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This year, Land and Climate Review’s first investigative series has documented more than 11,000 breaches of environmental law at North American wood pellet mills.
Alasdair MacEwen speaks to Camille Corcoran, whose recent reporting was published with The Times in the UK, and Bertie Harrison-Broninski, who normally co-hosts with Alasdair, but here discusses Land and Climate Review’s Canadian investigations, which were featured on BBC Newsnight.
They discuss the process of uncovering environmental violations at wood pellet mills owned by Drax Group, which operates the UK’s largest power station, and how residents in Mississippi and British Columbia say they have been affected by the pollution from the mills.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski and Podcast House.
Read the investigations:
‘Drax-owned facilities broke environmental rules more than 11,000 times in the US’, Land and Climate Review, November 2024‘The Dirty Business of Clean Energy: The U.K. Power Company Polluting Small Towns Across the U.S.’, The Intercept, September 2024‘Drax’s pellet mills violated environmental law 189 times in Canada’, Land and Climate Review, May 2024‘Drax faces penalty after Canadian biomass plant fails to submit pollution report’, The Independent, October 2023Related episodes:
Are Canada’s sustainable forestry claims accurate? - with Richard Robertson from Stand.EarthDoes bioenergy increase CO2 emissions more than burning coal? - with John Sterman from MITWhat is BECCS and what does it mean for climate policy? - with Daniel Quiggin from Chatham HouseClick 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 UN Biodiversity Conference draws to a close Bertie speaks to María Arango, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Forest People’s Programme, about the impacts of the sugar cane industry on Black communities in the Cauca River Valley region of western Colombia.
A new report titled The Green Illusion finds that more than 80% of the region’s wetlands have been drained in order to plant sugar cane, resulting in Afro-descendant peoples being displaced from their ancestral lands and stripped of vital resources.
Bertie and María discuss the report’s findings and how international summits such as COP16 present key opportunities to protect the rights of Indigenous people that live in biodiversity hotspots.
Read the full report: The Green Illusion: Impacts of the Sugar Cane Monoculture on the Biodiversity and Livelihoods of the Black People in the Cauca River Valley, October 2024The Green Monster: Human Rights Impacts of the Sugarcane Industry on Black Communities in Colombia, June 2021'Colombia’s cane industry efficient but potentially damaging', Mongabay, March 2017
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 2022, Indonesia only consumed about 70,000 tonnes of wood for electricity. In 2023, we consumed almost half a million.”
Read the full report, which includes maps outlining the threatened and logged forest areas: Unheeded Warnings: Forest Biomass Threats to Tropical Forests in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, Auriga Nusantara, October 2024'Rush to Burn Wood for Energy Threatens Indonesian and Southeast Asian Forests & Communities', Auriga Nusantara, October 2024'The President's new clothes', The Gecko Project, October 2024Bioenergy Explained, Land and Climate Review, 2022
Alasdair speaks to Timer Manurung, Chairman of the Indonesian NGO Auriga Nusantara, about a new report he worked on with five other environmental charities.
Titled Unheeded Warnings, the report warns that the Indonesian government’s plans for biomass power risk harming 10 million hectares of untouched primary forest, and "the deforestation of an area roughly 35 times the size of Jakarta — resulting in CO2 emissions almost five hundred times higher than current levels.”
Alasdair and Timer discuss the investigation process, the scale of these potential impacts, and the Indonesian Government.
To see photos from Timer's investigation, click 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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Bertie speaks to Sherri Goodman about her new book, Threat Multiplier:
Click here to buy Threat Multiplier from Island Press. 'A career spent trying to make the military care about climate change', The Washington Post, August 2024'The US Department of Defense’s Role in Integrating Climate Change into Security Planning', New Security Beat, May 2024'Changing climates for Arctic security', The Wilson Quaterly, 2017National Security and the Threat of Climate Change, 2007
Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.
From 1993-2001, Sherri Goodman served as the first US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, making her the Pentagon's Chief Environmental Officer. She then went on to help deliver influential reports that helped to establish climate change as a national security threat in the US.
Threat Multiplier documents key environmental and climatic challenges during her career, such as negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and managing geopolitical risk in the Arctic as melting permafrost changes the ocean landscape.
Goodman is now Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security, and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center.
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 week, Greenpeace Africa published their new report “Fast Fashion, Slow Poison: The Toxic Textile Crisis in Ghana”. The report outlines the shocking environmental and public health impact of the second-hand clothing industry in Ghana - revealing that every week, up to half a million items of clothing from the Kantamanto Market in Accra end up discarded in open spaces and informal dumpsites.
Bertie speaks to the report's author, Sam Quashie-Idun, about his findings, who is responsible for the harmful textile imports and what can be done to alleviate the problem.
Sam Quashie-Idun is Head of Investigations at Greenpeace Africa and a member of Land and Climate Review's investigations unit.
