The Land & Climate Podcast

Following new allegations from the BBC that a UK power station is "burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests" in British Columbia, Bertie speaks to Richard Robertson about Canada's forestry sector.

Richard Robertson is a Forest Campaigner at Stand.Earth, and recently contributed to a report prepared by numerous NGOs, which accused the Canadian government's own forestry report of being “akin to an industry ad, promoting questionable and misleading claims.”

Bertie and Richard discuss these findings, the biomass industry, certification and regulation, and whether Canadian forestry deserves its leading reputation.

Further reading: 

• Read the report by Canadian environmental organisations:  The State Of The Forest In Canada: Seeing Through The Spin
• Read the Canadian government's own report, which the new publication responds to: The State of Canada’s Forests
• Read Stand.Earth's report about their old growth satellite monitoring tool: Forest Eye: An Eye on Old Growth Destruction
• 'Drax: UK power station still burning rare forest wood', BBC, 28/2/24

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fishing regulation and its importance to environmental and human rights.

They discuss past and future EU policy and its impact in South East Asia, and use Thailand as a case study to discuss the issue of durability with environmental reform. The Thai fishing sector's reliance on forced labour and overfishing reduced dramatically in the 2010s, but reforms may now be overturned.

Further reading:

• 'Europe already has the tools it needs to end forced labour', Land and Climate Review, 2023
• 'Civil society urges Thai government to stop deregulation of the fisheries industry', Environmental Justice Foundation, 2023
• Thailand’s progress in combatting IUU, forced labour & human trafficking, 2023
• The ever widening net: mapping the  scale, nature and corporate structures of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by the Chinese distant-water fleet, 2022
• A manifesto for our ocean, 2023
• 'Denmark and Sweden press Brussels to act against UK in fishing dispute', Financial Times, 2024

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

This week, the EU's Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warned that "You cannot magically CCS yourself out of the problem". But the new policy he was presenting that day still called for 280 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to be permanently stored underground.

The extent to which carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology should be a part of climate planning is contentious, but advocates often point to Norway's long-running CCS plants as proof that it can work.

Are Equinor's North Sea gas field facilities the gold standard for successful CCS, or have they had issues too? Last year, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) published a report exploring that question.

Bertie spoke to the report's author and IEEFA's Strategic Energy Finance Advisor for Asia, Grant Hauber, to hear about his findings.

Further reading: 

• Norway’s Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS: Industry models or cautionary tales?, IEEFA, 2023
• Blue hydrogen: Not clean, not low carbon, not a solution, IEEFA, 2023
• 'Carbon capture key to reaching net-zero, but climate chief urges caution', Euronews, 7/2/24
• 'What is happening with Carbon Capture and Storage?', Land and Climate Review, 2022
• 'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land and Climate Review, 2022
• 'Capturing and storing problems', Land and Climate Review, 2022

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

What are the impacts  of new flying technologies? Are policymakers and the aviation industry taking the right steps to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees?

Alasdair speaks to Dr Daniel Quiggin, senior research fellow at the Chatham House Environment and Society Centre. Dr Quiggin is an expert in the analysis of how national and global energy systems will evolve to 2050 and author of recent research on Net zero and the role of the aviation industry.

Further reading:

• Net zero and the role of the aviation industry, Chatham House, November 2023
• 'First net zero flight takes off but decarbonisation remains on runway', November 2023

Link to the Chatham House webinar on the research:
3pm GMT on Wednesday 31st January 2024

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Bertie speaks to Agathe Bounfour, Oil Investigations Lead at Transport and Environment, about her investigation into the fossil funded research group CONCAWE.

The investigation revealed that CONCAWE undermined the European Union's attempt to regulate human exposure to benzene, a carcinogenic pollutant. After oil industry lobbying and research, the new regulated limit from 2024 will be ten times higher than the original suggestions from scientific agencies. 

Read the full investigation here.

Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

• 'Action to tackle air pollution failing to keep up with research', The Guardian, 2023
• 'Benzene and worker cancers: ‘An American tragedy’', The Center for Public Integrity, 2014
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, 2012
• Doubt is Their Product: How industry's assault on science threatens your health, David Michaels, 2008 

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

In this episode Alasdair caught up with Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy at campaign organisation Corporate Accountability to discuss their new research with the Guardian which found considerable flaws in the 50 most used offset projects.  He asked about the recent research and what value offset projects might actually have.

