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More than 95% of Australian animals are invertebrates (animals without backbones – spiders, snails, insects, crabs, worms and others). There are at least 300,000 species of invertebrate in Australia. Of these, two-thirds are unknown to western science.

This means there are huge gaps in our knowledge of Australia’s invertebrates. Our new study, published today in the journal Cambridge Prisms: Extinction, indicates there has been a catastrophic under-recording of Australia’s species extinctions.

Our best estimate is that 9,111 invertebrate species have become extinct in Australia since 1788. This dwarfs the current official estimate of the total number of extinctions across all plant and animal species in Australia: 100.

The extinction of so many invertebrate species is not an arcane concern for those few people who care about bugs. Invertebrates are the building blocks of almost all ecological systems.

Loss of invertebrates will destabilise those systems. It will negatively impact the resources we depend upon, like pollination, cycling of nutrients into the soil, clean air and waterways.

Re-calculating the loss

To date, assessments of historic and ongoing biodiversity loss in Australia have been heavily skewed towards vertebrates, especially mammals and birds. This bias has also driven the efforts to prevent the loss of such species.

These conservation efforts are important. But in having such a focus, we have neglected the invertebrates. We haven’t adequately recognised which invertebrates are at the highest risk of extinction, or which have already been lost.

The most widely used estimate for the total number of extinctions of all Australian plants and animals since 1788 is “just” 100 species.

Of these, only ten are invertebrates. And only one invertebrate species, the Lake Pedder earthworm, is officially listed as extinct by the Australian government.

In our study, we used a range of approaches to estimate a more realistic figure for the number of invertebrate extinctions, and to predict how many will become extinct in 2024.

We took the proportional extinction rates of Australian vertebrates and plants and extrapolated this to the number of Australian invertebrates. Separately, we also extrapolated the proportion of extinctions recognised among all of the world’s invertebrates to the number of Australian ones.

To estimate the current extinction rate – the number of invertebrates that are going extinct as you read this article – we had to make assumptions. One option was that our estimated number of extinctions from 1788 to 2024 fell equally across the years.

However, it’s more likely the annual rate of extinctions of Australian invertebrates has increased over time. This is due to increasing habitat loss and other threats as Australia’s human population has grown.

Any such study will have many unknowns, unavoidable uncertainties and caveats. Because of this, we derived broad bounds to our estimate of Australian invertebrate extinctions. It ranges from about 1,500 species at the lower end to nearly 60,000 at the upper end.

This vast number of extinctions is not simply a historical blemish. Importantly, we estimate that the current rate of extinctions of Australian invertebrates is between one and three species every week.

Most of the Australian invertebrate species that have gone extinct will not yet have been formally described. Many may never be so. We have coined the term “ghost extinctions” for those species that have been lost without a trace – with no evidence they ever existed.

Why so many extinctions?

Many of the factors that have caused extinctions in Australian plants and vertebrates also threaten invertebrates. These include extensive habitat destruction, invasive species, degradation and transformation of aquatic environments, and changed fire regimes.

For invertebrates, added to that cocktail of threats is the widespread use of insecticides, pesticides and herbicides.

Many invertebrates are at high extinction risk because they live in small areas, can’t easily move, and are highly sensitive to change. They also often share habitats, so we get entire groups of highly at-risk invertebrate species hanging on in remnant islands of habitat (known as “centres of endemism”).

Many of these at-risk invertebrates are also members of ancient lineages which stretch back millions of years. They would have survived through a world with dinosaurs and the arrival of mammals. Now, they have met a world with humans.

How can we stop invertebrate extinctions?

Currently, conservation priorities in Australia are informed by formal listings of individual threatened species. It’s an important conservation mechanism, but it fails the vast majority of invertebrate species.

We just don’t have enough data, evidence or resources to list each one. As a result, most imperilled invertebrates are excluded from protection.

Our results are a wake-up call.

Preventing extinctions of invertebrate species is a formidable challenge. A first step is for everyone to be aware of the huge distortion in conservation efforts and awareness, and the likely magnitude of invertebrate extinctions.

We can help lower the rate of invertebrate extinctions, but it will take a shift in thinking.

To provide better protection across all of Australia’s biodiversity, we need to better protect centres of endemism and better control key threats (such as habitat destruction and broad-scale use of insecticides).

Governments and research organisations must give more priority to taxonomic research – the naming and describing of new species. We also need more comprehensive monitoring by government agencies, conservation groups and citizen scientists of invertebrate populations, to identify new threats as they arise and to protect species and places.

In 2022, Australia signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It joined 196 countries pledging a commitment to zero new extinctions.

If Australia is losing one to three invertebrate species per week, the “zero extinctions” goal is pushed into a whole new realm of accountability. Unless we address this decline, that pledge of zero extinctions is destined to failure.

The authors would like to acknowledge the co-authors of this research: Michael Braby, Australian National University; Heloise Gibb, La Trobe University; Mark Harvey, Western Australian Museum; Sarah Legge, Charles Darwin University; Melinda Moir, Western Australia Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development; Brett Murphy, Charles Darwin University; Tim New, La Trobe University; and Michael Rix, Queensland Museum.

John Woinarski, Professor of Conservation Biology, Charles Darwin University and Jess Marsh, Visiting researcher in ecology, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Dutton government would keep coal working hard for much longer under its nuclear policy, while renewables would provide only a little over half the electricity generated in 2050.

The opposition has finally put in place the last piece of its controversial nuclear policy, with modelling claiming its alternative would come in substantially cheaper than Labor’s transition path to net zero.

The Coalition policy ensures the issues of coal and climate change will be strongly contested at next year’s election.

The key breakdown in the opposition policy is that by 2050, renewables would provide 54% of electricity generation and nuclear 38%, with 8% a combination of storage and gas.

This compares with Labor’s transition plan for renewables to provide nearly all the generation by then (and 82% by 2030).

The modelling, done at no charge by Frontier Economics, costs the Coalition plan for the transition of the National Electricity Market (which covers the east coast and South Australia but excludes Western Australia) at $263 billion (about 44%) cheaper than its estimate for Labor’s transition. It includes nuclear construction costs.

The modelling, including a range of assumptions (the same assumptions as Australian Energy Market Operator except for inclusion of nuclear), puts the cost of Labor’s transition in the National Electricity Market at $594 billion and that of the Coalition’s at $331 billion.

A central feature of the plan is to keep existing coal-fired power stations going for longer. Then the first of them would be replaced by nuclear generation, in the mid-2030s. The Coalition policy is for seven publicly-owned nuclear plants spread around the country although the modelling is on the basis of units in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

The Coalition argues coal-fired power stations do not need to be, and should not be, phased out as soon as is now planned by AEMO. Prolonging their lives as compared to AEMO assumptions would save money, it says.

Another important saving, the Coalition says, is that its plan to have its nuclear plants located at or near existing power plant sites does away with the need for a huge new transmission grid.

Peter Dutton says: “Nuclear energy is at the heart of our plan, providing the ‘always-on’ power needed to back up renewables, stabilise the grid, and keep energy affordable”.

“The Coalition’s approach integrates zero-emissions nuclear energy alongside renewables and gas, delivering a total system cost significantly lower than Labor’s. This means reduced power bills for households, lower operating costs for small businesses, and a stronger, more resilient economy,” Dutton says.

The release of the costings unleashes a tsunami of claims and counterclaims about numbers. That debate will be eye-glazing for many voters.

Not to worry. We are talking the span of a generation. Numbers that stretch out to 2050 don’t mean a great deal. Hundreds of things – in technology and politics, for starters – can and will change as the years pass.

Moreover, numbers from modelling have an extra layer of complexity and uncertainty. They depend heavily on their assumptions that are, in many cases, necessarily arbitrary.

Anyone inclined to take modelling at face value should reflect on the Labor experience. Before the 2022 election it released modelling that gave it the basis to promise a $275 reduction in household power bills by next year. We all know what happened to that.

Regardless of the problems in attempting to be precise, the broad debate about nuclear’s cost will be intense.

The opposition’s plan is up against, for example, the recently released GenCost report, prepared by the CSIRO. This gave a thumbs down to the nuclear option in cost terms. The opposition attempted to cast doubt on the CSIRO’s expertise, but that is unlikely to fly.

The Coalition policy will go down differently according to which constituency is judging it.

Most obviously, given its reliance on extending the life of coal, it will be unpopular with those for whom climate change is a top-line issue. Teal MPs and candidates will hope to get mileage out of that. Under the Coalition plan emissions would remain higher for longer than under Labor’s transition.

On the other hand, in some regional communities where there has been a bad reaction to the planned new power grid and to wind farms, the policy is likely to be well received.

The question is how it will play in the outer suburban electorates that Dutton hopes will help him cut deeply into Labor’s majority.

For these voters, stressed by the cost of living, climate change is probably less of a priority than it once might have been. And nuclear is less scary than in bygone years.

But whether they will see the Coalition policy as more practical than Labor’s, or as a pie-in-the-sky nuclear dream – that’s too early to say.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen was dismissive when the Coalition first promoted nuclear. But Labor would be unwise to be complacent, especially in what’s shaping as a difficult election for the Albanese government.

Labor’s strongest arguments will be on climate change – the evils of the extension of the use of coal – and cost (relying on GenCost findings and the like).

But it is vulnerable in its rejection of calls to lift the ban on nuclear. Bowen argues to do this would be a “distraction”, potentially harming investment in renewables.

That’s a weak argument. To suggest those looking to invest very large sums are likely to be distracted if there wasn’t a ban on the nuclear option is simplistic.

