Environment

How to stop supply chain issues disrupting the economic recovery

Covid-19 revealed that modern supply chains are a house of cards, collapsing the moment they come under any kind of sustained pressure. Many businesses that were caught flat-footed by global lockdowns have found the speed of the recovery just as treacherous to navigate. Clogged ports and widespread shortages have led to record order backlogs across major supply chain hubs. The crunch on container capacity could last until Q4 2022, according to maritime research firm Drewry. Shortages of key components, including semiconductors, could take even longer to resolve. Is the answer to carry on pushing orders through in the hope that these problems resolve themselves? Two years into the pandemic, there are strong signs global businesses are starting to realise that supply chains actually need root-and-branch reform. Bursting at the seams Recent data from Tradeshift suggests buyers are beginning to question the wisdom of putting fresh orders into a system that is coming apart at the seams. Global order volumes fell by 24 points in Q3 2021 (see figure 1), the biggest quarterly drop since the first lockdowns in early 2020 and 15 points below the pre-pandemic forecast range. Rising invoice volumes provide an indication of how supply chains are reacting to demand signals. Invoice numbers moved five points closer to the expected range in Q3 2021, but the upward trajectory is flatter than anticipated given the significant spike in order volumes during the previous quarter. The data suggests it may be some time before order volumes start to align with invoice flows. The longer this gap persists, the more likely it is that the downward trajectory in Q3 signals the beginning of a more prolonged slowdown. The International Monetary Fund recently cut its forecast for US growth by 1 percentage point to 6%, citing supply chain disruption and weakening consumption. Tradeshift’s data indicates that activity across US supply […]

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Climate talks, Glasgow

The climate talks in Glasgow are just days away, and may be the last chance to coordinate global efforts to stop the planet warming beyond 1.5℃ this century. More than 100 world leaders will attend the summit to try to agree on the details of crucial issues, such as timetables to deliver on emissions reduction commitments. So which countries hold the cards? Well, the nature of these particular climate talks make it less likely one or more states – regardless of their power or contribution to climate change – will determine the summit’s success. But this wasn’t always the case. In 1997 Kyoto Protocol talks, all developed states needed to agree on targets, timeframes and what could be included or excluded from calculations. This meant Australia was able to hold the agreement to ransom by threatening to withhold support, unless demands were met. In 2009 talks in Copenhagen, the plan was to develop a new post-Kyoto Protocol agreement, based on new binding emissions targets. The reluctance of China, and even the United States, ultimately prevented a new agreement being reached. Organisers of the Paris talks of 2015 learnt their lesson. Rather than aim to agree on a fair allocation of responsibility across almost 200 countries, organisers allowed states to develop their own nationally determined contributions – targets for reducing emissions. Unity in Glasgow is still crucial While the success of the Glasgow summit doesn’t depend on a consensus across all participating nations, there are three big reasons international cooperation is still crucial. First, the summit serves as the default target date for nations to articulate new emissions reduction commitments since the Paris Agreement. States will also need to agree on the next deadline for updated national climate targets. Second, it will determine commitments from wealthy countries to finance developing states’ transition away from greenhouse-intensive development like […]

Is Organic Farming ‘Mainstream Agriculture In Waiting’?

Organic farming has huge potential. Not only does it have many benefits over conventional farming practices, but that with adjustments organic farming could yield as much produce. By Angela Singleton An independent report suggesting that organic farming has huge potential and could even be ‘mainstream agriculture in waiting’ has been welcomed by the Soil Association, the UK’s leading environmental charity campaigning for sustainable, organic farming and healthy food. Peter Melchett, policy director for the Soil Association, said: “Organic farming does not have all the answers to the challenges of climate change and diet-related ill-health and there is still a lot of work to do to improve organic systems. But the report shows the positive impact that organic farming could have.” The key findings include increased beef production by 68 per cent and lamb by 55 per cent; a fall in energy-intensive inputs: fertiliser inputs could be cut by 95 per cent and sprays by 98 per cent; and an estimated 73 per cent increase in farm employment. The survey also argues that organic farming has many benefits over conventional farming practices – water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions would reduce, spray use would be cut by 98 per cent and fertilisers by 95 per cent. With adjustments, organic farming could yield as much produce as conventional farming. The report – England and Wales under organic agriculture: how much food could be produced? – shows the positive impact that such farming could have. It was carried out by Philip Jones and Richard Crane at the University of Reading, and was funded by independent trust the HCD Memorial Fund, and the Soil Association. While the survey acknowledges that organic farming aims to be an optimal output system rather than a high output system, it suggests that, as consumers, we need to consider […]

