Author: Alex Kellogg

The Nicaragua Canal: Economic Opportunity or Environmental Catastrophe?

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 24

In June of 2013, the Nicaraguan National Assembly approved of the construction of a canal to be built through Nicaragua by the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Group. The canal is expected to cost around $40 billion, provide Nicaragua with 250,000 jobs and significantly increase the national GDP. On the surface, one can understand why the government of the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, with nearly 45% of its citizens below the poverty line, may find this deal attractive. However, the canal’s construction, which has already been postponed twice, has raised concerns by conservation scientists, environmental activists, and indigenous Nicaraguans about the environmental and social impacts the canal may have on the country.

The 173-mile long canal is currently projected to bisect Nicaragua starting from the mouth of the Brito river on the Pacific coast, where it will cut through to lake Cocibolca and on eastward through the Tule and Punta Gorda rivers to the Caribbean sea. Lake Cocibolca is Central America’s largest freshwater lake and is not only Nicaragua’s primary source of fresh water, but is also home to a variety of endemic fish species as well as thousands of indigenous families who fish the lake for subsistence. Conservationists fear that the introduction of saltwater from the ocean entering the lake via the canal could disrupt the lake’s ecosystem, threatening not only its biodiversity but also the livelihoods of thousands of people. There is the additional possibility of invasive ocean species being inadvertently transported into the lake from ships passing through and wreaking havoc on endemic populations.

The canal would also cut through the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, a reserve stretching from southern Mexico to Panama that allows endangered mammals, such as jaguars, to migrate from north to south across their native habitat. Experts at Panthera, a group of scientists dedicated to the protection of large cats, warn that such a disruption could do significant harm to the already small jaguar population (500 individuals) in Nicaragua. Perhaps the most troubling consequence of the canal would be the displacement of some 120,000 farmers and members of the indigenous Rama, Ulwa, Garifuna, and Miskitu communities that live along the canal’s proposed route. This displacement would not only unjustly confiscate land from indigenous groups that have been marginalized since Spanish colonial times, but would also threaten their unique languages and cultures, representing a net loss of human cultural diversity.

Sources:

After Seven-year Moratorium, Indonesia’s Rainforests Continue to Disappear

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18 Issue 16

In 2011, the Indonesian government, responding to the rampant deforestation of the archipelago’s tropical rainforests and peatlands, imposed a moratorium on the logging of any new concessions in undisturbed forest areas.

Yet recent satellite imagery monitoring Indonesia’s deforestation rate shows that the country has lost over 10,000 square miles of forested lands since the moratorium went into effect, an area slightly larger than the state of Maryland. This is in addition to the nearly 96,000 square miles of rainforest lost between 1990 and 2011, an area roughly the size of the United Kingdom.

The trend has awarded Indonesia, whose rainforest is the third largest globally and home to 17 percent of the planet’s species, the notorious distinction of being the world’s No. 1 deforester, eclipsing Brazil in 2014. Largely to blame are the land-hungry palm oil and paper pulp plantations that Indonesia has come to rely in recent decades in order to grow its economy.

“In fact, there was a marked increase of deforestation after 2010,” says Erik Meijaard, a conservation scientist and founder of Borneo Futures. “You get a very rapid expansion of the oil palm industry into forest areas, so if a moratorium was called in 2011, it didn’t seem to have an impact on the oil palm sector at least,” said Meijaard.

The plantations clear the land by burning the rainforests and peat bogs, not only destroying habitat for critically endangered species like the orangutan and the Sumatran rhino but also releasing vast volumes of smoke and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In 2015, due to dry conditions exacerbated by an El Niño event, the largest wildfire in Indonesian history, attributed to industrial burns, released 1,750 million metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, almost twice the annual emissions of Germany.

Even though emissions from forest and land disturbance only account for a quarter of total global emissions, Indonesia leads the world in forest-related emissions, releasing 240 to 447 million tons of CO2 annually from these activities.

Despite these trends, Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry states that the deforestation rate has been decreasing since 2015. “There has been a decline in deforestation in production forests, from 63% [of total deforestation] in 2014 to 44% in 2017,” said Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar.

Critically, this is because the Indonesian government views production forests, man-made industrial forests planted for timber harvesting, as reforestation. This is at odds with many research institutes and conservation think tanks, such as the World Resource Institute, that sees production forests as a form of deforestation because they are a human replacement of the natural forest cover.

The disagreement over definitions could impede Indonesia’s access to international funding for its reforestation efforts, such as the $1 billion Norway has pledged as a part of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program, and the $100 billion the signers of the Paris Accords pledged to donate to the Green Climate Fund to assist developing counties in fighting climate change.