Firstly, this underestimates the financial nous of such investors. On Labor’s own argument, they wouldn’t want to invest in nuclear because it wouldn’t be profitable to do so. Secondly, investors currently know if there were a change of government, the Coalition would lift the ban (notwithstanding  the present opposition of various states).

The strongest reason Labor won’t contemplate lifting the ban is politics. Any such move would outrage the left of the party, and also risk driving voters to the Greens. It would also require a change in the Labor’s party platform, which says Labor will “prohibit the establishment of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia”.

With households highly focused on their immediate power bills, the government has been tipped to extend more relief as it burnishes its cost-of-living credentials for the election. The Coalition would have to decide whether to match this. It would be hard not to do so.

The Coalition’s plan for nuclear power is a big idea, of which we don’t see that many in our current politics. It will test Dutton’s ability to cope with detail under the pressure of a campaign. There will be another test. If the Coalition remains in opposition, will it throw its grand plan into the policy dust bin, so the nuclear debate will be gone for another decade or two?

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On Granite Island off South Australia, a colony of little penguins is fighting to survive. About two decades ago, the penguins numbered 1,600 adults – now there are just 30.

It is important for scientists to monitor and study this little penguin colony, to observe their behaviours and stop their numbers from declining.

In our latest research project, my colleagues and I captured footage of the penguins over several breeding seasons, as part of a study into their parenting behaviours. It provides a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the unseen world of these vulnerable birds.

So let’s take a look at what Granite Island’s little penguins get up to when humans aren’t watching.

The world’s tiniest penguin

Little penguins (Eudyptula novaehollandiae) are the world’s smallest penguin species. They typically grow to about 35 centimetres and weigh an average 1.2 kilograms. They live in coastal waters in Tasmania and southern Australia – including on Granite Island, about 100 kilometres south of Adelaide.

The island is connected to the mainland by a causeway, and draws up to 800,000 visitors a year.

The stark decline in little penguin numbers on Granite Island is due to several factors. They include predators such as fur seals and foxes, changing environmental conditions, declines in fish numbers, and human disturbance.

My colleagues and I have spent years studying the Granite Island penguin colony. Our latest research gathered thousands of hours of footage to determine if a particular personality trait – boldness – affected the penguins’ breeding and parenting.

Home after a day at sea

The footage starts with a stream of little penguins waddling under a boardwalk, returning from sea. They have spent most of the day in the water, hunting for food such as fish and squid. Little penguins forage about their body weight in food every day.

The penguins return to their nests after dark, to rest and feed their chicks. They do this in groups – possibly to avoid predators – before heading to their separate burrows.

They tend to travel quietly, to avoid attracting attention. But out at sea or back in their burrows, little penguins can be quite vocal, making sounds such as short quacks, growls and brays.

The footage shows one penguin bumping into another in the dark – but this doesn’t mean they don’t see well. Little penguins have excellent vision, even at night. Because the birds don’t move well on land, they often feel exposed and in a hurry to get home.

The birds are quite territorial and can get into disputes with others in the colony. The footage shows two males fighting by standing tall and pecking each other. One is probably defending its nest.

Hello, lover

Little penguins are monogamous. The breeding season runs over spring and summer, when there is lots of food around.

Males establish the burrows, which are usually in rock crevices or under thick vegetation. They then try to attract a female by demonstrating their quality – either through vocal displays or defending territory.

The footage shows a male and female penguin greeting each other, before getting down to business. Then we cut away, to give the lovebirds some privacy!

Across a breeding season, little penguin pairs typically rear one or two clutches during autumn and winter. Each clutch consists of one or two eggs. The penguins take turns sitting on the eggs while the other feeds at sea.

Keeping their plumage looking tip-top

In the footage we see two little penguins preening themselves during a quiet moment. This is important to remove parasites and keep their plumage healthy.

Despite their small bodies, little penguins have an estimated 10,000 feathers. The feathers are downy at the base, providing a layer of insulation which helps keep them warm during long days at sea.

The feathers are also waterproof thanks to an oily liquid the penguins secrete from a gland near their tails, which they spread over their body when preening.

Now for some family time

After the eggs hatch, the parents take turns to guard their chicks for three weeks while the partner fishes at sea. When this period ends, the parents leave the chicks alone in the burrow while they fish, returning every one to five days to feed them.

The footage shows the chicks excitedly jumping on a parent in the nest. We also see the chicks practising their vocal calls and stretching their tiny wings by flapping them madly. This is all important practice for being a grown-up penguin.

The parent-offspring relationship was the focus of our new research. When humans are around a lot – as they are at Granite Island – penguins can be bolder and more aggressive. We predicted bold individuals would invest less time in parental care, as has previously been observed in other bird species.

But this was not the case. We found a penguin’s boldness has no bearing on its performance as a parent, such as how often it returned to the nest, fed its chicks, or stayed overnight.

The next phase of our research will examine factors such as the quality of food the parents feed to chicks, or whether personality traits other than boldness might affect their child-rearing.

Protecting our little penguins

Humans are disturbing animal habitats at an alarming rate. We intend to keep studying – and filming – Granite Island’s little penguins to understand how this pressure is affecting them.

If you are ever lucky enough to observe little penguins anywhere in Australia, please take care of them by sticking to a few simple guidelines outlined in full here.

They include:

• stay at least five metres away
• don’t use camera flashes – it can temporarily blind the penguin
• don’t shine a torch directly at the penguin
• keep dogs away at all times
• don’t get between a penguin and its burrow or chicks.

Diane Colombelli-Négrel, Senior Lecturer, Animal Behaviour, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Giant old trees are survivors. But their size and age do not protect them against everything. They face threats such as logging or intensifying drought and fire as the climate changes.

Tasmania has long been home to plants ancient and giant. One rare shrub, King’s lomatia (Lomatia tasmanica), has been cloning itself for at least 43,000 years.

But in recent years, even some giants have succumbed. The devastating 2019 fires in southern Tasmania killed at least 17 of the largest trees. That included the largest blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) ever measured, the 82 metre high Strong Girl.

But giants still exist. In southern Tasmania’s Valley of the Giants (Styx Valley), there is a mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) named Centurion now over 100m tall. Centurion is a leading candidate for the tallest flowering plant on Earth and the tallest tree in the Southern Hemisphere. (California’s coastal redwood ‘Hyperion’ reaches 116 metres, but is a non-flowering tree).

For years, I have been drawn to Centurion as a botanical science landmark. I have climbed it, measured it, and observed it carefully. But after the 2019 fires, my colleagues and I realised the urgency of preserving physical genetic samples before the chance was lost forever. During the 2019 fires, Centurion itself narrowly escaped death. It was saved only by the efforts of firefighters.

Our recent research sequencing a high-resolution genome of Centurion turned up an intriguing finding – this giant shows greater genetic diversity than we had expected, which may boost the adaptability of the species. Finding and preserving samples of Australia’s other remaining giants will help scientists learn from these remarkable trees.

Where Centurion stands

Giant trees are found only in a few locations in Australia, such as Victoria’s Central Highlands (mountain ash) and Western Australia’s southwest forests (red tingle, Eucalyptus jacksonii). These regions tend to have higher rainfall and less frequent fires.

Centurion is named for its height, at more than 100 metres high. But it is also at least three centuries old.

It has been lucky to survive this far. Centurion stands in a small patch of uncut state forest in a heavily logged area. Logging in the region is continuing, though nearby areas of old growth forest were added to the World Heritage area in 2013.

It was found in 2008, when forestry workers analysing aerial laser scanning data identified the tree as a 99.76 m tall giant.

In 2018, I measured its height using laser ground measurement. The living top of the tree had grown to more than 100m in height.

When I climbed Centurion, I saw the uppermost branches had actually sprouted from the side of a snapped upper stem about 90m tall. This suggests the tree could have once been significantly taller.

Branches resprouting from the lower trunk suggest the tree is taking advantage of a change in light conditions after neighbouring trees died. The resprouting abilities of Eucalyptus species mean these trees can better recover after fire – and outcompete less resilient species such as rainforest plants.

When the fires came

In early 2019, I had planned to collect leaf samples from Centurion for deeper study, alongside geneticists from two universities. But then the fires came. Large tracts of southern Tasmania burned over that summer. Giants turned to charcoal. Centurion was left charred, but with a green, growing top.

After the fires burned out, we were able to collect samples from Centurion and began analysing its genetic code in the lab. My colleagues and I have now posted its genome to an open-access public server for wider use.

We used cutting-edge methods to create one of the best genetic fingerprints of a forest tree so far. It’s the first time we have documented an individual Eucalyptus including genetic contributions from both parent plants across the full length of the chromosomes. This totals nearly a billion DNA base pairs – individual “bits” of genetic information.

Centurion’s genome showed us the tree’s parents had each bequeathed it very different genetic sequences. This combination may have contributed to its extreme growth, though we don’t know for sure.

The genome reveals a surprising amount of genetic variation. In Centurion’s DNA lie new genetic sequences, deleted genes and duplicated genes. These variations suggest mountain ash trees have high adaptability. Not all trees are like this – some have very little genetic variation, or even rely on cloning. Trees bred for agriculture or forestry tend to have low genetic diversity.

Building an archive of giant eucalypts

After the 2019 fires turned some of Australia’s largest trees to ash, my colleagues and I realised the moment was urgent. If we didn’t preserve the genes of these trees, they could be lost forever.