How a Great Green Wall could help Africa combat climate change

Elvis Paul TangemCoordinator of the Great Green Wall Initiative, African Union Commission Elvis Lyonga EdimoCommunications Consultant, The Great Green Wall initiative is a reforestation project that aims to transform the lives of millions living on the frontline of the climate crisis. The goals of this African-led project are to restore 100 million hectares of land, sequester 250 million tonnes of carbon and create 10 million green jobs in rural areas. Once complete, the Great Green Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef. The Sahel is a 5,900 kilometer belt of land below the Sahara Desert, stretching across the breadth of Africa. It is a semi-arid region, known for its variable rainfall. The area has some of the world’s highest levels of poverty, and regular droughts and floods lead to shortages of food and drinking water. These in turn lead to humanitarian crises, and to migration. In the past, efforts to tackle these problems have often been based on simplistic assumptions. Led for the most part by international NGOs and civil society organisations, they have focused on finding financial or technological solutions to the poverty of communities in the area. They have largely ignored the wealth of knowledge that local people have about their natural surroundings. At their worst, such projects have actually exacerbated the problems. As communities don’t buy in to initiatives that haven’t considered their needs and priorities, many ended as soon as their staff and experts left. The Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative was initially conceived in 2007 as a reforestation project, which aimed to create a shield of trees to keep the desert at bay. However, it now has much broader and more ambitious goals. It aims to promote sustainable land and water management in the drylands […]

Seismic climate wins show Big Oil, Gas and Coal are running out of places to hide

Three global fossil fuel giants have just suffered embarrassing rebukes over their inadequate action on climate change. Collectively, the developments show how courts, and frustrated investors, are increasingly willing to force companies to reduce their carbon dioxide pollution quickly. A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to slash its greenhouse emissions, and 61% of Chevron shareholders backed a resolution to force that company to do the same. And in an upset at Exxon Mobil, an activist hedge fund won two seats on the company’s board. The string of wins was followed in Australia on Thursday by a court ruling that the federal environment minister, when deciding whether or not to approve a new coal mine, owes a duty of care to young people to avoid causing them personal injury from climate change. The court rulings are particularly significant. Courts have often been reluctant to interfere in what is viewed as an issue best left to policymakers. These recent judgements, and others, suggest courts are more prepared to scrutinise emissions reduction by businesses and – in the case of the Dutch court – order them to do more. Court warns of ‘irreversible consequences’ In a world-first ruling, a Hague court ordered oil and gas giant Shell to reduce CO₂ emissions by 45% by 2030, relative to 2019 levels. The court noted Shell had no emissions-reduction targets to 2030, and its policies to 2050 were “rather intangible, undefined and non-binding”. The case was brought by climate activist and human rights groups. The court found climate change due to CO₂ emissions “has serious and irreversible consequences” and threatened the human “right to life”. It also found Shell was responsible for so-called “Scope 3” emissions generated by its customers and suppliers. The Chevron upset involved an investor revolt. Some 61% of shareholders supported a resolution calling for Chevron to substantially reduce Scope 3 […]

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Sea levels rising fastest in big cities

It is well known that climate-induced sea level rise is a major threat. What is less well know is the threat of sinking land. And in many of the most populated coastal areas, the land is sinking even faster than the sea is rising. Parts of Tokyo for instance sank by 4 metres during the 20th century, with 2 metres or more of sinking reported in Shanghai, Bangkok, and New Orleans. This process is known as subsidence. Slow subsidence happens naturally in river deltas, and it can be accelerated by the extraction of groundwater, oil or gas which causes the soil to consolidate and the surface to lose elevation. Subsidence leads to relative sea level rise (sea level rise plus land sinking). It turns croplands salty, damages buildings, causes widespread flooding and can even mean the loss of entire coastal areas. Subsidence can threaten flooding in low-lying coastal areas, much more so than rising sea levels, yet scientists are only just realising the global implications of the threat with respect to coastal cities. In fact, while the average coastal area experiences relative sea level rise of less than 3mm per year, the average coastal resident experiences a rise of around 8mm to 10mm per year. This is because so many people live in deltas and especially cities on deltas that are subsiding. That’s the key finding of our new research, where we analysed how fast cities are sinking across the world and compared them with global subsidence data including less densely populated coastlines. People often choose to live in river deltas, floodplains and other areas that were already prone to sinking, and in doing so will further enhance subsidence. In particular, subsiding cities contain more than 150 million people in the coastal zone – that’s roughly 20% of people in […]

Will 2021 be the year of living dangerously?

