Tag: Environment

Iraq’s marshes are dying, and so is a civilization | Climate Crisis

Mohammed Hamid Nour is only 23 but is already nostalgic for how Iraq’s Mesopotamian marshes once were before drought dried them up, decimating his herd of water buffaloes.

Even at their centre in Chibayish, only a few expanses of the ancient waterways – home to a Marsh Arab culture that goes back millennia – survive, linked by channels that snake through the reeds.

Pull back further and the water gives way to bare, cracked earth.

Mohammed has lost three-quarters of his herd to the drought that is now ravaging the marshes for a fourth consecutive year. The United Nations said it is the worst in 40 years, describing the situation as “alarming”, with “70 percent of the marshes devoid of water”.

“I beg you, Allah, have mercy!” Mohammed implored, keffiyeh on his head as he contemplated the disaster under the unforgiving blue of a cloudless sky.

As the marshes dry out, the water gets salty until it starts killing the buffaloes. Many of Mohammed’s herd died like this, others he was forced to sell before they too perished.

“If the drought continues and the government doesn’t help us, the others will also die,” said the young herder, who has no other income.

In the 1990s, Iraq’s former strongman President Saddam Hussein drained the marshes – which were 20,000sq km (7,700sq miles) – to punish the Marsh Arabs, diverting the flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers away from the land.

It was only after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that people began to dismantle the Saddam-era infrastructure, allowing the marshes to refill slightly, but they are still only 4,000sq km (1,500sq miles) by the latest estimates – also choked by dams on the Tigris and Euphrates upstream in Turkey and Syria and soaring temperatures of climate change.

Iconic culture

Marsh buffalo milk is an iconic part of Iraqi cuisine, as is the thick, clotted “geymar” cream Iraqis love to have with honey for breakfast.

The buffaloes are tricky to raise and their milk cannot be mass-produced, and their rearing is tied to the marshes

Both the Mesopotamian marshes and the culture of the Ma’dan – Marsh Arabs – who live in them, have UNESCO World Heritage status. The Ma’dan have hunted and fished there for 5,000 years, building houses from woven reeds on floating reed islands where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers come together before pouring into the Gulf.

Even their beautifully intricate mosques were made of reeds.

Today, only a few thousand of the quarter million Ma’dan who lived in the marshes in the early 1990s remain.

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‘We are resilient’: Mauritius slowly consolidates ecotourism gains | Environment

Île d’Ambre, Mauritius – It is said to be the place where the last dodo was sighted. Yet, today, Île d’Ambre, an islet off the northeastern coast of Mauritius fringed by bright green mangroves, stands as a symbol, not of extinction, but of survival.

As guide Patrick Haberland explains, vast swaths of mangroves were destroyed right up to the mid-90s, ripped up for firewood or to clear the way for boat routes and hotel construction projects.

Cutting down mangroves is now forbidden by law. Following a national conservation drive, sites like Île d’Ambre have since been restored. Now it’s a national park, protected by the government’s forestry department.

Having escaped extinction, the trees are now vital to the very survival of the nation. Their dense, tenacious roots are among the island’s main lines of defence, along with the coral reef and seagrass beds, against rising tides that are eroding its silvery beaches, gobbling up 20 metres of coastline over the past decade.

It’s a predicament that weighs heavily upon Haberland, who runs Yemaya Adventures, a small company taking tourists on canoeing trips through the mangroves. He is one of a growing number of locals advocating a back-to-nature approach to tourism. “The environment provides us with our livelihood. If we don’t respect it, we won’t have work,” he says.

People kayaking among the mangroves at Île d’Ambre, an islet off the northeastern coast of Mauritius [Lorraine Mallinder/Al Jazeera]

‘Killing the golden goose’

As tourists flock here in ever greater numbers – up by nearly 60 percent during the first half of this year – the island finds itself in a quandary. How can it sustain an industry that has not only strained its fragile ecosystems but also contributed to global climate change that is in turn bleaching its reefs and causing sea levels to rise by an alarming 5.6mm a year?

“It’s killing the golden goose, destroying the environment,” says activist Yan Hookoomsing, of the nonprofit Mru2025. As Hookoomsing points out, the hotel industry is still expanding. Back in 1997, the government’s “Vision 2020” plan for the industry set a “green ceiling” of 9,000 hotel rooms for the entire country. Recently, tourism minister Steven Obeegadoo announced 19 new hotel builds that will bring that total close to 16,000.