The Tasmanian Herbarium now hosts our project to curate and store samples through the Giant Eucalyptus Specimen Archive project. We have sampled several of the largest remaining giants in the Styx Valley, lodging samples with the Herbarium and genomic researchers at the Australian National University.

Conservation – of specimens?

Mountain ash like cool, wet mountains. But as the world warms, drought and fire become more common. Recent Tasmanian bushfires have burned traditionally cooler, wetter parts of Tasmania, where rare species such as pencil pines and King Billy Pines grow.

Conserving old growth forests and their giants in national parks or World Heritage listing can only go so far in the face of these threats. This year, we have seen widespread browning and dying among eucalypts.

Preserving leaf and flower specimens costs a fraction of what it takes to keep living plants or store frozen seeds.

Future scientists may find these giant trees have some genetic talent for survival, as demonstrated by their longevity. Preserving their genes could help the species survive.

We may well need long-term preservation of specimens in Herbariums, which preserve plant material for decades or even centuries. Museums, botanical gardens, seedbanks and laboratories can also archive specimens from significant individual plants.

If the genetic stories of Earth’s ancient and giant trees are to be read in the future, we must take the time to record them and keep them safe.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to the Borevitz Lab (ANU), the Tasmanian Herbarium, and the Eucalypt Genetics Group (UTAS). This article is in memory of Tasmanian ecologist Dr Jamie Kirkpatrick (1946-2024)

Daniel Bar Ness, Research associate, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Imagine you’re walking across rolling hills that stretch for miles, with warm sunshine and the chirping of birds all around.

This peaceful and serene scene is an increasingly rare one in the modern world.

Our natural soundscapes are falling silent as bird populations decline. Humans are interacting less with nature, in what is sometimes referred to as an “extinction of experience”. This has been linked to deteriorating public health and wellbeing.

Birds are often colourful and their song provides the soundtrack to our outdoor activities. Listening to a dawn chorus should be like listening to a full orchestra, with strings, woodwind, brass and percussion impressing with their volume and complexity. But if the only ones who turn up are the bass drum and a trumpeter, the music would be underwhelming, if not boring.

Our study explores the link between birdsong and people, specifically on English vineyards, as viticulture is the UK’s fastest growing agricultural industry. It is also strongly embedded in tourism through vineyard tours and wine-tasting events.

We surveyed bird communities on 21 vineyards and measured the characteristics of their soundscapes using acoustic indices, which are metrics that capture complexity and volume of sound. Our results showed that vineyards with more bird species had louder and more complex soundscapes.

This is not surprising: a vineyard with robins, blackbirds, swifts, finches and tits is expected to sound more acoustically diverse and loud than a vineyard with just a few pigeons, crows and pheasants.

But does the silencing of our soundscapes matter to us? The short answer is yes. There is growing evidence about the health benefits of spending time in nature, including reducing risks of heart disease, diabetes and anxiety. Yet while the general benefits of being outside in nature may seem intuitive, the contributions of natural sounds to this are less understood.

So as part of our research, we explored the experience of 186 wine-tour participants across three vineyards with varying soundscapes. We also enhanced some vineyard soundscapes with hidden speakers, which played the songs of five additional bird species. This was designed to see how participants’ engagement with nature would be affected by increasing the diversity of birds and songs, as well as the overall volume.

Surprising soundscapes

The results were fascinating. Paul Harrison, the manager at Saffron Grange, a vineyard in Essex, summarised: “What was surprising was the significant impact that birdsong has on people.”

Visitors who experienced louder and more complex sounds – whether on vineyards with naturally richer soundscapes or on those we had enhanced – reported that they had enjoyed the sounds more. They also felt more connected to nature and more satisfied with their tour. With richer soundscapes, they felt more mindful and positive during the tours, reporting that they felt freer from work, routine and responsibility. They said they felt “engrossed by the sounds” and found them “appealing”.

We harness nature’s benefits subconsciously, which means, as Harrison pointed out, that it’s easy to take them for granted: “We all benefit from the soundscape of the vineyard daily and maybe when it is so frequent we don’t fully realise how that positively impacts wellbeing compared to other work settings.”

Our study is a clear demonstration of the direct effect that birdsong has on our wellbeing. It shows that bird conservation could simultaneously enhance our experience of spending time in nature and elicit positive emotions.

The world we experience today is unlike what our grandparents experienced. We are increasingly disconnected from nature, and nature’s benefits on our wellbeing are lessening as a result. What is most concerning is that these changes are accepted as the new norm, a concept termed “shifting baseline syndrome”.

We hope our findings lead to more people thinking like Harrison, who concluded:

It goes to show how important nature is for humanity on so many levels and hopefully a study like this supports more investment and help in retaining as well as improving our natural soundscapes.

Our study presents a strong, albeit selfish, argument for protecting natural soundscapes. We showed that even an hour’s exposure to diverse and loud birdsong can lead to feelings of optimism and relaxation. So, we hope businesses and people will be inspired to invest in conservation and promote nature engagement in creative settings, such as workplace courtyards or restaurants with outdoor seating.

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Natalia Zielonka, Postdoctoral Researcher, Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia and Simon Butler, Professor of Applied Ecology, University of East Anglia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Surging global tourism emissions are driven almost entirely by 20 countries, and efforts to rein in the trend aren’t working.

That is the main finding of our new research, published in Nature Communications today. It represents the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of tourism emissions yet conducted.

The study draws together multiple datasets, including those published directly by 175 governments over 11 years (2009-2020). It uses the United Nations-endorsed “measurement of sustainable tourism” framework and draws on tourism expenditure and emissions intensity data from national accounts.

The findings reveal serious challenges ahead, given the wider context. The UN Environment Programme reports a 42% reduction in current global emissions overall is needed by 2030 (and 57% by 2035). If not, the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees will be lost.

But global tourism emissions have been growing at double the rate of the global economy. Our study reveals that between 2009 and 2019, emissions increased by 40%, from 3.7 gigatonnes (7.3% of global emissions) in 2009 to 5.2 gigatonnes (8.8% of global emissions) in 2019.

While global tourism emissions fell dramatically in 2020-2021 due to COVID-19, the rebound to pre-pandemic levels has been rapid.

Massive growth without a technological fix

Tourism-related emissions increased at a yearly rate of 3.5% from 2009 to 2019. By comparison, global economic growth in general over that period was 1.5% per annum. If this growth rate continues, global tourism emissions will double over the next two decades.

The carbon intensity of every dollar of tourist spending is 30% higher than the average for the global economy, and four times higher than the service sector.

The primary driver of rising emissions is high growth in tourism demand. The rapidly expanding carbon footprint is predominantly from aviation (21%), use of vehicles powered by petrol and diesel (17%), and utilities such as electricity supply (16%).

Slow efficiency gains through technology have been overwhelmed by this growth in demand.

Aviation accounted for half of direct tourism emissions, making it the Achilles heel of global tourism emissions. Despite decades of promises, the global air transport system has proved impossible to decarbonise through new technologies.

20 countries dominate emissions

Our research revealed alarming inequalities in emissions growth between countries. The United States, China and India accounted for 60% of the growth in tourism emissions between 2009 and 2019. By 2019, these three countries alone were responsible for 39% of total global tourism emissions.

Three-quarters of total global tourism emissions are produced by just 20 countries, with the remaining 25% shared between 155. Remarkably, there is now a hundred-fold difference in per-capta tourism footprints between countries which travel most and those which travel least.

Of the top 20, the US (as a foreign destination, as well as its citizens travelling) had the largest tourism carbon footprint in 2019 – nearly 1 gigatonne. It was responsible for 19% of the total global tourism carbon footprint, growing at an annual rate of 3.2%.

In 2019, the US tourism carbon footprint was equivalent to 3 tonnes per resident, ranking 12th globally among countries with the highest per-capita tourism emissions.

As a destination, the United Kingdom ranked 7th globally, at 128 megatonnes (2.5% of the total). In 2019, UK residents produced 2.8 tonnes of emissions per person, ranked 15th globally.

Australia’s tourism carbon footprint ranked 14th globally (82 megatonnes). Its resident per-capita tourism carbon footprint in 2019 was 3.4 tonnes (8th globally). This underscores the high emissions being driven by long-haul air travel for inbound and outbound international trips.

In 2019, New Zealand’s per-capita tourism carbon footprint was 3.1 tonnes per resident (10th globally). Like Australia, dependence on long-haul international travel is a problem that cannot be ignored.

4 pathways to decarbonising tourism

For the first time ever, this year’s UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP29) included tourism. UN Tourism endorsed our study and acknowledged tourism now contributes 8.8% of total global emissions.

It reported that COP29 “marks a turning point, when ambition meets action, and vision transforms into commitment […] to positive transformation for a better future for our planet”.

But our research shows the combination of tourism demand growth on one hand, and the failure of technology efficiency gains on the other, present enormous barriers to tourism carbon mitigation.

Despite this, we have identified four pathways towards stabilising and reducing global tourism emissions:

1. Measure tourism carbon emissions to identify hotspots. Our research provides evidence of the tourism sub-sectors driving high emissions growth, including aviation, energy supply and vehicle use. These hotspots must move onto a 10% annual emissions reduction pathway to 2050.

2. Avoid excessive tourism development and identify sustainable growth thresholds. National tourism decarbonisation strategies must now define and implement sustainable growth goals, most urgently in the 20 highest-emitting tourism destinations.

3. Shift focus to domestic and short-range markets, and discourage long-haul markets. Actively managing growth in demand for air travel is the most obvious first step, which might involve regulating long-haul air travel demand.