Yet at the moment, Indonesia has only received 12% of Norway’s promised contribution, and only $10 billion has thus far been given to the Green Climate Fund. This is compared to the nearly $30 billion Indonesia earns annually from paper pulp, palm oil, and coal industries, the very enterprises that are most destructive to the forests.

“The amount of money that’s on the table for conserving forests is not nearly enough to compete with the amount of money that is changing hands every day for clearing forests for palm oil and paper pulp,” says Jonah Busch, an environmental economist and fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Despite the problems with the moratorium and the muddled definition of “deforestation”, Busch thinks that, at least in the short term, something is better than nothing. “The very important steps in the right direction that Indonesia has taken are unfairly characterized as failures because the whole big ship has not turned around yet. If there hadn’t been a moratorium, deforestation might have been higher.”

Sources

  1. Coca, Nithin. “Despite Government Pledges, Ravaging of Indonesia’s Forests Continues”. Yale Environment 360. Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 22 March 2018. Web. 30 March 2018.
  2. Harball, Elizabeth. “Deforestation in Indonesia is Double the Government’s Rate.” E&E News Sustainability. Scientific American, 30 June 2014. Web. 30 March 2018.
  3. Jong, Hans Nicholas. “Is a plantation a forest? Indonesia says yes, as it touts a drop in deforestation.” Mongabay. Mongabay, 31 January 2018. Web. 1 April 2018.

Border Wall Threatens Desert Wildlife

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 14

Despite its reputation as a barren wasteland, the desert regions of the American southwest are some of the most biologically rich areas in all of North America. Within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, there are 25 million acres of protected public lands, including six national parks, six wildlife refuges and a number of wilderness areas.

Of this area, the Coronado National Forest, part of the ecologically rich Sky Island mountain range that extends from Sonora, Mexico, into southern Arizona and New Mexico, contains more threatened and endangered species than any other national forest in the country. Many of these threatened species are charismatic megafaunas, such as the Mexican gray wolf, ocelot, jaguarundi, and a lone jaguar that has reentered the region from Mexico after the species was driven to extinction in the U.S. during the 20th century.

Yet these species and many others are increasingly threatened by the expanding wall the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building on the border to deter unauthorized migration from Mexico. A 2011 study by Penn State biologist Jesse Lasky found that, of 369 animal species documented within 30 miles of the border, 50 were considered endangered.

The 654 miles of wall that already exist along the 2,000-mile long border has prevented at least 45 of those species from migrating, potentially reducing their gene pool and cutting them off from water sources and hunting grounds. “A lot of species do best in Northern Mexico, but with changes in precipitation patterns, they would need to disperse across the border,” says Lasky. “This is something we should be thinking about a lot more – how fast organisms are responding to climate change.”

Additionally, new roads created by the Border Patrol into more remote areas of Arizona’s southern desert have also disrupted desert habitat and destroyed many miles of cryptobiotic soil, clumps of fungus and algae that retain moisture and assist in plant growth that take many years to form.

In autumn of 2017, President Trump requested $1.6 billion for the construction of 74 miles of additional wall that would bisect the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in Texas as well as reinforce an existing wall on the San Diego-Tijuana border in California. Environmentalists worry that apart from bisecting habitat and preventing animal migration, the wall could also exacerbate the risk of flooding to both ecosystems and human settlements.

In Nogales and the adjacent Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona, debris has been known to pile up behind the border fence, damming water behind it until it bursts through in a flash flood event that drowns out habitat and occasionally kills people. “Flood water always has debris in it,” says Dan Millis of the Sierra Club Borderlands project. “That’s how you get these damming events that blew out chunks of the wall. Damming also causes erosion – it creates the situation we saw in Arizona where debris backs up the water and then the sediment building upstream created a waterfall that causes more erosion. This is liable to happen in Texas.”

Due to a law passed in 2005 called the Real ID Act, the DHS has the right to waive most environmental regulations in the name of national security, depriving environmental advocacy groups of the power to litigate against the federal government. Yet as the Trump administration makes plans to build 700 to 900 additional miles of concrete wall along the border to the tune of at least $12 billion, environmentalists, scientists, and regional stakeholders are coming up with alternative solutions that promote border security while also enhancing the health of borderland ecosystems.

One such proposal is to create a large international nature reserve on the Rio Grande that is co-owned and operated by the U.S. and Mexican governments. The Rio Grande’s volume is currently on the decline due to climate change as well as diversions by both countries for municipal, agricultural and industrial uses. It also suffers from excessive pollution from raw sewage and fertilizer runoff, possibly contributing to the loss of half a dozen of its native fish species. By restoring the riparian areas on both sides through the planting of trees, reducing water diversions and cleaning up pollution, the river’s water volume and velocity will likely increase, deterring people from crossing while also providing more robust habitat for wildlife.