With tourism numbers on the rise, Hookoomsing and his partner, Carina Gounden, are campaigning to fence off the country’s southern coast, proposing a geopark on the stunning stretch of coastline, which features sand dunes, sea cliffs, lava caves, pools, waterfalls, estuaries, lagoons and open ocean.

Currently awaiting government approval, the “green lung” project would be a logical move for a country trying to offset its dependence on tourism with sustainable land use policies – only four percent of native forest is left, the result of extensive cane cultivation going back to the mid-19th century.

Hookoomsing and Gounden fell in love while campaigning to kick hotel developers off Pomponette, a public beach in the south – a battle they finally won in 2020. Like so many other hotel projects, it would have seen locals excluded from their shores. “We need to think about how we share these spaces,” says Gounden. “You can’t just tell the public to move away.”

“Mauritians feel like second-class citizens,” she adds. “There’s a feeling of losing something that made them happy, the beauty of their country. This affects the way we welcome tourists.”

No more greenwashing

“The baseline of what is acceptable is changing,” says Vikash Tatayah, conservation director at the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation.

He’s banking on tourists helping to drive the move towards sustainability. Right now, the foundation is developing niche ecotourism activities that will allow visitors to spend time with local researchers. Eco-volunteerism is another potential growth area, enabling tourists to participate in conservation.

Nature is one of the island’s main draws, he says. “People come from the four corners of the globe to see the kestrels and the pink pigeons. Some come to see rare reptiles. Others come for the rare plants like the tambalacoque (dodo tree) or the mandrinette hibiscus.”

German tourists prepare for their kayaking expedition to Île d’Ambre [Lorraine Mallinder/Al Jazeera]

“One thing hotels and companies won’t be able to do in the future is greenwashing – we got rid of all our plastic cups, so we’re ecological,” he adds. “Tourists will want to know the environmental policy of the countries they visit. They will want to know hotels are working on conservation and that staff are locally employed.”

Aware of the changing mood, the luxury market is also getting in on the act. Local group Rogers has repurposed the former sugar estate Bel-Ombre, relaunching the area as a kind of ecotourism mecca. Its three hotels offer carbon-neutral packages integrating solar power and water repurposing initiatives, offsetting emissions through the African carbon credits scheme Aera.

The hotels are located in a buffer zone on the UNESCO-recognised Black River Gorges National Park-Bel Ombre Biosphere Reserve. Covering more than 8,500 hectares (32.8sq miles), the reserve is viewed as a model for eco-friendly development, bringing back endemic trees such as the black ebony and providing a home for rare native species like the Mauritian flying fox and the pink pigeon.

Equitable change

Change seems inevitable, but it will have to be equitable if it is to be truly sustainable, analysts say.

“We need to change sea, sand and sun to restoration, recycling and respect,” says oceanographer Vassen Kauppaymuthoo. “The environment can be used as a transformative tool for tourism. If eco-tourism is presented as an opportunity where people can participate, giving them back confidence, then we can have this spark.”

To a certain extent, he thinks this transformation will require a long, hard think about the nation’s identity, reversing recent trends that have seen it copying glitzy destinations like Dubai and Singapore. Failure to do this properly could see the sector, which represents a quarter of gross domestic product (GDP), going the way of the dodo, he says.

But if there’s anything this small nation excels at, it’s survival. Back in 1968, when Mauritius took its first steps as an independent nation, with only sugarcane mono-crops to its name, it was predicted to fail. By the 90s, it was being hailed as a model for the African continent.

“At the end of the day, we are resilient,” says Kauppaymuthoo. “We’re used to radical change.”

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Is Israel’s Gaza bombing also a war on the climate? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Many of the world’s leaders are gathered in Dubai for COP28, the annual United Nations summit on climate change. Some 2,400km (1,500 miles) to the West, meanwhile, Israel’s war on Gaza is raging.

Sixty days into the war, Israel’s bombs have killed about 16,000 people, including more than 6,600 children. But increasingly, experts are also worried about its effect on the environment and on Gaza’s ability to combat climate change.

From polluted water supplies to toxic smoke-filled air from burning buildings and bodies, every aspect of life in Gaza is now filled with some form of pollution.

“On the ground, this war has destroyed every aspect of Gaza’s environment,” Nada Majdalani, the Ramallah-based Palestine director for EcoPeace Middle East, told Al Jazeera.