4. Address inequality between countries by factoring in the social costs of carbon emissions. Controlling current patterns of relentless growth in long-haul air travel aligns with a more socially equitable approach to tourism, which is needed to address these inequalities.

The fundamental purpose of our research is to give policymakers and industry leaders greater clarity about tourism’s impact on global emissions. The challenge then is to develop evidence-based policy and regulation to achieve urgent tourism decarbonisation.

The authors acknowledge the contributions of Stefan Gössling, Manfred Lenzen and Futu Faturay who were part of the research team on this project, and who coauthored the Nature Communications paper on which this article is based.

James Higham, Professor of Tourism, Griffith University and Ya-Yen Sun, Associate Professor, School of Business, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We are now in the middle of the sixth mass extinction, caused by our emergence as a planet-shaping force. Species are going extinct far faster than the average natural rate of loss.

In response, conservationists are working to safeguard biodiversity strongholds such as tropical rainforests, famed for their remarkable richness of species. Many of these rainforests are household names, from the Amazon to the Congo to Australia’s Daintree and Wet Tropics.

But these rainforests are being steadily cut down or degraded. It’s entirely possible for rainforests to look good in satellite images even though logging, mining or road-building mean they have become poor homes to species able to thrive only in the absence of major human disturbance, such as West Africa’s iconic Diana monkey (Cercopithecus diana).

How much rainforest is still in good condition and able to sustain the Daintree’s cassowaries and tree kangaroos, the Amazon’s sloths and anacondas and the Congo Basin’s forest elephants, bonobos and okapi? We looked at over 16,000 species of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians in our new research to answer this question.

At first glance, it seemed like good news – up to 90% of the geographic ranges of these species were still covered in forest. But when we drilled down further, we found the real problem. Barely 25% of the world’s remaining tropical rainforests are still of high quality. For threatened species and those in decline, there’s just 8% of their habitat left in good condition.

What makes a rainforest high quality?

To protect rainforests, conservationists have long focused on a key goal: reduce deforestation. The theory is that by slowing or stopping the rate at which trees are felled, rainforest habitat can be preserved.

We measure deforestation by looking at rates of native forest cover loss and assessing the size of the remaining canopy. But while forest cover is vital for many species, it’s not enough. Maintaining forest cover without considering its quality means ignoring major human sources of damage, such as logging, roadbuilding and mining which make rainforests increasingly degraded.

Degraded rainforests aren’t lifeless. They’re often full of life. But the species you find are usually those that thrive in disturbed, open areas such as the edges of forest, roadsides and agricultural lands. Such species take advantage of human-made disturbance to expand. This comes at the expense of many other forest dependent species, who often decline or disappear.

To be able to distinguish high quality from degraded rainforests, our team used high-resolution imagery of global rainforests from three NASA satellites to calculate the height of trees, canopy cover and how long the rainforest had stood without pressure from human industries.

We combined these three variables into a single measure of forest structural condition and overlaid our results with a map of major industrial human pressures such as expansion of cities, creation of farmland and building roads.

Bringing these data sources together lets us rank the condition of rainforests, which we dub the Forest Structural Integrity Index, first developed in 2020.

High quality rainforests have a multi-layered structure – a lower understorey of shrubs and small trees, a midstorey of medium trees, a canopy of the taller trees and an emergent layer where unusually tall trees poke through the sea of green.

In forests degraded by logging, very tall, tall and medium trees are logged or severely damaged, while the understorey is overtaken by dense brush. We know high quality rainforests are linked to a lower risk of extinction for vertebrates.

High quality rainforest is getting harder to find

In our research, we define high quality rainforest as those left undisturbed since 2000, with little pressure from human industry. These forests have over 75% canopy cover and trees over 15 metres, indicating they are older.

High quality forests are better homes for wildlife than degraded forests, when we look at how many species live there, how plentiful these species are and how broad and functional the ecosystem is. High quality rainforests also provide irreplaceable ecosystem services to the planet and humans, such as stabilising the climate by sequestering large amounts of carbon in their wood.

Unfortunately, our new research shows the extent of the damage we have done. Only a fraction of rainforest cover can now be considered high quality habitat for over 16,000 mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian species – even though 90% of their geographic ranges are still “forested”.

What does this look like? Take the golden bowerbird (Prionodura newtonia), endemic to Queensland’s Wet Tropics. Its habitat appears well preserved, with 84% of its range still forested. But when we drill down, we find only 36% of the rainforest can still be considered high quality.

In West Africa’s rainforests, the Diana monkey still has forests covering 80% of its range – but just 0.7% of high quality.

What should we do?

These findings are a wake-up call. They suggest many seemingly safe species could be at real risk of extinction. Just because a forest is still standing doesn’t mean it’s able to be a home.

This points to the urgency of stopping deforestation as rapidly as possible. Our last tracts of undisturbed tropical rainforest have to be protected.

But it also shows us that ending deforestation isn’t enough by itself. Many of the world’s surviving rainforests are not in great shape. We should let these rainforests recover by banning industrial-scale timber extraction, road building and other major pressures.

In 2022, nations promised to end the routine destruction of tropical rainforests and other highly biodiverse areas within a decade.

We’re halfway to 2030, and tropical rainforests are still being felled or burned, even if there are some signs of progress.

Changing course away from a human-made mass extinction means redoubling our efforts to safeguard tropical rainforests, for nature and for us.

Rajeev Pillay, Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology, University of Northern British Columbia and James Watson, Professor in Conservation Science, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels continue to rise and 2024 is likely to be the world’s hottest year on record.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require much more than existing efforts to reduce emissions and decarbonise industry. We also need to remove enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, 7-9 billion tonnes a year.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says carbon dioxide removal technology will be required to achieve global and national net zero targets. In other words, there is no net zero without CO₂-removal, because emissions of greenhouse gases are not declining anywhere near fast enough.

There will be trade-offs, as CO₂-removal can be costly and often uses up energy, water and land. But Earth is hurtling towards a climate catastrophe, with more than 3°C of warming under current global policies. We must do everything we can to avert disaster, which means slashing emissions as much as we possibly can, and removing what’s left.

Within the international scientific community the debate about carbon dioxide removal has moved on from “could we, should we?” to “we must” – recognising the urgency of the situation. So it’s worth coming up to speed on the basics of carbon dioxide removal technology, both old and new, and the role we can expect it to play in Australia’s net-zero future.

Why do we need carbon dioxide removal?

Carbon dioxide removal accelerates natural processes such as storing carbon in trees, rocks, soil and the ocean. It differs from carbon capture and storage, which seeks to remove carbon before it enters the atmosphere.

As Australia’s Climate Change Authority states, reaching the national goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 does not mean all emissions are eliminated across the economy. Some emissions are likely to remain – about 25% of Australia’s 2005 emissions under the current plan – and they need to be dealt with.

So how much carbon dioxide are we talking about? Some 133 million tonnes a year by mid-century, according to the authority. This equates to billions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide removal over the next 25 years.

Ways to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are among the federal government’s national science and research priorities. So let’s take a look at the technologies we are using now and what we might need.

What technologies do we need?

The international scientific community divides carbon dioxide removal technologies into “conventional” (nature-based) and “novel” (new) approaches.

The conventional technologies rely on biological processes, such as planting trees, boosting soil carbon levels and increasing carbon stores in coastal ecosystems such as mangroves. The carbon is typically stored over shorter timescales, from a decade to a century.

Unfortunately, many of these natural carbon stores or “sinks” are already becoming saturated. They will also become increasingly vulnerable in a changing climate. For example, forest fires are releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere annually.

To reach net zero emissions, the world will need to find more durable ways to remove CO₂ at scale from the atmosphere. This is where the new technologies come in.

Examples include adding crushed carbonate or silicate rock to the ocean or farmland. Research suggests waste rock from mining could be used for this purpose.

Concerningly, novel approaches currently comprise less than 0.1% of total global carbon dioxide removal.

Avoiding potential pitfalls

Like all technologies, carbon dioxide removal comes with potential risks and tradeoffs.

In a market worth as much as US$1.1 trillion dollars (A$1.7 trillion) by 2050, there’s always a risk of overstating the benefits.

To counter this, the IPCC is developing evidence-based methods to ensure the amounts of carbon removed can be verified and included in national accounts. This should promote transparency and reduce the risk of greenwashing or making misleading claims.

Carbon dioxide removal can also affect the environment. For instance, some approaches such as tree planting may compete with agriculture or biodiversity conservation for water and land. This challenge is compounded by climate change.

Other approaches, such as direct air capture and storage, currently face technical challenges in extracting CO₂ from air without consuming high amounts of energy.

The interests and rights of Australia’s First Nations communities must also be considered. A global survey of Indigenous people in 30 countries around the world, including Australia, found positive attitudes to climate intervention technologies. However, this is only a starting point. Greater engagement is needed nationally concerning specific carbon dioxide removal approaches.

More work is needed to understand these challenges, including how to manage them and their impacts on Australian communities.

A new industry for Australia?

Australia’s large land mass and vast oceans mean we have far greater physical capacity than other nations to store carbon.

Australia also has access to renewable energy used to power the technologies, and a skilled workforce to develop and run them.

Much like solar and wind energy, tackling carbon dioxide removal in Australia at the scale required will require a new industry with its own infrastructure, institutions and processes.

CSIRO and other organisations are advancing the technology, but more is needed. Australia requires a national dialogue and clear vision around how to deliver carbon dioxide removal responsibly and sustainably.