As the third decade of the 21st century gets under way, we will look back on 2021 as a year when the future of our life on earth balanced on a fulcrum. But which way will we lean? Will we grind out a post-COVID-19 recovery along the lines of the recovery from the last great global financial crisis in 2009 towards a more dangerous future of higher consumption and emissions? Or will policy-makers, politicians, business leaders and civil society summon their collective imaginations, cooperative spirit and willpower to craft stimulus packages and investments that lead to a more sustainable, nature-friendly future? Last year broke yet more of the wrong kinds of environmental records. A peak temperature of 38°C inside the Arctic Circle. Wildfires in the Amazon that spread to the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, driving a drought that cost Brazil’s agriculture sector $3 billion. Historic levels of flooding along the Yangtze, affecting 63 million people. More Californian fires to add to the $148 billion of losses from 2018’s fires. A record number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall. 300mThe estimate of the number of people who live in places where climate-triggered flooding will likely occur by 2050 5xGreenland’s loss of ice when compared with the melt rate 25 years ago 23%The percentage of global climate change emissions that the degradation of ecosystems is responsible for $44tnOr one-half of all global GDP depends on nature and is threatened by its loss 1mThe number of species at risk from extinction Yet amid the storm clouds of grim statistics are some sunbeams of hope. Last year saw a doubling in the number of companies committing to net-zero targets. The election of Joe Biden means the three largest carbon emitters in the world – China, the EU and the US – have all committed […]

Truth decay: when uncertainty is weaponised

From tobacco to food and fuels, industries use denial, deceit and doubt to corrupt. By Felicity Lawrence. The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception David Michaels Oxford Univ. Press (2020) In 2017, US presidential strategist Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase “alternative facts” to defend false claims about the size of the crowd at Donald Trump’s inauguration. Numerous commentators lamented that we were entering a new era of Orwellian doublethink. These are indeed upside-down times, as epidemiologist and former safety regulator David Michaels demonstrates in his excoriating account of the corporate denial industry, The Triumph of Doubt. Unwelcome news is automatically rebranded fake news. Inconvenient evidence from independent sources — say, about climate breakdown and fossil fuels, or air pollution and diesel emissions — is labelled junk science and countered with rigged studies claiming to be sound. But it would be wrong to see truth decay solely as the preserve of today’s populist politicians. Normalizing the production of alternative facts is a project long in the making. Consultancy firms that specialize in defending products from tobacco to industrial chemicals that harm the public and the environment have made a profession of undermining truth for decades. They hire mercenary scientists to fulfil a crucial role as accessories to their misrepresentations. Denial machine Michaels was among the first scientists to identify this denial machine, in his 2008 book Doubt is Their Product. His latest work combines an authoritative synthesis of research on the denial machine published since then with his own new insights gleaned from battles to control the toxic effects of a range of substances. He takes on per- and polyfluoroalkyls, widely used in non-stick coatings, textiles and firefighting foams; the harmful effects of alcohol and sugar; the disputed role of the ubiquitous glyphosate-based pesticides in cancer; and the deadly epidemic of […]

What is green finance and why is it important?

Green finance is blossoming. Globally, the green bond market could be worth $2.36 trillion by 2023. It is regarded as a way of meeting the needs of environmentalism and capitalism simultaneously – but what is green finance and how does it work? At its simplest, green finance is any structured financial activity – a product or service – that’s been created to ensure a better environmental outcome. It includes an array of loans, debt mechanisms and investments that are used to encourage the development of green projects or minimize the impact on the climate of more regular projects. Or a combination of both. Funding sustainable development For the United Nations, green financing plays an important role in delivering several of its Sustainable Development Goals. Its Environment team is already working with public and private sector organisations in an attempt to align international financial systems to the sustainable development agenda. Some of the activities UN Environment is involved in include helping countries re-engineer their regulatory frameworks – so that green borrowing becomes compliant, for example – and helping steer public sector planning in a more environmentally friendly direction. Clean sources of energy can be brought to fruition through the right combination of planning consent, strategic priorities and availability of capital. Such projects could be given preferential treatment to make them a more attractive option than, for example, fossil-fuel derived energy infrastructure. Typical projects that fall under the green finance umbrella include: Renewable energy and energy efficiency Pollution prevention and control Biodiversity conservation Circular economy initiatives Sustainable use of natural resources and land Growing international interest One common green finance instrument is the green bond. There is a code of conduct that defines what constitutes a green bond. To qualify, a bond must adhere to criteria on the use of proceeds, have a process for project evaluation […]

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