Climate Review, 2024'What should we do if the spruce dies out as our supertree?' [German language], Der Standard, 2024'After the spruce dieback: Can the forest heal itself?' [German language], National Geographic, 2024'German forest under severe stress' [German language], Forest Condition Report 2022'The spruce tree is dying of thirst' [German language], Spektrum.de, 2022
Peter Wohlleben is a forester and author who has written over 30 books on ecology and forest management.
Peter and Alasdair discuss the problems with plantation forests, the power of trees to influence their local ecosystems and what modern forestry gets wrong.
How Trees Can Save the World was published in March and is available to buy from Harper Collins here.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Manglende episoder?
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Alasdair speaks to Faustine Bas-Defossez about the relationship between sustainable farming policy and the European farmers' protests.
Faustine Bas-Defossez is Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bureau, a Europe-wide network of environmental citizens' organisations.
Alasdair and Faustine discuss the Nature Restoration Law, reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy and what the upcoming European elections might mean for the future of EU agriculture.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
NGOs unite against EU’s rollback of green policies for the agrifood sector, EuractivEurope is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks, European Environment Agency Open letter from the ECVC and IFOAM to Ursula Von der Leyen on CAP simplification, European Coordination Via Campesina European Pact for the Future, European Environmental Bureau Orbán-backed Think Tank Courts Farmers Linked to Far Right Ahead of EU Poll, Desmog
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Alasdair speaks to environmental attorney Peter Lehner about US agriculture's contribution to global emissions.
Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food and Farming Programme and former executive director of the National Resources Defence Council.
Alasdair and Peter discuss the future of the US farm bill, the adverse climate effects of crop insurance and the influence agrochemical lobbies have on agriculture across America.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Building on the IRA’s Farm Policy MomentumHarvesting Climate Benefits from the 2024 Farm BillRipe for Change The Real Cost of Food
Further reading:
Peter’s recent articles for the American College of Environmental Lawyers:Peter’s book:
Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral AgricultureClick here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Does our society have an addiction to short term thinking and planning? Is our failure to mitigate climate change a result of this?
Buy Deep Time Reckoning from MIT Press here. 'The Art of Pondering Earth’s Distant Future', Scientific American, 2021'The benefits of 'deep time thinking'', BBC Future, 2023'Temporality, fiction and climate – reading Mark Bould’s Anthropocene Unconscious', Land and Climate Review, 2022
Vincent Ialenti spent three years doing fieldwork in Finland, interviewing experts working on Posiva's Safety Case for the world's first long term nuclear repository, Onkalo.
His book about that fieldwork, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, explores the idea of "shallow" and "deep" time thinking. Dr. Ialenti uses Onkalo as a case study for how policy can involve ongoing work over decades, and look ahead towards potential impacts hundreds of thousands of years into the future - if expertise is as trusted and depoliticised as it is in Finland.
Bertie spoke to Vincent about the book, and how policymakers and the climate sector can think beyond the next generation or electoral cycle.
Dr. Vincent Ialenti is a Research Associate at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt’s Department of Environmental Studies. Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Bertie speaks to Austin Frerick about his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.
Book excerpt: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’, Minnesota Reformer ‘Hidden costs, public burden: The real toll of Walmart's "always low prices"’, Salon‘Do You Know Where Your Strawberries Come From?’, The New Republic‘Why Austin Frerick Is Taking On The Grocery Barons’, Forbes
Austin Frerick is an agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale University, and has advised on policy for senior US politicians including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden during his presidential campaign.
Bertie and Austin discuss lobbying and state capture in the US, the history of farming deregulation, and the environmental impact of food monopolies.
Barons was published last week and is available to buy from Island Press here.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Last month an investigation by Transport and Environment (T&E) exposed a number of challenges facing Eni's African biofuel projects.
Read Agathe's op-ed about the investigation on Land and Climate Review. Read T&E's full investigation.Read The Continent's front page cover story about the investigation.
The Italian oil giant's "second generation" biofuel crops have not met production targets in Kenya and Republic of the Congo. The investigation found that key promises have not been met around intercropping, and collected testimonies of alleged expropriation driven by Eni's business partners. T&E say farmers are now giving up on the projects.
To hear more details, Alasdair welcomed Agathe Bounfour back to the podcast, Oil Investigations Lead at T&E.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Following new allegations from the BBC that a UK power station is "burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests" in British Columbia, Bertie speaks to Richard Robertson about Canada's forestry sector.
Read the report by Canadian environmental organisations: The State Of The Forest In Canada: Seeing Through The SpinRead the Canadian government's own report, which the new publication responds to: The State of Canada’s ForestsRead Stand.Earth's report about their old growth satellite monitoring tool: Forest Eye: An Eye on Old Growth Destruction'Drax: UK power station still burning rare forest wood', BBC, 28/2/24
Richard Robertson is a Forest Campaigner at Stand.Earth, and recently contributed to a report prepared by numerous NGOs, which accused the Canadian government's own forestry report of being “akin to an industry ad, promoting questionable and misleading claims.”