Of course, prevention is better than cure. It’s always better to cut emissions and stop carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere in the first place, than trying to remove it afterwards. But time is running out, carbon dioxide levels are already too high and we need to reach net zero by 2050.

Carbon dioxide removal is now essential, along with deep and urgent emissions reduction. We must get moving on permanent carbon dioxide removal if we are to preserve the planet for future generations.

Andrew Lenton, Director CarbonLock, Environment, CSIRO and Kerryn Brent, Research scientist, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia is on the cusp of a once-in-a-generation transformation, as our energy systems shift to clean, renewable forms of power. First Nations peoples, the original custodians of this land, must be central to – and benefit from – this transition.

That is the key message of the federal government’s new First Nations Clean Energy Strategy, launched on Friday. The government has committed A$70 million to help realise its aims.

I was part of a committee that helped guide the government on the strategy. It involved more than a year of consultation with First Nations communities across Australia, plus input from industry and state and territory governments.

Australia has pledged to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Of the renewable energy infrastructure needed to achieve this, about half will be developed on First Nations land.

First Nations peoples have cared for Country for 65,000 years. Australia’s renewable energy transition must be on their terms. The strategy released today will guide this process – so let’s take a look at what it contains.

1. Get clean energy into First Nations communities

The strategy emphasises the need to establish renewable energy in First Nations communities and make homes more energy-efficient. Electricity supply to these communities is often limited, unreliable and more expensive than elsewhere in Australia.

Many remote communities across northern Australia also rely on back-up diesel power for much of the day. This is a highly polluting source of energy and hugely expensive to service.

Some remote communities use pre-paid electricity cards to access energy. This is expensive and those who cannot afford to pay often “self-disconnect” from the supply.

And remote First Nations houses – many of which are poorly built and insulated – can become dangerously hot which causes significant health problems.

2. Enable equitable partnerships

Equitable partnerships between First Nations peoples, industry and governments allow First Nations people to consent to projects on their terms. It also reduces risks, costs and delays for proponents.

The strategy aims to increase the capacity of First Nations peoples to actively take part in decisions about clean energy projects and policies.

First Nations people should have access to culturally appropriate advice and resources. This will arm them to better understand the opportunities and risks of, say, a solar farm proposed near their community.

It also means helping First Nations people participate in and benefit from projects – for example through skills training or help negotiating agreements.

3. Ensure First Nations people benefit economically

In times of significant economic change, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have usually been left behind. This time, history must not repeat.

Acceleration in Australia’s clean energy industry will create major economic and employment opportunities. First Nations peoples must be supported to seize them. For instance, First Nations peoples comprise just 1.9% of Australia’s clean energy workforce, which presents an enormous opportunity for increased participation.

Actions identified in the strategy include supporting First Nations energy businesses, including ensuring access to financial support. Other measures include developing a First Nations workforce by building on success stories such as the Indigenous Ranger program.

Recognition of Aboriginal land rights has led to a vast estate owned or managed by Indigenous people. The majority is in remote areas in northern Australia, far from population centres. But the Indigenous estate in south-eastern Australia is not insignificant and will prove vital in the new clean energy economies.

4. Put Country and culture at the centre

The strategy calls for First Nations peoples’ connection to land and sea Country, and their cultural knowledge and heritage, to be respected during the clean energy transition.

It acknowledges that clean energy harnesses the natural elements – such as sun, wind and water – and First Nations peoples’ knowledge of Country, developed over millennia, can greatly improve the way projects are designed and implemented.

It says governments and the clean energy industry must become more “culturally competent” so they can work collaboratively with First Nations peoples.

Towards autonomy and self-determination

Actions in the strategy are designed to complement the Closing the Gap agreement, which aims to close the health and life expectancy gap between First Nations peoples and non-Indigenous Australians. Closing the Gap targets include:

• realising economic participation and development
• social and emotional wellbeing
• access to information and services so First Nations people can make informed decisions about their lives.

Several priorities identified in the strategy are already in place, to some degree.

For example, the Capacity Investment Scheme – under which the government underwrites the risk of investing in new renewable energy projects – requires proponents to demonstrate First Nations engagement and commitments.

And New South Wales’ Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap requires energy proponents to meet First Nations targets for employment and procurement.

However, much work is needed to translate the new strategy into real benefits on the ground, and to realise the aspirations of First Nations peoples for autonomy and self-determination.

A hopeful initiative

First Nations peoples are already highly vulnerable to the damaging effects of climate change. It threatens to make their Country unlivable, leading to a new wave of dispossession. For that reason and others, we need the clean energy transition to work.

The strategy is an optimistic and hopeful initiative. Done right, it will ensure the continent’s original custodians benefit socially and economically from the enormous changes ahead.

Over the last 60 years, various government policies in Australia have sought to boost First Nations economic development. But the efforts have been stymied by a lack of capacity and resources.

If this new strategy is to succeed, further funding and ongoing monitoring is needed to ensure its aims are achieved.

As Australia bids to host the United Nations climate change conference in 2026, in partnership with Pacific nations, we must show a commitment to elevating the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples around the world – including on home soil.

Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, Convenor: Indigenous Land & Justice Research Group, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Road transport is responsible for a substantial share of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. So reducing these emissions is a high priority.

In the European Union (EU), CO₂ emissions from new passenger cars have been regulated for more than 15 years. The range of policy measures includes mandatory CO₂ emission targets.

But Australia’s mandatory New Vehicle Efficiency Standard will only come in next year, without other supporting policy measures.

In our new research, my colleagues and I compared the two car fleets and examined their emissions in detail. We found Australian cars are typically larger, heavier and less efficient, producing 43% more emissions than their EU counterparts. The results demonstrate the vital role of well-designed, ambitious policies and regulations in driving down emissions.

What we did

Car emissions by country depends on many factors. These include the level of dependence on cars, travel behaviour, consumer preferences, marketing, car types and sizes, fuel efficiency requirements, purchase price, running costs and, importantly, government policies.

Policy levers range from financial incentives, taxes and regulations through to other measures such as information campaigns.

In collaboration with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, we collected information about the respective car fleets in Europe and Australia.

We obtained region-specific vehicle specifications including vehicle sales, car make and model, weight, size, rated power, battery capacity and certified emissions performance. We extracted this from previous studies, publicly available data sets and information in Europe and Australia.

We then fed this information into detailed simulation models to estimate emissions in a wide range of real-world conditions, for each fleet. This included the effects of different driving conditions and climates.

What we found

Our research revealed Australian cars are larger and heavier than EU cars, which has direct consequences for emissions.

New vehicles in both the EU and Australia must be certified, with their fuel consumption and emissions tested against emission limits, before they can be sold.

But the test procedure differs between the EU and Australia. The EU uses a modern procedure, whereas Australia still uses an outdated and unrealistic test developed in the 1970s – ironically called the New European Drive Cycle test.

In the four years from 2018 to 2021, the difference between certified CO₂ emissions of new cars registered in Australia and the EU increased by 20%. This was mainly due to the more rapid rise of EVs in Europe.

Then there’s the difference between certified emissions and what actually happens on the road, often referred to as the “gap”. We found the gap between certified CO₂ emissions and real-world emissions is larger in Australia. In Europe the average gap for petrol and diesel cars is 15–20%, whereas in Australia it is 30–35%.

Differences in vehicle weight and size, driving style, climate, and the use of air conditioning contribute, but the outdated test protocol is a major factor.

The gap is particularly large for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle emissions are three to four times higher on the road in both Europe and Australia.

Why? Largely because certified emissions performance assumes these vehicles will drive in electric mode 75–90% of the time, while the reality is more like 25%. So in practice, these vehicles mostly drive around as high-emitting petrol or diesel cars.

Overall, we estimated the real-world CO₂ emissions of the registered on road fleets in 2021 were 143 grams per kilometre for the EU and and 204 grams per kilometre for Australia. This means the average Australian car on the road is producing 43% more greenhouse gas emissions than the average EU car.

Mandatory CO₂ emission targets work

Our research shows mandatory CO₂ emission targets are effective in reducing emissions from both (new) passenger cars and, over time, the fleet as a whole. But this only happens if they are well designed.

With its long-standing regulations, the EU has significantly reduced CO₂ emissions, mainly through increased sales of low- or zero-emission vehicles. Conversely, Australia has relied on ineffective voluntary emission standards so far, with relatively slow uptake of electric vehicles and slow or even no progress in reducing emissions as a result.

We found the shift towards electric vehicles is crucial for achieving carbon neutrality goals. Having a higher proportion of zero- and low-emission cars in new EU car sales was the main reason the region’s 2020 emission reduction targets were met.

Without this, 70% of manufacturers would have failed to meet the EU standards. That’s because the emissions performance of conventional diesel and petrol cars have hardly improved.

This is in line with recent research that found only a shift to lightweight battery-electric vehicles, alongside deep decarbonisation of the electricity grid, will get Australia close to net zero by 2050.

Both regions have designed similar paths for future emissions reduction efforts. However, EU targets have been set for a longer term (2015-35). Australia has only set annual targets for the period 2025 to 2029.

Our research suggests sales of battery electric cars will need to increase in each region to meet future CO₂ emissions targets. In the EU, electric vehicle sales will need to hit 50% by 2030 to meet its target. In Australia, electric vehicle sales will need to reach 60% by 2029 to meet its more lenient target.

Shaping future policy

As the EU shows, setting ambitious, effective and legally binding emissions targets can drive innovation and transform markets.