Yet another option is to rely more heavily on advanced surveillance technology to monitor the border and reduce the environmental damages associated with a physical wall and terrestrial Border Patrol vehicles. The Department of Homeland Security already employs predator drone aircraft, high-elevation blimps, and helicopters equipped with video cameras and infrared sensors used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to monitor border activity. “Technology is definitely first,” said David Aguilar, principal of the Washington D.C.-based Global Security and innovative Strategies consulting firm. “These are things that can be used on any part of the border. There are places where you just can’t put a wall.”

Despite insistence from some that security concerns trump environmental ones, this is a false choice. While no solution is 100% effective, it is possible to secure our border without sacrificing the species and ecosystems that make the borderlands beautiful and worth protecting.

Sources:

  1. Barclay, Eliza and Sarah Frostenson. “The ecological disaster that is Trump’s border wall: a visual guide.” Vox. Vox, 29 October 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
  2. Goldfarb, Ben. “Where wildlife is up against the wall.” High Country News. High Country News, 10 February 2017. Web. 9 February 2018.
  3. Lasky, Jesse R. et. al. “Conservation biogeography of the US-Mexico border: a transcontinental risk assessment of barriers to animal dispersal.” Wiley Online Library. Diversity and Distribution: A Journal of Conservation Biogeography, 3 May 2011. Web. 9 February 2018.
  4. Montemayor, Gabriel Diaz. “There’s a better alternative to building a border wall: restoring the Rio Grande.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 28 August 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
  5. Nixon, Ron. “On the Mexican Border, a Case for Technology Over Concrete.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 June 2017. Web. 19 February 2018.
  6. Ray Ring. “Border out of control.” High Country News. High Country News, 16 June 2014. Web. 9 February 2018.

King Penguins Face Habitat Loss in Warming Southern Ocean

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 11

The king penguins of the Antarctic sea may be the next charismatic species faced with the daunting challenge of moving to escape the impacts of climate change. A study recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that, unless warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are reduced, up to 70% of the king penguin population will have to move or face starvation by the end of the century.

Due to warming ocean temperatures, the Antarctic polar front, a nutrient-rich band of water in the Southern Ocean from whence king penguins derive 80% of their diet, is migrating closer to Antarctica and farther away from the southern archipelagos where the penguins roost. While the penguins can swim up to 400 miles round trip from the southern islands to the polar front, if the band moves much farther south, it will be out of reach for most of the penguin colonies.

Additionally, the lack of sea ice, which allows penguins to rest while hunting in the open ocean, may further threaten the species capacity to feed itself as warming continues. “They will need to either move somewhere else or they will just disappear,” said Dr. Emiliano Trucchi, an evolutionary biologist at Italy’s University of Ferrara and one of the study’s senior authors. “The largest colonies are on islands that will be too far from the source of food.”

The largest colonies of king penguins, home to a full half of the species population, are located on Prince Edwards and the Crozet Islands, south of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. According to the researchers’ “business as usual” climate change model, the populations on these islands would likely lose their habitat entirely by the end of the century. Another 21% that live on the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean and the Falkland Islands off the South American coast will likely find themselves far enough away from their food source that they may be incentivized to relocate to islands farther south.

Yet, relocation may not be as simple as moving farther south to islands closer to the new Antarctic polar front. Unlike the larger emperor penguins, king penguins require ice-free islands with sandy beaches, leaving the species with few additional islands closer to Antarctica to move to as many are rocky, covered in ice, or have other species of penguins already living there. “We are talking about one million individuals that need to find a new place to live,” says Trucchi, noting that “the endpoint of this massive relocation is hard to predict.”

Despite the grim finding, the researchers suggested that some islands, such as Bouvet Island in the Southern Ocean, may be able to be colonized by king penguins as temperatures warm if humans take steps to protect them. “If there are some islands that are likely to be relatively safe, like those in the south, then we know about that now, and we can potentially protect those from other threats like fishing and tourism – to give animals the best chance of survival,” says Dr. Jane Younger, evolutionary ecologist at Loyola University Chicago.

The researchers ultimately argue that mitigating climate change is the best chance we have at saving king penguin habitat; using a model in which greenhouse gases were reduced enough to prevent global temperature from rising more than 2-degrees Celsius, they found that the majority of the population would not need to migrate.