Here’s a look at how the unstoppable bombardment of the enclave could further affect climate change in a region that has already seen temperatures increase, with projections of a 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) rise by the end of the century.

How has the Israeli bombing affected Gaza’s climate change measures?

Gaza has been under an Israeli siege for 16 years, with Israeli authorities holding the switch to — among other things — dependable access to fuel and power in the enclave.

As a result, the people of Gaza turned significantly to solar energy to power their homes.

“Gazans have been climate adaptive, and some 60 percent of their energy would come from solar power,” Majdalani said.

But Israeli bombing has damaged or destroyed thousands of buildings, many of which were roofed with solar panels.

“Destroying the solar panels is not only targeting the wellbeing of people, it’s diminishing the efforts of the Gazans in taking climate adaptation and measures to secure clean energy,” she said.

“These solar installations now lay in the rubble with the buildings destroyed, setting back Gaza’s climate change efforts.”

What are the main environmental concerns on the ground?

Amid the war, “getting figures and measurements of the extent of the damage” to Gaza’s environment is difficult, said Majdalani.

But some things are clear. Decaying bodies and contaminated water supplies are a “ticking time bomb” that will lead to the spread of diseases, she said.

“Right now this is the greatest concern, and everyone should be worried, including Israel. Having military might on the ground cannot protect them against the spread of cholera which is predicted.”

Impending rains are another concern. Majdalani’s team estimates 44 percent of gas, water and sanitation facilities have either been completely or partially damaged in Gaza since the war began. This includes water wells and wastewater treatment. Sewage water has already flooded Gaza streets, but if rain mixes with the filth, the risks of cholera and other gastrointestinal diseases increase further.

“The war damage to Gaza’s water sanitation and hygiene infrastructure makes flooding more likely with the winter rains,” Doug Weir, director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, an independent research body based in the United Kingdom, said.

Even before the current war, inadequate sanitation infrastructure and electricity shortages meant that untreated sewage water was dumped into the sea and was responsible for more than one-quarter of illnesses. It was the primary cause of child morbidity in the Gaza Strip.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, the total shutdown of wastewater treatment plants in October, after Israel imposed a complete blockade on any fuel entering the strip, led to the release of more than 130,000 cubic metres of untreated sewage into the Mediterranean Sea daily, posing a grave environmental hazard.

With the destruction amid the current war, huge volumes of debris and waste are blocking sewers, warned Weir. This, he said, “will allow more standing water, with associated risks to human health from transmissible diseases from wastewater mixing with rainwater.”

Could there also be a rise in carbon emissions adding to global warming?

This war, like others before it, requires vast quantities of fossil fuel, leading to excessive carbon emissions and pollutants in the environment.

Earlier reports suggest 25,000 tonnes of munitions were dropped on Gaza in the first few weeks of the war. The carbon emissions from this would equate with the annual energy use of approximately 2,300 homes, or the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from approximately 4,600 passenger vehicles.

The world’s military forces also use fossil fuels to operate aircraft, tanks and weapons, accounting for approximately 5.5 percent of global emissions. The figure could be higher as defence forces are not bound to report their carbon emissions as it may undermine national security.

“Methodologies to count emissions from conflicts are in their infancy,” Weir told Al Jazeera.

But things are slowly changing.

Last week, the UN Environment Programme’s flagship Emissions Gap report, which is released before each COP meeting, made mention of conflict and military emissions for the first time, calling for more research into the topic.

What effects do the weapons used in Gaza have on the environment?

Groups like Human Rights Watch have also accused Israel of using white phosphorous munitions in Gaza, which added further to the pollution in the atmosphere, said Majdalani. “As Gaza enters the rainy season, we expect the rain to fall as acid rain, contaminated with white phosphorus.”

People who use plastic sheets to collect rainwater to drink directly, amid a shortage of drinking water, could be particularly at risk, she said.

In the first weeks of the war, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA reported Israel dropped 42 bombs every hour on Gaza.

In addition to the emissions from weapons, their manufacture also contributes to pollution, Weir explained. “Far more emissions come from them during production, for example in creating the metal for their casings.”

Reports from Ukraine suggested the fighting there released some 100 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere in the first seven months of the war.

So what about Gaza?

“We anticipate that the bulk of the emissions in this war will be from military fuel use – Israeli jet fuel and diesel, from urban and landscape fires caused either by the destruction of buildings or targeted attacks, and from the carbon costs of reconstructing Gaza.”