But mandatory targets are not enough on their own. Complementary policies are needed, such as providing incentives to purchase electric cars, and developing charging infrastructure. This holistic approach looks beyond vehicle technology to also consider solutions such as promoting active travel, improving public transport and reducing the need for travel altogether.

Our research also clearly shows Australia needs to update official test procedures. It’s crucial to include on-board fuel consumption monitoring in the new standard, as is done in Europe, to monitor real-world fuel/electricity use and emissions.

Future regulations should consider incorporating the emissions over the life of a vehicle from manufacturing and fuel/energy production to recycling and disposal.

Accurate information for consumers, as well as properly designed government policies, will help Australia finally start reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transport.

Robin Smit, Adjunct Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Watching a pet dog run free can be a source of joy for many people. But letting your dog off the leash is not so good for wildlife, especially if you’re in an area set aside for native species.

In our new research, we conducted open-ended interviews with dog walkers to better understand their behaviour. This was the first step towards a new community-based social marketing campaign to increase the proportion of dogs on lead in nature reserves.

We focused on a park in the Mount Lofty Ranges of South Australia, which is known as a biodiversity hotspot and home to endangered species.

We found people walk their dog there for two main reasons: they love the natural atmosphere, and/or it’s near home. But whether they keep their dog on a lead depends on what they feel is best for the dog at the time, and who’s nearby. Our research shows changing that behaviour depends on meeting the needs of pet owners and their dogs.

Why do dogs need to be on lead in nature?

Dogs are predators that can kill, hurt or scare native animals such as small mammals, reptiles and birds.

Dogs also threaten wildlife indirectly. They can damage or destroy habitat by digging, trampling on vegetation and chewing up – or running off with – sticks. They can also crush eggs and nests, or pollute waterways by romping in streams.

On the flip side, we know non-native species can sometimes support native species. For instance, some dogs are trained to protect wildlife. We wanted to better understand what’s working well so we can boost these benefits while reducing any potential harm.

Protecting the last of the bandicoots

Wirraparinga–Brownhill Creek Recreation Park is home to the nationally endangered southern brown bandicoot, known as “marti” to the Kaurna people.

Marti are the last of eight species from the bandicoot family living in the wild of SA.

At Wirraparinga, marti live in the thin strip of protected dense vegetation along the creek line reserve. But this reserve is also popular with dog walkers, joggers, cyclists and other visitors. Dogs are legally required to be always on a lead, but often aren’t.

Members of the local conservation group initially asked us to survey the marti population in 2020. They wanted to know how many marti were there, and where.

To our surprise, this isolated colony was . Within five hectares of habitat we found ten marti, including a mum with three joeys.

Protecting this marti family from predation and stress became a priority for the community group. They expressed concern about unrestrained dogs, as well as foxes. And they asked us how to increase the proportion of people walking their dog on a lead.

Talking about walking in nature

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 37 dog walkers in this reserve during September 2021.

When asked “why this park?”, most people told us they enjoy walking in nature. But the decision to walk on or off lead was more complex. Most walk their dog on a lead at least some of the time. For those who switch between on and off lead, the decision depends on what’s going on around them.

People told us they prefer to have their dog off lead if they feel it’s best for their dog – “because it’s lovely to let (her) go off the lead and be just a dog”.

Giving a dog the freedom to chase a ball, follow a scent or play in the creek were common reasons for letting a dog off lead.

Some, but not all, put their dog back on lead when they saw other dogs, wildlife or people.

The power of social norms

Many people don’t consider their dog a threat to wildlife. So any negative consequences of letting a dog off lead in nature may be mostly unintentional.

We found dog walkers were mainly guided by social norms. These are shared behaviours, underpinned by shared values, that can have powerful but often invisible influences on individuals in a group. People noticed most other people use a lead, saying for example: “When there’s more people around, I respect other people’s wishes and put (the lead) on”.

Those who walked their dog on a lead – either some or all of the time – said they did so because they cared for and wanted to protect the natural world. These motivations suggest dog walkers value a peaceful walk free from conflict. This is the first study to identify peace as a universal driver in people who walk with their dog on a lead.

So at least in this nature reserve, people kept their dog on lead (or put their dog back on lead) to avoid conflict with other dogs, wildlife and people.

Helping people to do the right thing

We need to increase the proportion of people who keep their dog on lead in nature reserves.

Trying to make people obey the signs generally doesn’t work. Understanding and supporting people who value both their dog and wildlife, as well as connections with other people, is likely to be more effective.

Through our research, we discovered an unmet need for dog walkers to access wild spaces where their dog can be free to burn off energy and explore before going into a nature reserve. Having the option of visiting an attractive, easily accessible, enclosed natural dog park – reached from the same car park as the next-door nature reserve – may help more dog walkers keep their dog on lead when in the nature reserve.

Links between social norms and behaviour are a lever for policy makers who want more people to keep their dog on lead in nature reserves. We recommend designing community-based social marketing campaigns that connect with the dog walkers’ underlying values of caring for their dog and keeping the peace with other dogs, wildlife, and people.

Our findings show how nurturing peaceful connections among people, dogs and wildlife can empower dog walkers to keep their dog on lead in nature reserves.

We acknowledge the roles of our colleagues in the study this article is based on: Conservationist Dr Rossi von der Borch from the Bee Hub of Brownhill Creek who co-founded and co-designed the research, and University of Adelaide psychology researchers Dr Mark Kohler co-designed the research, while Dolly Dawson coded the data, and Nusrat Asad conducted and transcribed many of the interviews.

Jasmin Packer, Research Fellow in Wildlife Conservation, University of Adelaide and Anna Chur-Hansen, Professor of Psychology, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It was a story that pulled at the heartstrings. In 2018, an orca called Tahlequah was seen dragging the corpse of her newborn baby calf for 17 days, over 1,000 miles along the coast of North America. Eventually, Talequah let the baby go (happily, she’s had another baby since), but her behaviour left behind lots of questions among scientists about grief in animals.

Other animal behaviour suggests a complex relationship with death. A mother chimpanzee was observed cleaning the teeth of her dead son. And some elephant calves have also been found buried in ways that suggest grief and mourning.

In this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Susana Monsó, a philosopher who researches animal ethics and animal minds, about the different ways animals understand death.

Since starting her research on animals and death, one of Monsó’s favourite animals has been the opposum. These cute, furry marsupials play dead when they feel threatened, as she explains.

“She adopts the bodily and facial expression of a corpse. Her bodily functions are reduced. Her breathing and heart rate drop. Her body temperature drops. She opens her mouth and her tongue hangs out and adopts this bluish hue and she expels this putrid smell and liquid from her anal glands, and she stops responding to the world.”

Monsó, who is an associate professor of philosophy at the National Distance Education University in Madrid, Spain, found the opposum’s behaviour so fascinating that the animal became the protagonist of her new book, Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death.

She says that an opposum’s death display, which is aimed at convincing a predator that it’s dead to give it a chance to escape, must have had an evolutionary advantage. But, for playing dead to work, Monsó says, the predator really needs to believe it.

“The opossum shows us how her predators think of death, what they think a corpse looks like and smells like and feels. That’s why she succeeds in deceiving them, and this makes it more likely for her to pass on her genes.”

But some animals seem to react to death in ways that appear to be counterproductive. Monsó gives the example of a chimpanzee in a zoo in Valencia that was seen holding onto her baby’s corpse for seven months, and to the orca Tahlequah.

“It seems like very maladaptive in a lot of respects … why are these mothers spending so much energy on these babies who are dead, they’re not contributing to passing on their genes.”

While there may be a number of factors involved, Monsó says one of the biggest is maternal grief and the bond between mother and baby.

“These are animals that have extended periods of maternal care and a high level of dependency on the part of the baby. And so evolution needs to have provided the mothers with very strong motivations to take care of the babies because otherwise the babies are not going to make it to maturity.”

Monsó points to what she calls the minimal concept of death: one animal understanding that a dead animal is both no longer functioning as it would when it was alive, and that this is an irreversible situation. She says that some animals may also understand that death can happen to individuals who are now alive, but that this will depend on an animal’s experience and its intelligence.

Listen to the full episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast to hear Monsó talk more about her research, and the debates about anthropomorphism that emerge relating to research into animals and death.

Newsclips in this episode from CBS News and The Star.

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Katie Flood and Mend Mariwany. Gemma Ware is the executive producer. Sound design was by Michelle Macklem, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.

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Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

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In the early hours of December 3 1984, 27 tonnes of toxic gas methyl isocyanate leaked from a storage tank at Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant on the outskirts of the central Indian city of Bhopal. Amnesty International estimates that more than 22,000 people have died as a result of the leak and more than half a million people suffer permanent injury.

What would become the “world’s worst industrial disaster” continues to devastate lives 40 years on. The water of 200,000 people in 71 surrounding villages in Madhya Pradesh state is contaminated by tonnes of toxic waste. Children with birth defects and other medical conditions are still being born. The disaster has imposed hefty medical costs on people who were already poor, which is particularly difficult and cruel for families whose breadwinners died as a result of that night.

Union Carbide was accused of negligence and cutting costs in the build-up to the disaster. In 2008, eight former plant employees, all Indian, were the first company staff to be convicted of negligence since the incident. Former CEO Warren Anderson, an American citizen, was released hours after his arrest by Indian authorities under pressure by US officials in 1984. He died in 2014, at the age of 92, in a nursing home in Florida.

Union Carbide and the Indian government reached a settlement of US$470 million (£368 million) in 1989, with each survivor due to receive US$500 in compensation. This figure was agreed without consulting the survivors and was only designed to compensate the short-term impact to employees, not the enduring harm to women, children and the elderly.