“These are kind of poster children for what’s going to happen with climate change,” said Dr. Ceriden Fraser, a marine molecular ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra. “People wouldn’t care as much if it were a slug or a slime mold, but the same sorts of impacts will happen to many different species. In a way, it’s good for us to see these impacts happening to animals we love, because it might spur a little bit of action.”

Sources:

  1. Harvey, Chelsea. “Antarctica’s Iconic King Penguins May Have to Move South: But suitable islands for breeding may be harder to find.” Scientific American. E&E News, 27 February 2018. Web. 4 March 2018.
  2. Kennedy, Merrit. “Scientists Predict King Penguins Face Major Threats Due to Climate Change.” North Carolina Public Radio. National Public Radio, Inc., 26 February 2018. Web. 5 March 2018.
  3. Winetraub, Karen. “King Penguins Are Endangered by Warmer Seas.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 February 2018. Web. 5 March 2018.

China Bans Imported Recyclables, Disrupting Global Market

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 6

On January 1st, the Chinese government instituted a ban on imported recycled plastic and paper materials, throwing the global recycling market into turmoil.Since the 1990’s, China has been the number one consumer of raw recycled materials, receiving a full half of the world’s waste plastic, metal and paper as cheap fodder for its rapid urban-industrial expansion. In 2016, China purchased 7.3 million tons of “solid waste” worth about $18 billion, leaving a gaping hole in global demand after the ban that experts fear will not easily be filled.

The ban prohibits the import of 24 different types of commonly recycled waste products, including low-grade polyethylene terephthalate found in plastic bottles and unsorted paper. It also requires that all non-banned imported recyclables contain no more than 0.5% contamination, a threshold stricter than any European or American standard on recyclables.

“Large amounts of dirty wastes or even hazardous wastes are mixed in the solid waste that can be used as raw materials,” Beijing wrote to the World Trade Organization explaining the logic behind the new ban. “This polluted China’s environment seriously.”

While Chinese officials were initially willing to ignore the environmental costs of importing contaminated scrap materials, such as soil and water pollution, the country’s explosive economic growth affords it the option of sourcing newer, cleaner plastics for its domestic needs over recycled ones.

“What’s happened is that the final link in the supply chain has turned around and said: ‘No, we’re not going to take this poor quality stuff anymore. Keep it for yourself,’” said Simon Ellin, chief executive of the British Recycling Association. “The rest of the world is thinking, ‘What can we do?’ It’s hard times.”

This decision is having profound impacts on the capacity of Western nations to handle their recycling, most of whom sent their waste to China and thus do not have the infrastructure to process recyclables themselves.

Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, are resorting to either incinerating or burying their plastics in landfills as a short-term solution to the crisis, though both options are environmentally damaging. Other countries, such as the United States, are attempting to find markets in countries like Myanmar, India, and Vietnam for their recycling, though switching supply chains so abruptly is a challenge.

“There may be alternative markets but they’re not ready today,” said Emmanuel Katrakis of the Brussels based European Recycling Industries Confederation. In the meantime, the United States, which annually sends over 1.42 million tons of scrap plastic and 13.2 million tons of scrap paper to China, will be forced to either spend taxpayer money on upgrading recycling processing facilities domestically or, like the UK, divert the excess to landfills according to Adam Minter, author of “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade.” “Without China, there will be less recycling in the United States, and it will cost more,” the author said.

The United States initially relied upon China to recycle its plastic waste due to market incentives; it was simply cheaper to send recyclables overseas than it was to expand recycling capacities at home. With the shifting of incentives caused by China’s tightening regulations over recent years culminating in the most recent ban, it is costing the U.S. $2,100 per shipping container to return recyclables by ship from Chinese ports back to California.

“The public doesn’t realize this, but recycling is made possible by technology and markets – they think its just a matter of technology,” an expert on China’s waste management reported to Quartz. “And we don’t have strong enough markets in the U.S.”

While this market change will almost certainly harm the U.S.’s environment in the short term as recycling friendly states like Oregon and Washington divert their recycling to landfills, in the long term it could be beneficial as American states become incentivized to build their own recycling facilities.

Sources

  1. De Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko. “Plastics Pile Up as China Refuses to Take the West’s Recycling.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 11 January 2018. Web. 16 January 2018.
  2. Guilford, Gwynn. “China doesn’t want your trash anymore – and that could spell big trouble for American cities.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 8 May 2013. Web. 27 January 2018.
  3. Guilford, Gwynn. “US states banned from exporting their trash to China are drowning in plastic.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 21 August 2013. Web. 27 January 2018.
  4. Ives, Mike. “China Limits Waste. ‘Cardboard Grannies’ and Texas Recyclers Scramble.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 November 2017. Web. 16 January 2018.
  5. Kaskey, Jack and Ann Koh. “China’s Blow to Recycling Boosts U.S.’s $185 Billion Plastic Bet.” Bloomberg. Climate Changed, 6 December 2017. Web. 16 January 2018.
  6. Staub, Colin. “Exporter response to China: ‘We are changing our whole strategy.'” Plastics Recycling Update. A Resource Recycling, Inc. Publication, 4 January 2018. Web. 16 January 2018.