How will destroyed buildings and reconstruction add to climate change?

Other risks include fires, pulverised building materials that can include harmful substances like asbestos, and pollutants released from facilities containing hazardous materials.

Even rebuilding war-torn areas that have turned to rubble causes significant emissions. “Producing concrete and cement to rebuild generates a large quantity of carbon dioxide, which contributes to the climate crisis,” said Weir.

Lennard de Klerk, from the Initiative in GHG Accounting of War, did a rough calculation on how much GHG emission would result from rebuilding just residential and non-residential buildings that were destroyed or damaged after the first six weeks of the war.

He told Al Jazeera, “5.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions would be released to produce construction materials and the emissions of the construction activities itself”.

That is already a fifth of the projected emissions for the reconstruction of Ukraine from its war, which has been going on for 21 months as opposed to two months in Gaza.

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Death toll rises to 13 after Mount Marapi eruption, climbers still missing | Volcanoes News

Two more bodies were found late on Monday, an Indonesian official says, as volcanic activity hampers rescue mission.

Thirteen climbers have been declared dead since the Mount Marapi volcano erupted in Indonesia on Sunday, with the head of the local rescue service saying two more bodies were found.

“The total number of people who have died is currently 13,” Abdul Malik, head of Padang Search and Rescue Agency, told AFP news agency on Tuesday, adding that 10 hikers were still missing, while 52 have been evacuated.

The bodies of the two hikers were found late on Monday, he said.

The rescue mission is being hampered by further volcanic activity and bad weather.

“The volcanic ash has reached the foot of the hill, which is a challenge for the team. Both routes will be steep and slippery,” Malik said.

Eleven bodies were found on Monday near the crater of Mount Marapi on the island of Sumatra, while several others were found alive and carried down the mountain.

The volcano spewed an ash tower 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) – taller than the volcano itself – into the sky on Sunday. It was the deadliest eruption since 1979, when another one killed 60 people.

‘Mountain of Fire’

Mount Marapi, which means “Mountain of Fire”, is the most active volcano on Sumatra island. Between Sunday and Monday, 46 eruptions had occurred, besides one on Tuesday morning, state-run Antara News reported.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide. The archipelago nation has nearly 130 active volcanoes.

For more than a decade, Indonesia’s volcanology agency had sent monthly letters warning the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and local conservation agency that climbers should keep a safe distance from the volcano’s peak, agency head Hendra Gunawan told Reuters news agency.

“The recommendation was to not climb up to the peak, that no one should go within 3km of the crater,” he told Reuters.

Officials from the volcanology body said it could only issue safety warnings and that it was up to the environment ministry and local authorities to enforce them.

The conservation agency, which is under the ministry, said permits to climb were given after getting the green light from several local agencies, including the West Sumatra provincial government and national disaster agency, as well as the Padang search and rescue agency.

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Death toll rises as Tanzania reels from flooding, landslides | Floods News

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa says at least 63 people have been killed in flooding unleashed by heavy rainfall over the weekend.

The death toll from floods in northern Tanzania following torrential rains this weekend has risen to 63, officials have said.

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said in comments broadcast on television on Monday that the number of injured stood at 116 people. Landslides had destroyed half of one village he visited, he said.

“We are here in front of bodies of our fellows. We have lost 63 loved ones. Of the total fellows we lost, 23 are men and 40 are women,” he said during an event to bid farewell to the bodies of those who had died in Hanang district, northern Tanzania.

“My fellow Tanzanians, this is a tragedy,” he said.

Queen Sendiga, commissioner for the Northern Manyara region, said the death toll had reached 68, the AFP news agency reported.

Earlier on Monday Zuhura Yunus, a spokesperson for the president’s office, said the flooding has affected at least 1,150 households and 5,600 people, with 750 acres [300 hectares] of farmland also destroyed.

“Despite all the challenges rescue work is facing from damaged roads and mud and logs filling the roads, the government is doing its best to deal with that,” Yunus said.

Residents stand beside a car damaged by flooding in the town of Katesh, Tanzania, on Sunday, December 3 [AP Photo]

The flooding is the latest example of extreme weather that has devastated East African countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, with hundreds of people killed since the region’s rainy season began in October.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who was attending a United Nations climate summit in Dubai, has said that she will return from the trip early to attend to the crisis.