Bertie and Richard discuss these findings, the biomass industry, certification and regulation, and whether Canadian forestry deserves its leading reputation.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fishing regulation and its importance to environmental and human rights.
'Europe already has the tools it needs to end forced labour', Land and Climate Review, 2023'Civil society urges Thai government to stop deregulation of the fisheries industry', Environmental Justice Foundation, 2023Thailand’s progress in combatting IUU, forced labour & human trafficking, 2023The ever widening net: mapping the scale, nature and corporate structures of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by the Chinese distant-water fleet, 2022A manifesto for our ocean, 2023'Denmark and Sweden press Brussels to act against UK in fishing dispute', Financial Times, 2024
They discuss past and future EU policy and its impact in South East Asia, and use Thailand as a case study to discuss the issue of durability with environmental reform. The Thai fishing sector's reliance on forced labour and overfishing reduced dramatically in the 2010s, but reforms may now be overturned.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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This week, the EU's Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warned that "You cannot magically CCS yourself out of the problem". But the new policy he was presenting that day still called for 280 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to be permanently stored underground.
Norway’s Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS: Industry models or cautionary tales?, IEEFA, 2023Blue hydrogen: Not clean, not low carbon, not a solution, IEEFA, 2023'Carbon capture key to reaching net-zero, but climate chief urges caution', Euronews, 7/2/24'What is happening with Carbon Capture and Storage?', Land and Climate Review, 2022'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land and Climate Review, 2022'Capturing and storing problems', Land and Climate Review, 2022
The extent to which carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology should be a part of climate planning is contentious, but advocates often point to Norway's long-running CCS plants as proof that it can work.
Are Equinor's North Sea gas field facilities the gold standard for successful CCS, or have they had issues too? Last year, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) published a report exploring that question.
Bertie spoke to the report's author and IEEFA's Strategic Energy Finance Advisor for Asia, Grant Hauber, to hear about his findings.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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What are the impacts of new flying technologies? Are policymakers and the aviation industry taking the right steps to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees?
Net zero and the role of the aviation industry, Chatham House, November 2023'First net zero flight takes off but decarbonisation remains on runway', November 2023
Alasdair speaks to Dr Daniel Quiggin, senior research fellow at the Chatham House Environment and Society Centre. Dr Quiggin is an expert in the analysis of how national and global energy systems will evolve to 2050 and author of recent research on Net zero and the role of the aviation industry.
Further reading:Link to the Chatham House webinar on the research:
3pm GMT on Wednesday 31st January 2024Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Bertie speaks to Agathe Bounfour, Oil Investigations Lead at Transport and Environment, about her investigation into the fossil funded research group CONCAWE.
'Action to tackle air pollution failing to keep up with research', The Guardian, 2023'Benzene and worker cancers: ‘An American tragedy’', The Center for Public Integrity, 2014Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, 2012Doubt is Their Product: How industry's assault on science threatens your health, David Michaels, 2008
The investigation revealed that CONCAWE undermined the European Union's attempt to regulate human exposure to benzene, a carcinogenic pollutant. After oil industry lobbying and research, the new regulated limit from 2024 will be ten times higher than the original suggestions from scientific agencies.
Read the full investigation here.
Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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In this episode Alasdair caught up with Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at campaign organisation Corporate Accountability to discuss their new research with the Guardian which found considerable flaws in the 50 most used offset projects. He asked about the recent research and what value offset projects might actually have.
The Land and Climate podcast is produced by Vasko KostovskiRecommended reading:
‘Revealed: top carbon offset projects may not cut planet-heating’, The Guardian, September 2023 ‘Gas-Lit: No, the Dubai Climate Talks Did Not Save the Planet’, Newsweek, December 2023 '10 myths about net zero targets and carbon offsetting, busted’, Climate Home News, December 2020‘Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation’, Science, August 2023 ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Carbon Crediting’,Berkeley Public Policy, September 2023 ‘The Verra Scandal Explained: why avoid deforestation credits are hazardous’ London School of Economics Blogs, January 2023‘The Land Gap Report’, Various, 2023 'The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets'Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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2023 was expected to be a big year for Europe in reducing harm from agrochemicals. But in a surprise move in November, European Parliament rejected a law to halve pesticide use. That same month, The European Commission stated it would renew the controversial approval of glyphosate for another 10 years.
'Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, is showing up in pregnant women', The Conversation, December 2023'EU Commission hosts a secret 3-day meeting with the pesticide industry as their exclusive guest', Pesticide Action Network, December 2023'Green Deal is dead', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023'Beneath the orange fields: Impact of Glyphosate on soil organisms', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023'Conservative backlash kills off EU’s Green Deal push to slash pesticide use', Politico, November 2023'EU to renew herbicide glyphosate approval for 10 years', Reuters, November 2023'Long-term evidence for ecological intensification as a pathway to sustainable agriculture', Nature Sustainability, 2022Listen to our previous episodes on Monsanto, EU lobbying, and Neonics.