Dow Chemical merged with Union Carbide in 2001 and has claimed that the settlement absolves them of further legal responsibility. In 2010, a five-bench panel of India’s Supreme Court dismissed a plea to review it, saying that “the question of compensation can’t be raked up three decades after the settlement”.

A 40-year struggle for justice

Environmental racism explains the disparate fates of the survivors and culprits of the Bhopal disaster, according to Amnesty International. This is where discrimination causes some people to bear the brunt of environmental degradation, violating their human rights in the process.

Despite the apparent stalemate, survivor groups have remained dogged in their fight for justice and accountability. I have documented some of these efforts in a theatre play, We All Live in Bhopal, which catalogues the first 30 years of the struggle. The play shows the resilience of survivors and their communities, and the hope which inspires their activism.

Women survivors are the backbone of the struggle for global awareness and legislative redress. Champadevi Shukla and Rashida Bee organised a 19-day hunger strike in New Delhi in 2002 following the announcement of the merger with Dow Chemical. This coincided with a month-long relay hunger strike in Bhopal, and similar efforts in ten countries by 1,500 people.

Their sustained efforts won them the 2004 Goldman Environmental Prize, which “honours ordinary people who take extraordinary actions to protect the planet”. Shukla and Bee used their prize money to set up the Chingari Trust, which helps children with disabilities stemming from the disaster.

Bhopal prompted a host of environmental protection efforts by the Indian government, including the Environmental Protection Act of 1986, which created a legal framework for the government to deal with everything from pollutants to industrial waste disposal. Nonetheless, the country’s rapid economic growth concerns some survivors who fear another Bhopal. The most recent report of the Federation of India Chambers of Commerce and Industries ranked industrial accidents as the third highest risk to the country’s business operations.

For now, Bhopal’s survivors continue to wage their struggle for justice.

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M. Sudhir Selvaraj, Assistant Professor, Peace Studies and International Development, University of Bradford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Antarctica, the world’s most remote, harsh and pristine continent, is not free from marine pollution. Where human activity goes, plastic debris inevitably follows.

What might the early explorers of this icy wilderness think today, upon discovering a continent transformed by permanent fishing activities, research stations, military presence, tourism, and all their environmental impacts? Among these, plastic pollution stands out, as it has created a unique new ecological niche in the ocean.

Once it gets into the water, plastic debris provides surfaces that can be quickly colonised by microbial communities, forming a biofilm. This plastic-borne community is known as the plastisphere, and it poses a serious threat to marine ecosystems, particularly in the cold, understudied waters of the Southern Ocean.

The plastisphere: an emerging threat

As plastic debris drifts through the ocean, the plastisphere develops through typical ecological succession, eventually becoming a complex and specialised microbial community. Plastics not only provide shelter for these microorganisms but also act as a vector, allowing potentially harmful pathogens like Vibrio spp., Escherichia coli, and bacteria carrying antibiotic resistance genes, to spread across marine environments, even reaching remote, untouched areas.

Beyond being a home for microbes, the plastisphere can disrupt the natural balance of ocean life at the microscopic level. These changes don’t stay in the water, as they can spread outward, potentially affecting how the ocean absorbs carbon and produces greenhouse gases. This has consequences for the air we breathe around the world.

However, it’s not all bad news, as bacteria known for their potential to degrade plastics or hydrocarbons – such as Alcanivorax sp., Aestuariicella sp., Marinobacter sp. and Alteromonas sp. – are frequently identified on plastics.

A hostile research environment

We currently know very little about the plastisphere, especially in the Southern Ocean, where uncovering its dynamics is key to understanding its impacts on one of the planet’s most remote and vulnerable marine environments. For this reason, our recent study sought to investigate the abundance and diversity of microbial communities in the Southern Ocean plastisphere, particularly following the initial colonisation of plastic debris.

Working in Antarctica is not an easy task. Just reaching this continent is a challenge, and once there, scientists have to contend with harsh environmental conditions: freezing temperatures, powerful winds, icebergs, and the constant pressure of limited time to carry out their work. These challenges make every moment in the field both demanding and invaluable.

This is why we approached our study with a controlled and manageable experiment. We set up aquariums filled with seawater collected near the Spanish research station on Livingston Island, South Shetlands. Inside, we placed small, rounded pellets of the three most common types of plastic polluting the sea – polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. We left them at environmental conditions (around 0 ºC and between 13 – 18 h of sunlight) for 5 weeks, aiming to recreate the most plausible outcomes in the field.

We compared the colonisation of plastics with glass, an inert surface. Samples of plastics and glass were collected periodically to track bacterial colonisation.

Plastisphere dynamics in Antarctica

Studying bacteria means making the invisible visible, so we combined several techniques to get a better picture of the plastisphere. Using scanning electron microscopy, we obtained biofilm images. We combined flow cytometry and bacterial culture to count total cells and colonies, and we sequenced the 16S rRNA gene to identify the succession of bacterial settlers.

This meticulous approach revealed that time was the key driver of change. Microbes quickly colonised the plastic, and within less than two days, bacteria like genus Colwellia were already fixed in the surface, showing a clear progression from initial settlers to a mature diverse biofilm including other genera like Sulfitobacter, Glaciecola or Lewinella.

These species, although also detected in water, show a clear preference for the social life of a biofilm community. Moreover, we did not detect clear differences between the bacterial communities from plastics and glass, suggesting that any stable surface can host these communities.

While similar processes happen in the other oceans, in Antarctica the process seems slower. The region’s lower temperatures slow bacterial development.

Plastic-eating bacteria?

One key discovery was the presence of Oleispira sp. on polypropylene. This bacteria is hydrocarbon-degrading, meaning it belongs to a group of microorganisms that can break down oil and other pollutants.

Their role within the Antarctic plastisphere raises important questions, like whether these kinds of bacteria could mitigate the impacts of plastic pollution. If so, they could be key to the future of Antartica and our oceans.

However, there is still much to be discovered, particularly regarding their potential for bioremediation in extreme environments. Understanding these processes could pave the way for innovative strategies to address the growing challenge of plastic waste in marine ecosystems.

Pere Monràs i Riera, Investigador predoctoral en conservación y gestión de la biodiversidad, Universitat de Barcelona and Elisenda Ballesté, Profesora agregada en Microbiologia, Universitat de Barcelona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Three-quarters of Earth’s land has become drier since 1990.

Droughts come and go – more often and more extreme with the incessant rise of greenhouse gas emissions over the last three decades – but burning fossil fuels is transforming our blue planet. A new report from scientists convened by the United Nations found that an area as large as India has become arid, and it’s probably permanent.

A transition from humid to dry land is underway that has shrunk the area available to grow food, costing Africa 12% of its GDP and depleting our natural buffer to rising temperatures. We have covered several consequences of humanity’s fossil fuel addiction in this newsletter. Today we turn to the loss of life-giving moisture – what is driving it, and what we are ultimately losing.

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Why is the land drying out so fast? It’s partly because there is more heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases emitted from burning fossil fuels. This excess heat has exacerbated evaporation and is drawing more moisture out of soil.

‘Oil, not soil’

Climate change has also made the weather more volatile. When drought does cede to rain, more of it arrives in bruising downpours that slough the topsoil.

A stable climate would deliver a year’s rain more evenly and gently, nourishing the soil so that it can nurture microbes that hold onto water and release nutrients.

This is the kind of soil that industrial civilisation inherited. It’s disappearing.

“Soil is being lost up to 100 times faster than it is formed, and desertification is growing year on year,” says Anna Krzywoszynska, a sustainable food expert at the University of Sheffield.

“The truth is, the modern farming system is based around oil, not soil.”

Fossil fuels have unleashed agriculture from the constraints of local ecology. Once, the nutrients that were taken from the soil in the form of food had to be replaced using organic waste, Krzywoszynska says. Synthetic nitrogen fertilisers, made with fossil energy at great cost to the climate, changed all that.

Next came diesel-powered machinery that brought more wilderness into cultivation. Farm vehicles as heavy as the biggest dinosaurs now churn and compact the soil, making it difficult for earthworms and assorted soil organisms to maintain it.

Tractors and chemicals served humanity for a long time, Krzywoszynska says. But soil is now so degraded that no amount of fossil help can compensate.

“Across the world, soils have been pushed beyond their capacity to recover, and humanity’s ability to feed itself is now in danger.”

Green pumps and white mirrors

The primary way that we have been making up for lost food yield is turning more forests into farms. This is accelerating our journey towards a drier, less liveable world because forests, if allowed to thrive, create their own rain.

“Water sucked up by tree roots is pumped back into the atmosphere where it forms clouds which eventually release the water as rain to be reabsorbed by trees,” say Callum Smith, Dominick Spracklen and Jess Baker, a team of biologists at the University of Leeds who study the Amazon rainforest.

“In the Amazon and Congo river basins, somewhere between a quarter and a half of all rainfall comes from moisture pumped from the forest itself.”

Some experts have argued that the UN report understates Earth’s growing aridity by overlooking the water that is held in snow caps, ice sheets and glaciers. Climate change is melting this frozen reservoir, which also serves as a seasonal source of water.

“And as water in its bright-white solid form is much more effective at reflecting heat from the sun, its rapid loss is also accelerating global heating,” says Mark Brandon, a professor of polar oceanography at The Open University.

How do we adapt our relationship with the land to remoisturise the world? Krzywoszynska argues that there is no easy solution, but the future of food-growing “is localised and diverse”.