China Launches World’s Largest Carbon Market

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 3

Premier Xi Jinping of China announced on December 19th that his country was opening the largest carbon trading market in the world, fulfilling China’s pledge to do just that in two years’ time at the 2015 Paris climate summit. This comes after US president Donald Trump rescinded the United States’ commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris accords earlier this year, leaving a vacuum in global climate change leadership that many expect China to fill. “The launching of China’s national emissions trading system is a significant step in a long march toward a clean energy economy,” president of Energy Foundation China, Zou Ji, told HuffPost. “By launching, China sends a strong political signal internationally that China is keeping its global commitments, and is committed to the Paris Agreement.” China’s carbon trading market would function as a “cap and trade” system, wherein the central government puts a price on carbon by instituting a “cap” on the total amount of greenhouse gases a given industry is allowed to produce within a given time frame. Companies that produce less carbon dioxide than the cap allows for can then sell “carbon credits” to companies that exceeded the emissions cap, incentivizing companies to produce less greenhouse gases. As caps are reduced each year, so too are the country’s total emissions over the course of several years. Although the scheme only covers power plants producing more than 26,000 tons of carbon per year, which collectively produce 33% of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, the government plans to extend the program to other industries in the future if it proves successful, such as the petrochemical, aviation, and steel industries. Due to the sheer size of China’s power sector, however, the 3.3 billion tons of carbon that are expected to be traded annually on the new market dwarfs the emissions covered by the world’s next biggest carbon market, that of the European Union, which covers only 2 billion tons of carbon annually. The high emissions are due in part to China’s massive population, which at 1.3 billion people makes it the world’s most populous country, as well as the world’s number one emitter of greenhouse gases. Yet China’s per capita emissions still lag behind that of the United States, which are more than double that of China. Ambitious as China’s cap and trade scheme is, official trading will probably not begin until 2019, according to Energy Foundation China, as the Chinese government has yet to fully plan out the regulations under which the market would operate. Of particular concern is determining how to get the price of carbon high enough to be effective at actually limiting emissions, an objective the European Union market struggled with in the wake of the 2008 financial crises when the price for carbon credits dipped from 25 Euros per ton to 5 Euros per ton, eventually stabilizing at around 7 Euros per ton. According to economists, every ton of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere today will do $125 worth of damage to society at a global scale in the future, a number commonly referred to as the social cost of carbon. In order for the scheme to actually reduce emissions and have a mitigating effect on climate change, the price of carbon needs to be as close to this number as possible. If all goes well, the program could help China achieve its goal of reaching peak carbon dioxide production by 2030.

Sources:

  1. Bradsher, Keith and Lisa Friedman. “China Unveils an Ambitious Plan to Curb Climate Change Emissions.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 December 2017. Web. 23 December 2017.
  2. Mosbergen, Dominique. “China Unveils World’s Largest Carbon Market.” HuffPost. Huffington Post, 19 December 2017. Web. 23 December 2017.
  3. Rathi, Akshat and Echo Huang. “The complete guide to the world’s largest carbon market that just launched in China.” Quartz. Quartz Media LLC, 18 December 2017. Web. 22 December 2017.

One of the Worst Fires in State History Ravages Southern California

Swamp Stomp

Volume 18, Issue 2

Over 230,000 square acres and upwards of 1,000 structures in urban southern California have been burned in what is now recognized as one of the worst wildfires in California state history. At least 200,000 residents from the towns of Ventura, Ojai, and Montecito, all to the northwest of Los Angeles, have been evacuated as the flames continue to be driven west by the desiccating Santa Ana winds, annual gusts that blow from the southwest deserts over the Santa Ana mountain range and into coastal California in the winter. “It’s not like someone-pointing-a-gun-at-you scared,” said Montecito resident Charles McCaleb referencing the approaching wildfire. “Its more of a controlled fright where you know what’s happening.”