Poisoned Gifts, Greenpeace, 2023How to Ensure Waste Colonialism is Not Written Into Law and That Fashion’s Biggest Polluters Have to Change, The Or Foundation, 2023‘‘It’s like a death pit’: how Ghana became fast fashion’s dumping ground’, The Guardian, 2023‘European secondary textile sector ‘on the brink of collapse’’, Recycling International, 2024
You can read the report here and watch Sam’s Instagram video summarising its findings 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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In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Buy Overshoot from Verso Books'The overshoot myth: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C', The Conversation, August 2024'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land & Climate Review, 2022'What does the IPCC say about carbon removal?', Land & Climate Review, 2022'Global warming overshoots increase risks of climate tipping cascades in a network model', Nature Climate Change, 2022'Overshooting tipping point thresholds in a changing climate', Nature Climate Change, 2021'Carbon Unicorns and Fossil Futures: Whose Emission Reduction Pathways Is the IPCC Performing?', in Has It Come to This? The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering on the Brink, 2020How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire, Verso Books, 2020
Since then, climate planning has increasingly revolved around overshooting this target, with the hope that temperature levels can be brought back down in later decades. Temperature overshoot models are now the default, but also a cause of scientific concern, as the devastating impacts of crossing this threshold may not be reversible.
In their new book Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton study this risky approach to policy, and the economic interests that they theorise have led to it. Alasdair spoke to them both about the new book.
Andreas Malm is Associate Professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, and the celebrated author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, among other works. Wim Carton is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, and the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics.
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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Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues.
'Russia’s war with Ukraine accelerating global climate emergency, report shows', The Guardian, June 2024'Revealed: repairing Israel’s destruction of Gaza will come at huge climate cost', The Guardian, June 2024'National climate action plans must include military emissions', CEOBS Blog, June 2024'UNEA-6 passes resolution on environmental assistance and recovery in areas affected by armed conflict', CEOBS Blog, March 2024'Does reporting military emissions data really threaten national security?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024'Ticking boxes: are military climate mitigation strategies fit for purpose?', CEOBS Blog, February 2024 Estimating the Military’s Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2022
But Ukraine has helped to shift opinion this year, after pushing for more accountability for wartime environmental harm. Recent estimates put the CO2e cost of Russia's invasion of Ukraine at 175 million tonnes, and day to day military operations - not including conflicts - at a staggering 5.5% of global emissions.
Bertie spoke to Lindsey Cottrell, Environmental Policy Officer at the Conflict and Environment Observatory, about the military emissions gap in carbon accounting, and the campaign for UNFCCC rules to be changed to acknowledge it.
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 Jonas Algers about steel decarbonisation; what the options are, where there are challenges, and what is happening so far.
'Leading with Industrial Policy: Lessons for Decarbonization from Swedish Green Steel', Roosevelt Institute, 2024'Phase-in and phase-out policies in the global steel transition', Climate Policy, 2024'Building a stronger steel transition: Global cooperation and procurement in construction', One Earth, 2023'Paris compatible steel capacity: Contraction and replacement for zero emissions', Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, Lund university, 2023
Jonas Algers is a PhD candidate at Lund University, Sweden, researching steel decarbonisation policy.
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 fashion expert and journalist Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick - and How We Can Fight Back.
Buy To Dye For from Penguin Random House. Visit Alden's website, EcoCult, for more reporting on these issues. 'Hitting the gym or going to yoga? Your workout clothes could be doing more harm than you realize', CNN, 2023 'That Organic Cotton T-Shirt May Not Be as Organic as You Think', New York Times, 2022'Sick of smelly, plastic clothes? Blame oil and industrial farming', Land & Climate Review, 2023
Drawing from case studies in Alden's book, they discuss the health risks with chemicals modern clothing is often treated with, and whether there has been enough research and regulation on the issue.
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 former politician and French investigating magistrate Eva Joly about corporate corruption, tax evasion, and how these issues relate to the climate crisis.
Tax Wars, ICRICT'Global minimum tax on multinationals goes live to raise up to $220bn', Financial Times, 2024'McDonald’s to pay more than €1B to settle French tax case', Politico, 2022It is time for a global asset registry to tackle hidden wealth, ICRICT, 2022'L`affaire Elf en résumé', Challenges, 2007
They reflect on her investigation into financial corruption at the French oil giant Elf Aquitaine, and her current campaign work with the International Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT).
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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Ed speaks to Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.
'Are markets the right tool for decarbonizing electricity?', Volts, 2024'Everything You’re Told About Green Capitalism Is Wrong', Novara Media, 2024
Brett Christophers is a professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the author of four books on economic geography and political economy.
Brett and Ed discuss the commodification of electricity, the role of the state in renewable energy projects and why markets can’t be relied on to decarbonise the energy sector.
The Price is Wrong was published in February and is available to buy from Verso books here.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further listening:Further reading:
'Antimarket', London Review of Books, 2024'The Price is Wrong - Brett Christophers on saving the planet', Financial Times, 2024Other books by Brett:
Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World, 2023Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, 2020The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, 2018Click here to read our investigation into the UK biomass supply chain, or watch a clip from the BBC Newsnight documentary.
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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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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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