“I send my sincere condolences to the affected families and have directed all our security forces to deploy to the area and help those affected,” Hassan said in a video message.

The flooding follows a period of severe drought that has left soil in the region drier and less capable of holding water, heightening the risk of flash flooding.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Sendiga said that about 100 homes were swallowed up in the village of Katesh, about 300 kilometres (185 miles) north of the capital, Dodoma, and that rescue workers continue to search for people buried in the mud.

At the COP 28 UN climate summit in Dubai, Hassan highlighted the fact that poor countries face disproportionate risks from climate change, despite the fact that wealthy countries in the West bear responsibility for a large share of the cumulative emissions that drive climate change.

“It must be said, unfulfilled commitments erode solidarity and trust, and have detrimental and costly consequences for developing countries,” said Hassan. “My own country is losing 2 to 3 percent of its GDP due to climate change.”

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COP28: Israel should not be allowed to greenwash its war on Gaza | Environment

As its war on Gaza continues with no end in sight, Israel will be participating in the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) which started on Thursday in Dubai. For the Israeli government, this will be an invaluable opportunity to engage in “green diplomacy”, promote its climate technologies, and divert the international community’s attention from its illegal occupation, apartheid and ongoing war crimes against the Palestinians.

Indeed, participating in the world’s top climate event while continuing to indiscriminately bomb an unlawfully besieged territory will allow Israel, which has long been trying to conceal its theft of Palestinian land and resources under a cloak of pseudo “environmentalism”, to push its extensive “greenwashing” agenda to dangerous new extremes.

Given the scale of atrocities Israel has committed in Gaza in the past few weeks, the presence of an Israeli delegation – no matter its size or the relative seniority of its members – will cast a shadow over COP28.

The Israeli government has said its delegation to the conference has been significantly “scaled down” due to “current events”, and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top ministers will not be in attendance. Nevertheless, it said Israel will still have a pavilion at the conference which will be used to promote its environmental start-ups and initiatives, especially those from the southern regions affected by the war.

Regardless of who in the Israeli government ends up attending the summit this year, however, they will struggle more than ever to sell the image of Israel as an environmental leader. The dissonance caused by Israel’s representatives suddenly switching from genocidal threats to eco-friendly jargon will be mind-breaking for global audiences.

Can anyone take seriously, for example, any recommendations on clean and sustainable energy from Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz, who at the start of the war stated: “Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home”? Or can anyone with any self-respect take ecological advice from Israel’s Agriculture Minister Avi Ditcher, who declared that Israel is “rolling out Nakba 2023” in Gaza?

Saying the genocide part out loud, the Israeli government cannot expect its rhetoric to not have long-term diplomatic, economic, and potentially legal consequences, or to not damage the country’s standing as a climate leader. Jordan, for example, has already pulled out of an energy and water deal with Israel which was hatched in COP27 due to what Jordanian Foreign Minister called “Israel’s barbarism in Gaza”.

The public relations fallout caused by Israel’s war will also make it difficult for it to sell its climate tech solutions as global audiences will find it hard to reconcile Israel’s supposed concern for the environment with its current actions in Gaza.

Israel’s air raids and total blockade of Gaza have left civilians on the verge of dehydration and starvation. The UN had to pressure Israel to allow clean water into the territory and refrain from using water as a “weapon of war”. More than 15,000 people in Gaza have been killed in indiscriminate attacks on residential areas, schools, and hospitals, including thousands of children. Those who survive are without adequate shelter, food, and medical care.

The Gaza Strip was barely habitable before Israel’s latest assault due to a years-long, relentless blockade. Now, Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment and total siege – its ongoing genocide – has also triggered an ecocide in Gaza. Even if the war ended today, it would take years for Gaza’s natural ecosystems to recover.

Of course Israel’s greenwashing efforts also did not start with this war. Israel has been trying to greenwash its occupation of Palestine and oppression of the Palestinian people since its inception.

Indeed, since the founding of Israel in 1948, the Jewish National Fund, Israel’s largest green NGO that controls 13 percent of state land, has been evicting Palestinians from their lands and destroying their villages under the pretence of protecting forests and preserving natural reserves. It has also uprooted hundreds of thousands of olive trees to destroy Palestinian lives and livelihoods.

Meanwhile, Israel’s national water company Mekorot created a “water apartheid” in the occupied West Bank, where Jewish settlers consume six times more water than 2.9 million Palestinians living there.