Numerous factors are contributing to these intense wildfires, not least of which includes the fact that this summer and fall have been both the hottest and driest on record for California. “The [relative] humidities right now along the coast are much drier than what you’d normally see in the interior desert in the summertime,” said Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist. “Once you get down to 1% or 2%, you’re down almost as low as is physically possible.” After a historically wet winter last year that allowed more grass and underbrush to grow throughout the state than normal, the extreme heat and dryness of summer and fall killed off the majority of this vegetation, building up an excess of natural dry tinder that the current wildfire has been able to continuously feed off of. Even though California’s wet season was supposed to begin in October, precipitation has been below the historical average, further exacerbating the wildfires. “Normally if we had a little bit of rain, there’s some moisture in the soil to recover,” Swain said. “But there is no rain in sight, about as far as I can possibly say about the weather.”

While it is too early to determine, human-induced climate change is thought to be a culprit in contributing to California’s extreme weather conditions, with studies showing that climate change contributed strongly to the state’s drought in 2012. In accordance with climate change models, annual variations of precipitation and temperature, like the kind California has seen in the past decade, are expected to increase, exaggerating the differences between wet and dry years and increasing the risk of wildfires.“ This is looking like the type of year that might occur more often in the future,” said A. Parker Williams, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, who led one of the studies investigating climate change’s impact on California’s drought.

Some meteorologists argue that climate change may not be to blame, citing a ridge of air over the Pacific Northwest influenced by the naturally occurring La Niña cycle as the reason for southern California’s abnormal weather. Yet according to Dr. Williams, due to the warming effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, “whatever happens, it’s all superimposed on a warmer world.”

Sources:

  1. Fountain, Henry. “In a Warming California, a Future of More Fire.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 7 December 2017. Web. 10 December 2017.
  2. Lai, K.K Rebecca, Derek Watkins and Tim Wallace. “Where the Fires are Spreading in Southern California,” The New York Times. The New York Times, 8 December 2017. Web. 10 December 2017.
  3. Serna, Joseph. “For some, Thomas fire triggers ‘controlled fright.'” The Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times, 11 December 2017. Web. 11 December 2017.
  4. Serna, Joseph. “Why is Southern California burning in December? A climate scientist’s answer.” The Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times, 7 December 2017. Web. 11 December 2017.

Senate Tax Bill Includes Provision to Drill Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 50

Senate Republicans passed a tax reform bill early Saturday morning with a provision opening up parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas development. The provision, introduced by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, passed 51-49 along party lines, save Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) who voted against the bill. The measure represents a “critical milestone in our efforts to secure Alaska’s energy future,” Murkowski said in a statement.

Established by former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, spans across 19 million square acres of Alaska’s North Slope, making it the largest wildlife refuge in the United States. Often referred to as the “Serengeti” of North America, the refuge is home to over 200 species of wildlife, including caribou, arctic foxes, wolves, and a variety of bird species that migrate from all over North and South America to roost there in the summer months.

The ANWR is also the only refuge in the country where one can see black bears, grizzly bears, and polar bears in the same place, and serves as a wildlife corridor for species to move between the Canadian Yukon territory to the east and the Chukchi Sea to the northwest. A number of Alaska Native tribes, such as the Gwich’in, continue to rely on caribou herds that migrate through the refuge for sustenance.

After former President Jimmy Carter expanded the refuge in 1980, Congress designated 1.5 million acres on the north coast of the refuge as a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, after the fears of oil shortages intensified following the Arab oil embargo and Iranian Revolution of the 1970s. Geologists estimate the SPR contains around 12 million barrels of accessible crude oil, potentially worth around $685 million.

Senate Republicans argue that the drilling would only minimally impact the environment since only tracts within the SPR would be eligible for sale to gas companies and citing newer, cleaner extraction technologies that supposedly are more environmentally friendly.

Yet Democrats and environmentalists remain unconvinced, referencing the fact that oil spills remain incredibly common and that the SPR is virtually the only spot in all of Alaska where caribou calve in the spring. The measure to allow drilling in the ANWR was attached without debate to the tax reform bill rather than being presented as a stand alone bill. Since the tax reform bill has a direct impact on the national budget, it only needed a simple majority to pass, rather than the usually 60-vote filibuster threshold applied to all other legislation.

“Little wonder Senate Republicans rushed the vote: it wouldn’t survive the light of debate,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, of the legislation.

About a week before the Senate’s vote, twelve House Republicans had written a letter to both the House and Senate arguing against drilling the ANWR, saying that the refuge’s resources “simply are not necessary for our nation’s energy independence.”

Now that both the House and the Senate have voted on a tax reform bill, they will come together in the coming weeks to work out the differences and discrepancies between their two bills before submitting a bill to President Trump’s desk to either sign or veto.