What happened?
Alasdair talks to Dr Martin Dermine, Executive Director of Pesticide Action Network Europe, about why EU regulation of agrochemicals is moving so slowly.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Alasdair talks to Sir Dieter Helm, a Professor of Economic Policy at The University of Oxford, about his new book Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy. Cambridge University Press has published the work online as a free open acess title.
Read Legacy for free here. Video presentations and slides on the book's components can be found here. The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen (Harvard University Press, 2011).
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Bertie speaks to environmental journalist Stephen Robert Miller about his new book, Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought, and the Delusion of Controlling Nature. Spanning Bangladesh, Japan, and Arizona in the US, it covers the risks involved in adaptating to changing climate and weather, and the deadly costs of poor planning.
Buy Over the Seawall from Island Press.'When Climate Adaptation Backfires' in Discover Magazine'Why Are We Paying for Crop Failures in the Desert?' in Apocalypse Soon'‘White gold’: why shrimp aquaculture is a solution that caused a huge problem' in The Guardian 'What Should Farmers Grow in the Desert?' in Mother Jones 'Arizona’s water supplies are drying up. How will its farmers survive?' in National Geographic
Also featuring our new theme music - let us know what you think!
Further reading from Stephen Robert Miller:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Nuclear energy is not renewable, but it is low-carbon. Whether it should be part of the post-fossil fuel power grid is heatedly debated.
'Is nuclear power the key to reaching net zero?', by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, August 2023'Saudi nukes: A desire for energy, weapons, or just leverage?' by
Bertie took this question to Dr. Paul Dorfman, an Associate Fellow of the University of Sussex's Science Policy Research Unit, and the Chair of nonprofit institute the Nuclear Consulting Group. Dr. Dorfman is an expert in nuclear risk and has advised the Irish, UK, French and EU governments on nuclear policy.
Further reading:
Stasa Salacanin in The Cradle, October 2023'The end of Oppenheimer's energy dream' by Allison Macfarlane in IAI News, July 2023'The West hasn’t gone after Russia’s nuclear energy. Here’s why' by Clare Sebastian in CNN, March 2023'The Debate: Nuclear is already well past its sell-by date' by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, May 2022'Nuclear energy isn’t a safe bet in a warming world – here’s why' by Paul Dorfman in The Conversation, June 2021'Things fall apart' by Paul Dorfman in The Ecologist, October 2021Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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Alasdair talks to John Vaillant, author of the Baillie Gifford shortlisted book Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World and explores how fire is evolving in the 21st century and if humanity is going to be sufficiently prepared to tackle its advance.
Less is More by Jason HickelEnergy and Civilisation by Vaclav Smil 'Shell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents Show' by Inside Climate News
Fire Weather tells of the catastrophic wildfire in Fort McMurray in Canada in May 2016, and asks if the fire's surprising power and devastation is a harbinger for greater threats to our climate as we know it.
John Vaillant's recommended further reading:Audio production by Vasko Kostovski.
Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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In a controversial decision this week, the UK government approved development of a huge new oil and gas field in the North Sea. The Rosebank oil and gas field is majority owned by the Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor.
'Britain approves huge, controversial oil and gas field in the North Sea', CNN, 27/9/23'The Great Leap Offshore: Sino-Norwegian Relations and Petro-Knowledge Transfers, 1976–1997' by Jonas Fossli Gjersø in Enterprise and Society, 2022Commerce and politics: Statoil and Equinor 1972-2001, Eivind Thomassen, 2022'Norway wants to lead on climate change. But first it must face its legacy of oil and gas', Vox, 15/1/21'A greener shade of black? Statoil, the Norwegian government and climate change, 1990—2005' by Ada Nissen in Scandinavian Journal of History, 2021Det svarte skiftet, Eivind Trædal, 2018 [Norweigan]'A Short History of the Norwegian Oil Industry: From Protected National Champions to Internationally Competitive Multinationals' by Helge Ryggvik in Business History Review, 2015
Following this news, Alasdair talked to Professor Jonas Fossli Gjersø (University of Stavanger) about the history of Equinor - previously Statoil - and the way it has shaped Norway's economy, history, and environmental policy.
Audio production by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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American agrochemical firm Monsanto was the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds until merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018. Its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping farms, landscapes and ecosystems all over the world.
Click here to buy Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future Click here to buy Bart's latest book, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet'The herbicide dicamba was supposed to solve farmers’ weed problems – instead, it’s making farming harder for many of them', The Conversation, January 2022'Coca-Cola’s biggest challenge in greening its operations is its own global marketing strategy', The Conversation, May 2023Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town, Ellen Griffith Spears, 2014Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2016
Bart Elmore is a professor of environmental history at Ohio State University, as well as an award-winning author. Alasdair spoke to him about his 2021 book on the history of Monsanto, Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future.
Further reading:Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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