Despite its apartheid policies in the West Bank, in the international arena, Mekorot has managed to position itself as a leading contributor to the quest to achieve UN sustainability goals. It led a special session on water at COP27 and has been publishing annual environmental, social and governance (ESG) and corporate responsibility reports with little consideration or even mention of its practice of water apartheid against the Palestinians.

At last year’s COP27, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, who recently supported the collective punishment of civilians in Gaza, promised that Israel would be “net zero” by 2050. Since he failed to mention Palestine and Palestinians in his speech, however, it is unclear whether the environmental consequences of the occupation, the apartheid, or the 40,000 tonnes of explosives dropped on Gaza (which amounts to more than two nuclear bombs) would be included as part of Israel’s carbon footprint this year.

Writer and analyst Zena Agha has described Israel’s environmental policy as “Janus-faced”, on the one hand promoting “environmental reform and technological development” and on the other, depriving “Palestinians of their land, water, and other natural resources”.

Amid the ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza, at COP28, this two-sidedness will reach new extremes.

COP28 is already under fire for maintaining strong connections to big oil companies while purporting a technical and diplomatic agenda to transition away from fossil fuels. The optics of an Israeli delegation at COP28 amid an ongoing offensive that inflicted unprecedented humanitarian and environmental damage on Gaza will undoubtedly damage the reputation of the conference further.

Indeed, the scale of the humanitarian crisis Israel created in Gaza has not only exposed Israel’s decades-old greenwashing strategies and tarnished its image as a climate solution leader, but also called into question the credibility of a state-centred approach to global warming that ignores human rights.

By allowing itself to become a venue for Israel to greenwash its increasingly more brutal attacks on Palestinian people, land and essential infrastructure, as well as its disregard for UN resolutions, institutions and staff (more than 100 UN employees have been killed in the Gaza war so far), COP28 threatens to undermine critical features of the global climate agenda, namely state compliance, accountability, and respect for international law and institutions.

While Israel’s attendance at COP28 exposes one of the many existing problems with our current approach to tackling global warming, it is not too late to change course.

Those committed to achieving climate justice should treat this conference as an opportunity to call out greenwashing and state the obvious connection between human rights and the climate emergency. As Greta Thunberg rightly said, there can be “no climate justice on occupied land”, and occupiers should not be allowed to use climate conferences to greenwash their wars.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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US says climate change threatens wolverines with extinction | Wildlife News

The North American wolverine will receive long-delayed federal protections under a Biden administration proposal released on Wednesday in response to scientists warning that climate change will likely melt away the rare species’ snowy mountain refuges.

Across most of the United States, wolverines were wiped out by the early 1900s from unregulated trapping and poisoning campaigns. About 300 surviving animals in the contiguous US live in fragmented, isolated groups at high elevations.

In the coming decades, warming temperatures are expected to shrink the mountain snowpack wolverines rely on to dig dens where they birth and raise their young.

The decision Wednesday by the US Fish and Wildlife Service follows more than two decades of disputes over the risks of climate change, and threats to the long-term survival of the elusive species.

The animals resemble a small bear and are the world’s largest species of terrestrial weasels. They are sometimes called “mountain devils” for their ability to thrive in harsh alpine environments.

Protections were rejected under former President Donald Trump. A federal judge in 2022 ordered the administration of President Joe Biden to make a final decision this week on whether to seek protections.

A wolverine in Montana’s Glacier National Park [File: Jeff Copeland/Glacier National Park/The Missoulian via AP]

In Montana, Republican lawmakers urged the Biden administration to delay its decision, claiming the scientists’ estimates were not accurate enough to make a fair call about the dangers faced by wolverines. The lawmakers, led by hard-right conservative Representative Matt Rosendale, warned that protections could lead to future restrictions on activities allowed in wolverine habitats, including snowmobiling and skiing.

In September, government scientists conceded some uncertainty about how quickly mountain snowpacks could melt in areas with wolverines. But they said habitat loss due to climate change — combined with other problems such as increased development like houses and roads — will likely harm wolverine populations in decades to come.

“The best available information suggests that habitat loss as a result of climate change and other stressors are likely to impact the viability of wolverines in the contiguous US through the remainder of this century,” they concluded.

The scientists added that some of those losses could be offset if wolverines are able to recolonise areas such as California’s Sierra Nevada and Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.