Sources:

  1. Howard, Brian Clark and Sarah Gibbens. “See the Alaska Wildlife Refuge Targeted for Drilling by Tax Plan.” National Geographic. National Geographic, 2 December 2017. Web. 3 December 2017.
  2. Gardner, Timothy. “Drilling in Alaska refuge liklier as Senate clears tax bill.” Reuters. Reuters, 2 December 2017. Web. 3 December 2017.
  3. Koss, Geof and and Kellie Lunney. “Procedural knots tie up ANWR, reform push.” E&E Daily. E&E News, 1 December 2017. Web. 2 December 2017.
  4. Solomon, Christopher. “America’s Wildest Place is Open for Business.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 November 2017. Web. 3 December 2017.
  5. Westneat, Danny. “How to drill for oil in Alaska’s wildlife refuge: Sneak it through in tax bill.” The Seattle Times. The Seattle Times, 22 November 2017. Web. 3 December 2017.

COP23 Climate Conference: Small Island Nations Voice Concerns

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 48

Diplomats, government representatives and members of civil society convened in Bonn, Germany from November 6th to 17th to attend the twenty-third annual UN Climate Change Conference, or COP23.

The purpose of the conference, presided over by Prime Minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama, is to showcase how UN member states have been implementing solutions to meet the climate change mitigation objectives laid out by the Paris Climate Change agreements of 2015, as well as to build further collaborations between governments, private organizations and communities in reaching the goals of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable Development, which includes climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

During his opening speech, Prime Minister Bainimarama emphasized the dire need for international cooperation in addressing climate change, saying “we must preserve the global consensus for decisive action enshrined in the Paris Agreement and aim for the most ambitious part of that target – to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial age.”

As President of the conference, Bainimarama and the Fijian delegates, as well as other members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), have emphasized the particular plight small island nations face as the effects of climate change grow, from more frequent and powerful storms to sea level rise submerging large swaths of low-lying territory and salinizing sources of fresh water.

For many such islands, including Fiji, more than just natural resources and land are at stake of being lost to rising oceans; coastal villages that have been inhabited by humans for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years are often home to ancestral burial sites that have significant religious and culture meaning to the living. As small islands take steps to relocate these villages to higher ground, this connection between people and their land is compromised, if not lost altogether.

Sailosi Ramatu, headmen of the recently relocated Fijian village of Vunidogoloa, told E&E news that “we cherish our culture and religions in the village and [those are] two main things that we continue to teach our children today, as it is what we will be known for.”

While internal relocation remains an option for island nations with higher ground to move to, lower-lying islands, such as the Maldives in the Indian Ocean and Kiribati in the Pacific, face the stark choice of fortifying their islands against the tides or leaving their homelands altogether.

The Maldives, whose islands average a mere 1.5 meters above sea level, is opting for the former choice, selecting some of their islands to be buttressed by sea walls and artificially constructing others. In 2014, Kiribati made plans for the latter, buying 8 square miles of land from Fiji in the event of mass evacuations. “We would hope not to put everyone on [this one] piece of land but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it” then President of Kiribati Anote Tong told the Associated Press.

Due to the financial burden climate change is expected to impose upon less developed countries, wealthier countries during the Paris Climate Change agreements agreed to provide 100 billion US dollars towards funding adaptation in less developed countries. While this is a non-binding agreement, evidenced by President Trump’s removal of the United States from the agreements earlier this year, countries like China and Germany have continued to fund adaptation and mitigation strategies in poorer countries.

At the beginning of the conference in Bonn, Germany pledged 50 million euros to the Least Developed Countries Fund as well as an additional 50 million euros to the Adaptation Fund, making it the largest donor to the Adaptation Fund. Commenting on these donations, German Federal Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said: “With this pledge of support we are sending a clear signal that Germany stands in solidarity with those people and countries particularly affected by climate change. I hope that this pledge will lend good momentum and inspire a constructive atmosphere for the negotiations.”

Sources:

  1. Chemnick, Jean. “Islanders face severe threat. Can they convince the world?” Climatewire. E&E News, 9 November 2017. Web. 10 November 2017.
  2. “UN Climate Change Conference 2017 Aims for Further, Faster Ambition Together.” UN Climate Press Release. United Nations Climate Change, 5 November 2017. Web. 10 November 2017.
  3. “UN Climate Change Conference begins: Germany supports developing countries in climate change adaptation.” Current Press Release. Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, 6 November 2017. Web.  10 November 2017.

Trump Moves to Shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 47

President Trump recently confirmed with lawmakers in Utah that he is planning to shrink the size of two national monuments in the state, according to a press release from the office of Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R). The announcement comes in response to the recommendations laid out by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who in April was tasked by President Trump via executive order with reevaluating all national monuments over 100,000 acres in size designated since 1996.