The Land and Climate podcast is produced by Vasko Kostovski

Recommended reading:

• ‘Revealed: top carbon offset projects may not cut planet-heating’, The Guardian, September 2023 
• ‘Gas-Lit: No, the Dubai Climate Talks Did Not Save the Planet’, Newsweek, December 2023 
• '10 myths about net zero targets and carbon offsetting, busted’, Climate Home News, December 2020
• ‘Action needed to make carbon offsets from forest conservation work for climate change mitigation’, Science, August 2023 
• ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Carbon Crediting’,Berkeley Public Policy, September 2023  
• ‘The Verra Scandal Explained: why avoid deforestation credits are hazardous’ London School of Economics Blogs, January 2023
• ‘The Land Gap Report’, Various, 2023 
• 'The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets'

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

2023 was expected to be a big year for Europe in reducing harm from agrochemicals. But in a surprise move in November, European Parliament rejected a law to halve pesticide use. That same month, The European Commission stated it would renew the controversial approval of glyphosate for another 10 years.

What happened?

Alasdair talks to Dr Martin Dermine, Executive Director of Pesticide Action Network Europe, about why EU regulation of agrochemicals is moving so slowly.

Further reading: 

• 'Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, is showing up in pregnant women', The Conversation, December 2023
• 'EU Commission hosts a secret 3-day meeting with the pesticide industry as their exclusive guest', Pesticide Action Network, December 2023
• 'Green Deal is dead', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023
• 'Beneath the orange fields: Impact of Glyphosate on soil organisms', Pesticide Action Network, November 2023
• 'Conservative backlash kills off EU’s Green Deal push to slash pesticide use', Politico, November 2023
• 'EU to renew herbicide glyphosate approval for 10 years', Reuters, November 2023
• 'Long-term evidence for ecological intensification as a pathway to sustainable agriculture', Nature Sustainability, 2022
• Listen to our previous episodes on Monsanto, EU lobbying, and Neonics.

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Alasdair talks to Sir Dieter Helm, a Professor of Economic Policy at The University of Oxford, about his new book Legacy: How to Build the Sustainable Economy. Cambridge University Press has published the work online as a free open acess title.

Further reading: 

• Read Legacy for free here. 
• Video presentations and slides on the book's components can be found here. 
• The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen (Harvard University Press, 2011).

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Bertie speaks to environmental journalist Stephen Robert Miller about his new book, Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought, and the Delusion of Controlling Nature. Spanning Bangladesh, Japan, and Arizona in the US, it covers the risks involved in adaptating to changing climate and weather, and the deadly costs of poor planning.

Also featuring our new theme music - let us know what you think!

Further reading from Stephen Robert Miller: 

• Buy Over the Seawall from Island Press.
• 'When Climate Adaptation Backfires' in Discover Magazine
• 'Why Are We Paying for Crop Failures in the Desert?' in Apocalypse Soon
• '‘White gold’: why shrimp aquaculture is a solution that caused a huge problem' in The Guardian 
• 'What Should Farmers Grow in the Desert?' in Mother Jones 
• 'Arizona’s water supplies are drying up. How will its farmers survive?' in National Geographic

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Nuclear energy is not renewable, but it is low-carbon. Whether it should be part of the post-fossil fuel power grid is heatedly debated.

Bertie took this question to Dr. Paul Dorfman, an Associate Fellow of the University of Sussex's Science Policy Research Unit, and the Chair of nonprofit institute the Nuclear Consulting Group. Dr. Dorfman is an expert in nuclear risk and has advised the Irish, UK, French and EU governments on nuclear policy.

Further reading: 

• 'Is nuclear power the key to reaching net zero?', by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, August 2023
• 'Saudi nukes: A desire for energy, weapons, or just leverage?' by
  Stasa Salacanin in The Cradle, October 2023
• 'The end of Oppenheimer's energy dream' by Allison Macfarlane in IAI News, July 2023
• 'The West hasn’t gone after Russia’s nuclear energy. Here’s why' by Clare Sebastian in CNN, March 2023
• 'The Debate: Nuclear is already well past its sell-by date' by Paul Dorfman in The New Statesman, May 2022
• 'Nuclear energy isn’t a safe bet in a warming world – here’s why' by Paul Dorfman in The Conversation, June 2021
• 'Things fall apart' by Paul Dorfman in The Ecologist, October 2021

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Alasdair talks to John Vaillant, author of the Baillie Gifford shortlisted book Fire Weather: A True Story From A Hotter World and explores how fire is evolving in the 21st century and if humanity is going to be sufficiently prepared to tackle its advance.