Environmentalists argued in a 2020 lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service that wolverines face localised extinction from climate change, habitat fragmentation and low genetic diversity.

Wolverine populations that are still breeding live in remote areas of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington state. In recent years, individual animals have been documented in California, Utah, Colorado and Oregon.

The wildlife service received a petition to protect wolverines in 2000 and the agency recommended protections in 2010. The Obama administration proposed protections and later sought to withdraw them but was blocked by a federal judge who said in 2016 that the snow-dependent animals were “squarely in the path of climate change.”

Protections were rejected in 2020 under Trump, based on research suggesting the animals’ prevalence was expanding, not contracting. Federal wildlife officials at the time predicted that despite warming temperatures, enough snow would persist at high elevations for wolverines to den in mountain snowfields each spring.

They reversed course in a revised analysis published in September that said wolverines were “less secure than we described”.

The animals need immense expanses of wildland to survive, with home ranges for adult male wolverines covering as much as 610 square miles (1,580sq kilometres), according to a study in central Idaho.

They also need protection from trapping, according to scientists. Wolverine populations in southwestern Canada plummeted by more than 40 percent over the past two decades due to overharvesting by trappers, which could have effects across the US border, scientists said.

Wolverine trapping was once legal in states including Montana. They are still sometimes caught inadvertently by trappers targeting other fur-bearing animals.

At least 10 wolverines have been accidentally captured in Montana since trapping was restricted in 2012. Three were killed and the others were released unharmed. In Idaho, trappers have accidentally captured 11 wolverines since 1995, including three that were killed.

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Endangered Sumatran baby rhino born | Environment News

NewsFeed

A critically endangered species welcomed the birth of a Sumatran rhino. With only a few dozen of these rhinos in the world, the newborn male calf is a sign of the success for the Indonesian government’s conservation efforts.

Published On 28 Nov 2023

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Mozambique to present new $80bn energy transition plan at COP28 | Climate Crisis News

President Nyusi is expected to officially present the energy strategy to the international community during COP28.

Mozambique has approved an ambitious new energy transition plan until 2050, hoping to attract investments of some $80bn to boost renewable energy capacity and increase electricity availability, a senior energy official said on Monday.

President Filipe Nyusi is expected to officially present the energy strategy to international partners and potential donors on December 2 during the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

Priority plans between next year and 2030 include adding 2,000 megawatts of new hydropower capacity by upgrading existing plants and completing the new Mphanda Nkuwa Hydropower Project, expanding the national electricity grid, and switching to electric vehicles to reduce emissions from the transport sector.

“We are still fine-tuning the document and hope to publicly release it later this week,” Pedro Simao, special adviser to the energy minister, told Reuters news agency on Monday.

The document was approved by Mozambique’s Council of Ministers on November 21.

The Southern African country exported its first liquefied natural gas in November 2022 and is hoping huge gas discoveries, together with its renewable energy potential, will propel economic growth and help lift millions out of poverty.

(Al Jazeera)

Ahead of COP28, African countries are gearing up to ask for improved climate financing for renewable energy projects in a continent seen as lagging behind in preparing for a greener future, even though it contributes the least to global emissions.

Comprising about 17 percent of the world’s population, Africa contributes just 4 percent of global carbon emissions at 1.45 billion tonnes. But it has been home to some of the worst droughts and floods of recent times, including Cyclone Freddy, which killed more than 500 people and displaced thousands in Mozambique and Malawi earlier this year.

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A Crude Mistake? | Al Jazeera

People & Power investigates what major new oil projects in Uganda mean for the country, its people and the environment.

In this documentary, People & Power investigates what major new oil projects in Uganda mean for the country, its people and the environment.

As nations gather for COP28, one issue is expected to expose deep divisions between the Global North – largely responsible for the ravages of global warming – and the aspirations of developing countries in the South, who must deal with the consequences.

Can COP28 agree on a funding package to allow the South to both mitigate the damage and develop sustainably? And what could it mean for a country like Uganda, which is banking on major oil projects to create growth and prosperity, while facing criticism over the impact on the environment and human rights? Despite protests, drilling has commenced on two huge new oil fields on the banks of Lake Albert.

In 2023, final approval was granted for the construction of what will be the longest heated oil pipeline in the world, the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline. But will the people of Uganda gain any benefit from the controversial exploitation of their oil – and can any such profits be seen to balance out the environmental damage to the country?

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