Currently twenty-seven such monuments across the country, including several marine parks, are on Secretary Zinke’s list for proposed policy changes or boundary modifications. “We believe in the importance of protecting these sacred antiquities,” Hatch said in response to the announcement. “But Zinke and the Trump administration rolled up their sleeves to dig in, talk to locals, talk to local tribes and find a better way to do it. We’ll continue to work closely with them moving forward to ensure Utahns have a voice.”

The two national monuments in Utah, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears, were both designated by executive order, the former by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and the latter by President Barack Obama in 2016. Both national monuments have been objects of intense controversy in Utah state politics.

Critics of the monuments, including Sen. Hatch, have argued that the designations represent federal overreach into the state’s affairs and that they unfairly restrict land use, such as mining and grazing, that could otherwise bring money into the state. In the case of Grand Staircase-Escalante, extractive industries hoping to mine the estimated 30 billion tons of coal on the monument’s Kaiparowits Plateau were particularly put off by the designation.

“It sounds like the voices of western communities are finally being heard and the promise to preserve grazing inside monuments might finally be kept by the federal government,” wrote Ethan Lane, director of the Public Lands Council at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, in an email to The Washington Post. “This action would be a win for any western community that depends on ranching to stay afloat.”

Supporters of the monuments, including many Native American tribes from the region, argue that the designations are justified for both environmental and culture reasons; not only are Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears breathtaking sights of natural beauty rich in biodiversity, but the land encompassing the Bears Ears monument in particular is considered sacred by many southwestern tribes, including the Diné (Navajo), Hopi, and Ute, from whence the state of Utah gets its name.

“It was always and has been a spiritual place,” said Al Yazzie, a tribal member of the Navajo Nations’s Low Mountain chapter, about Bears Ears. “It’s the white people that came and tried to nullify that. And we had to fight to get it – to play the game the Western way, the government way, to have it reestablished as a national monument, as a sacred place for us.”

Despite President Trump’s proposed cuts, it is not yet clear if the president has the power to modify national monuments without permission from Congress. Under the Antiquities Act of 1906, the president may act to preserve lands that are scientifically, historically or culturally significant, yet it says nothing about the ability to rescind formerly designated monuments and natural parks.

The last president to modify natural monument boundaries was president John F. Kennedy, who in the 1960’s rearranged the borders of the Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico. However, this occurred before the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, which legal experts say may bar the president from reducing or abolishing any preexisting designation.

“The president simply does not have the authority to modify these land and ocean treasures,” said Peter Shelley, a senior counsel at Conservation Law Foundation. “More than 120 legal scholars agree that the purpose of the Antiquities Act is clear: to protect areas of scientific, cultural or historical value – not to decimate them.”

A number of environmental organizations and businesses, including the Wilderness Society, Southern Utah Wilderness alliance and outdoor gear companies Patagonia and REI have threatened to bring legal action against the Trump administration should any changes to the monuments be made.

At the heart of this issue over public lands in the west, which has been raging for decades, is how much power the federal government should have in deciding how a state’s lands are allowed to be used. This is of critical concern in western states because, compared to eastern states, a greater percentage of their land’s are federally owned; no state west of the Rocky Mountains except Hawai’i has less than 29% of their land owned by the federal government. In the east, the state with the most federally owned land is North Carolina at only 11.8%.

Even as President Trump and Secretary Zinke move forward with the monument amendments, it could take five to six years to fully effect them, according to legal experts. “This process will be very legally vulnerable because it will have to deal with all the scientific, environmental and social conclusions produced during the first round of management plan creation,” said Randi Spivak, public lands program director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “This would be a massive hurdle for the administration.”

Sources:

  • Barringer, Felicity and Geoff McGhee. “Tracking Proposed Monument Reductions in the West.” Public Lands & The West Blog. The Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University, 21 September 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.
  • Eilperin, Juliet. “Environmental and outdoor groups vow to fight national monument reductions.” The Washington Post. The Washington Post (WP Company LLC), 18 September 2017. Web. 18 November 2017.
  • Friedman, Lisa, Nadja Popovich and Matt Mccann. “27 National Monuments Are Under Review. Here are Five to Watch.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 August 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.
  • Friedman, Lisa and Julie Turkewitz. “Interior Secretary Proposes Shrinking Four National Monuments.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 August 2017. Web. 18 November 2017.
  • Yachnin, Jennifer. “National Monuments: Angry greens promise lawsuits if Trump acts on Zinke memo.” E&E News PM. E&E News, 18 September 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.
  • Yachnin, Jennifer. “National Monuments: Trump to slash Bears Ears, Grand Staircase – Hatch.” E&E News PM. E&E News, 27 October 2017. Web. 28 October 2017.