Fire Weather tells of the catastrophic wildfire in Fort McMurray in Canada in May 2016, and asks if the fire's surprising power and devastation is a harbinger for greater threats to our climate as we know it.

John Vaillant's recommended further reading:

• Less is More by Jason Hickel
• Energy and Civilisation by Vaclav Smil 
• 'Shell Knew Fossil Fuels Created Climate Change Risks Back in 1980s, Internal Documents Show' by Inside Climate News

Audio production by Vasko Kostovski. 

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

In a controversial decision this week, the UK government approved development of a huge new oil and gas field in the North Sea. The Rosebank oil and gas field is majority owned by the Norwegian state-owned energy company Equinor.

Following this news, Alasdair talked to Professor Jonas Fossli Gjersø (University of Stavanger) about the history of Equinor - previously Statoil - and the way it has shaped Norway's economy, history, and environmental policy.

Audio production by Vasko Kostovski. 

Further reading: 

• 'Britain approves huge, controversial oil and gas field in the North Sea', CNN, 27/9/23
• 'The Great Leap Offshore: Sino-Norwegian Relations and Petro-Knowledge Transfers, 1976–1997'  by Jonas Fossli Gjersø in Enterprise and Society, 2022
• Commerce and politics: Statoil and Equinor 1972-2001, Eivind Thomassen, 2022
• 'Norway wants to lead on climate change. But first it must face its legacy of oil and gas', Vox, 15/1/21
• 'A greener shade of black? Statoil, the Norwegian government and climate change, 1990—2005' by Ada Nissen in Scandinavian Journal of History, 2021
• Det svarte skiftet, Eivind Trædal, 2018 [Norweigan]
• 'A Short History of the Norwegian Oil Industry: From Protected National Champions to Internationally Competitive Multinationals' by Helge Ryggvik in Business History Review, 2015

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

 American agrochemical firm Monsanto was the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds until merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018. Its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping farms, landscapes and ecosystems all over the world. 

Bart Elmore is a professor of environmental history at Ohio State University, as well as an award-winning author. Alasdair spoke to him about his 2021 book on the history of Monsanto, Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future.

Further reading:

• Click here to buy Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future 
• Click here to buy Bart's latest book, Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet
• 'The herbicide dicamba was supposed to solve farmers’ weed problems – instead, it’s making farming harder for many of them', The Conversation, January 2022
• 'Coca-Cola’s biggest challenge in greening its operations is its own global marketing strategy', The Conversation, May 2023
• Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town, Ellen Griffith Spears, 2014
• Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2016

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

At the beginning of August, hundreds of NGOs signed a letter to Kenyan President William Ruto, alleging that US and European governments and companies had "seized" the inaugural Africa Climate Summit due to begin in Nairobi on Monday 4th September, in order to "hijack Africa’s just energy transition". 

Their criticism paid particular mention to international management consultancy McKinsey & Company, who were removed from the summit website and events calendar shortly after. Bertie spoke to one of the campaign leaders, Omar Elmawi, about these issues. 

President Ruto has denied that the summit has been "hijacked by foreign interests", telling the BBC that "African people will truly be represented" at the summit. McKinsey declined to comment, or answer our questions, but directed us to this press conference, and the question at 0:57.

Further reading:

• You can find the 'Real Africa Climate Summit' campaign website here, which includes the original letter.
• 'Africa Climate Summit: Kenya’s green growth pitch sparks justice concerns', African Arguments, 21/08/23
• 'Why fury has met McKinsey’s return in Nairobi summit', Daily Nation, 15/08/23
• 'Omar Elmawi Believes In an Africa Free From Fossil Fuels', Sierra, 27/4/23
• The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies, Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, 2023
• On the Trail of Capital Flight from Africa, Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, 2022

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

 A new investigation has revealed that a biofuel company called System Ecologica scammed the International Sustainability Carbon Certification, petrol companies, and EU governments, in a biofuel fraud case totalling tens of millions of euros. Regulators are increasingly worried that other companies may similarly be passing off unsustainable, imported vegetable oil as used cooking oil (UCO). This would have severe implications for emissions, deforestation, and the viability of a key EU climate initiative.

The findings were reported by Eli Moskowitz from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and Mira Sys from Follow the Money, along with Mubarek Asani from the Bosnian Center for Investigative Reporting. Bertie caught up with Eli and Mira to get the full story.
 
Further reading: 

• Read Eli, Mira and Mubarek's story on OCCRP here.
• 'Multimillionaire convicted of tampering with biodiesel', Follow the Money, 22/7/23 (Dutch) 
• 'Europe Battles Flood of Green Fuel Suspected to Be Fraudulent', Bloomberg, 27/4/23
• 'Industry suspects fraud as flood of Chinese biodiesel destabilises market', Euractiv, 8/6/23

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Last week, after intense debate between member states, the UN's International Seabed Authority decided not to fast-track licences to start mining the deep ocean floor. But while waters have calmed for now, nothing is set in stone: talks renew in 2024.

Ahead of the conference, Alasdair spoke to Professor Mats Ingulstad, who is leading the TripleDeep research project at the Norweigan University of Science and Technology. They discussed the history of extraction in Norway & the development of discussions around deep sea mining, as well as the risks and rewards of this new frontier.

Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.
 
Further reading: 

• 'Deep sea mining: Here’s which countries oppose and support the controversial practice', Euronews, 2/8/2023
• 'Experts agree – deep sea mining is not worth the risk', Land and Climate Review, 13/7/2023
• 'A historical perspective on deep-sea mining for manganese nodules, 1965–2019', Ole Sparenberg
• 'The Mining Industry: Expanding, Deepening, and Widening since the 1750s', Ingulstad et al., 2023
• 'Marine minerals' role in future holistic mineral resource management', Ingulstad et al., 2022

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Copa Cogeca is the largest agricultural lobbying group in Europe, claiming to be "the united voice" of 22 million farmers. But a new investigation from Lighthouse Reports suggests the true size of their membership is far smaller than this - and that the group uses its unrivalled influence to block climate and environmental reform, and lobby for industrial farmers at the expense of smallholders.

Bertie spoke to award-winning journalist Thin Lei Win, Lighthouse's Lead Food Systems Reporter, about the story.

Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• 'Europe’s Potemkin Lobby' - Lighthouse Reports 
• 'The truth behind Europe’s most powerful farmers lobby' - Politico 
• View Copa-Cogeca's specific figures on lobbying spending on lobbyfacts.eu here.
• Greenpeace's Out of Balance report, mentioned in the interview.
• 'EU Investigating Agribusiness Lobby Group Copa-Cogeca Over Potential Transparency Breach', DeSmog
• Romanian language reporting on the story from Libertatea here and here.
• Danish language reporting on the story from Danwatch here.
• Polish language reporting on the story from OKO.press here.

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Alasdair speaks to Professor Ángela Vergara about the history, economics, and environmental impact of mining in Chile.

Ángela Vergara is a member of the history faculty at California State University. Her books include Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile (Pittsburgh, 2021), and Copper Workers, International Business and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile (Penn State, 2008).

Podcast Editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• 'The ‘Alterlives’ of Green Extractivism: Lithium Mining and Exhausted Ecologies in the Atacama Desert', International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement. 
• Stay tuned for our upcoming collection on www.landclimate.org, The future unrefined, coming next week - including content about Chilean mining!

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Joëlle Gergis (@joellegergis) is an award-winning climatologist and writer based at the Australian National University. Her latest book, Humanity's Moment: A Scientist's Case for Hope, is a passionate and unsparing look at what has been lost but also what can still be saved - and why should still have hope. Dr Gergis draws on her experience as the lead author of Working Group 1, of the IPCC's latest assessment report (AR.6), as well as on her own experiences of facing up to the scale of the challenges posed by a rapidly warming natural world. She speaks to Edward Robinson. Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski. 

You can read more about Joëlle, including about her new podcast series at the Conversation, here and you can her order Humanity's Moment from Island Press, here. 

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Following US Climate Envoy John Kerry's latest remarks on overpopulation, Bertie spoke to Diana Ojeda, Associate Professor in sustainability, environment and development at the Universidad de los Andes' Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies, about why many scholars and activists are wary of populationist narratives in climate planning.

Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 

• 'A feminist exploration of ‘populationism’: engaging contemporary forms of population control'
• 'Confronting populationism: Feminist challenges to population control in an era of climate change'
• 'Malthus’s specter and the anthropocene'
• Anne Hendrixson and Diana Ojeda's article on population for Uneven Earth 
• Betsy Hartmann’s webpage 
• PopDev’s short documents series
• 'For reproductive justice in an era of Gates and Modi – the violence of India’s population policies' by Kalpana Wilson 
• Libby Lunstrum’s work
• 'Angry Young Men, Veiled Young Women: Constructing a New Population Threat' by Anne Hendrixson 
• Jade Sasser’s work

Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org