“To ensure that we eat well and live well in the future, we’ll need to reverse the trend towards greater homogenisation which drove food systems so far.”

The good news, according to Krzywoszynska, is that farmers are experimenting with methods that restore the soil even as they produce a diverse range of nutritious food. These innovators need rights and secure access to the land, the opportunity to share their experiences and financial and political support.

“Regenerating land is a win-win, for humans and their ecosystems, if we dare to look beyond the immediate short-term horizon,” she says.

Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Delhi’s air pollution is so bad that it’s sometimes hard to discern anything more than a few metres in front of you. And it is affecting people’s health. Breathing is uncomfortable, and one of us (Komali) developed rashes and red eyes on a recent trip to the city.

Our experiences are not unusual. Delhi – officially the National Capital Territory of Delhi – is the world’s second most populated urban area, and is among its most polluted. Air pollution recently went 26 times over the healthy limit prescribed by the World Health Organization.

The air quality index, or AQI, is a measure of how polluted the air is on a scale of 0 (clean) to 500 (maximum pollution). On November 19, Delhi’s average was 485. Many of its air pollution sensors maxed out at 500, so the true figure would be even higher.

Things peak every winter when many people suffer from respiratory problems and hospital visits increase. An extraordinary 11.5% of all deaths in the city can be attributed to air pollution, a loss of around 12,000 lives every year.

A human-made calamity

This is a human-made calamity with many causes. Some factors are common to many large and fast-growing cities, especially in emerging economies. Delhi has many coal power plants, for instance, and its streets are choked with heavy traffic. Decades of dust, often from the construction industry, have accumulated in and around the city. Waste is often simply burned.

But some factors are more specific and it is these that push Delhi from “regular pollution” into catastrophe. Every year, farmers across northern India especially the breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana burn off unwanted straw left behind in fields, sending huge clouds of smoke downwind towards Delhi. Fireworks during Diwali (held on October 31 this year) also cause a small but noticeable increase in air pollution.

All this is exacerbated when winter begins and colder and more polluted air becomes trapped over the city by a layer of warmer air above it – a process known as temperature inversion.

A conscious effort

The risk of pollution is increasing. Central and state authorities blame each other and there is a lack of political will to address the problem. Individual people seem unwilling to take responsibility and stop polluting.

A conscious effort is needed. Fortunately, certain policies could make a difference. Materials should be covered at construction and demolition sites, for instance, to stop so much dust from being blown into the air. This may require Delhi to strengthen its legal enforcement system.

The city should plant more pavement trees and create new parks. Trees are good at combating air pollution. Waste burning should be restricted. Eventually, coal power will need to be replaced by wind and especially solar. When pollution is at its worst, the city can impose strict restrictions on large diesel-powered freight vehicles transporting non-essential items.

Farmers, for their part, must stop burning plant material left behind (known as stubble) after food is harvested. This is easier said than done. The areas upwind of Delhi tend to have two growing seasons, and many farmers burn off their rice stubble in November before planting wheat in the same field. The system has persisted for a long time and is effectively locked in, with most powerful actors not having enough incentive to change things.

There are some alternatives. Farmers could be encouraged to diversify their crops, perhaps through conditions attached to loans. Some of that stubble could instead be used as cattle feed, in compost, as a roof material, or burned in bioenergy plants to produce electricity.

Evidence-based strategies and best practices are crucial. The goal must be to reduce the air quality index to the “good” category of 0–50 and ultimately to eliminate toxic air in Delhi and the surrounding region.

Komali Kantamaneni, Co-Director, United Nations- SPIDER- UK Regional Support Office, Senior Research Fellow, School of Engineering, Preston, UK, University of Central Lancashire and Sigamani Panneer, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At the bottom of the oceans and seas lie more than 8,500 shipwrecks from two world wars. These wrecks have been estimated to contain as much as 6 billion gallons of oil, as well as munitions, toxic heavy metals and even chemical weapons.

For decades, these wrecks have largely lain out of site and out of mind. But all this time, their structures have been degrading, inexorably increasing the chances of sudden releases of toxic substances into the marine environment.

In parts of the globe, climate change is exacerbating this risk. Rising ocean temperatures, acidification and increasing storminess accelerate the breakdown of these wrecks.

Of course, wrecks from the world wars are far from the only ones to be found at the bottom of the sea, with many others adding to the problem. The cost of addressing this global issue has been estimated at US$340 billion (£261 billion).

How many of these wrecks pose a threat to people’s safety, to coastal communities and to the environment? What can be done – and why haven’t we done it sooner?

Mapping the problem

The raw figures in dollars and the numbers of wrecks on the map rightly cause concern. Work by researchers such as Paul Heersink have drawn together different datasets to help visualise the scale of the challenge. Yet these figures, and the position of dots on maps, may also give a false sense of certainty.

It remains the case that the world’s oceans and seas are not as well mapped as we would like, with about 23% having been described and mapped in detail. Even that level of detail often falls short of what we need to positively identify a wreck, let alone determine the risk it might pose.

There is an ongoing global push to improve our mapping of ocean space under the auspices of the Seabed 2030 project, which is looking to reach a universal resolution of 100x100m. That means one “pixel” of information would be equivalent to about two football pitches. This will be transformative for our understanding of the ocean floor, but will not reveal the detail of all those things that you could hide within those two football pitches (which includes quite a few wrecks).

Many of the wrecks that may pose the greatest problems are found in shallower coastal waters, where government mapping initiatives and work by industry provide much higher resolutions, yet still the challenge of identification remains.

What about archival records? Historical records, such as those held by Lloyd’s Register Foundation in London, are fundamental to bringing greater certainty to the scale and nature of the challenge. They contain the details of ship structures, cargos carried and last known positions prior to loss.

The accuracy of those positions, however, is variable, meaning that knowing exactly where on the seabed a wreck might be, and so how to survey it and assess its risk, is not straightforward. This is placed in stark relief by the work of British maritime archaeologist Innes McCartney and oceanographer Mike Roberts, whose detailed geophysical and archival investigations in the Irish Sea demonstrated that historic wrecks have been frequently misattributed and mislocated. This means that the dots on the map are often in the wrong places, and up to 60% can be sitting in unknown locations on the sea floor.

A race against time

Most of the wrecks causing greatest concern are of metal, or metal and wood construction. The steel in these wrecks is slowly degrading, increasing the chance of cargos being spilt, and components breaking down. However, this is only part of the risk.

The sea is becoming an ever busier place, as we carry out more intensive fishing and ramp up the construction of offshore wind farms and other energy installations to meet net zero commitments. These all affect the seabed and can physically disturb or change the dynamics of wreck sites.

There is increasing global recognition of the need to address this problem. It has remained unresolved to date because of the complex international and interdisciplinary challenge it poses.

Many of the wrecks lie in waters off countries that have nothing to do with the original owner of the ship. How then, do we determine who is responsible? And who pays for the clean-up – especially when the original owner benefits from the legal loophole of sovereign immunity? Under this concept, the flag State (the country where the ship is registered) cannot be held responsible under international law and therefore is not legally obliged to pay up.

Beyond these fundamental questions of responsibility, there are technical challenges. It’s difficult to know exactly how many wrecks of concern there are, and how to locate them. So how do we assess their condition and determine if intervention is needed? And if so, how do we intervene?

Each of these questions is a complex challenge, and solving them requires the contributions of historians, archaeologists, engineers, biologists, geophysicists, geochemists, hydrographic surveyors, geospatial data analysts and engineers.

This has already been happening, with regional projects making critical headway and demonstrating what can be achieved. However, the immense scale of the problem outweighs the amount of work done to date.

New technologies are clearly critical, as are new attitudes. At the heart of the problem is an issue of knowledge and certainty – is this the wreck we think it is, does it pose a problem and if so, over what time scale?

Advances in subsea drones known as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), which are fitted with an array of sensors to measure the seabed and detect pollutants, could help enhance our knowledge about the locations of wrecks, what they’re carrying and their state of deterioration. AUVs can provide relatively cheap, high resolution data that produces fewer emissions than a comparable survey campaign conducted from a large research vessel.

But we also need to share that information, and compare it with data from archives to help generate knowledge and higher levels of certainty. Too often, underwater surveys and investigations occur in silos, with data held by individual agencies or companies, preventing a rapid and cumulative increase in understanding.

The severity of the environmental and safety risk posed by wrecks on the ocean floor, and how it changes over time, is not fully known. But this is a problem we can solve.

Action is needed now, driven by a robust regulatory and funding framework, and technical standards for remediation. A global partnership – codenamed Project Tangaroa – has been convened to stimulate that framework – but political will and financing is required to make it a reality.

Through targeted archival and survey work, and by sharing data and ideas, we can chart a course to a future where the sea is not a place where we ignore things today that will threaten us tomorrow.

Fraser Sturt, Professor of Archaeology, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As I walked through passport control in Reykjavik en route to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, the border agent asked me the standard question of why I was travelling. “To look at trees,” I answered.

He peered at me suspiciously through the glass and said: “There are no trees in Nuuk.”

“Yes there are; people are growing trees there, and there’s a forest in south Greenland.”

“I think you’re lying,” he said flatly, not having any of it. The Icelander seemed to be enjoying this little diversion from the rote reasons most travellers give for visiting Greenland: to see icebergs, Viking ruins, or polar bears.

I was indeed coming to Greenland for the plants – my first visit – and the people who cultivate them. That might sound strange, given that 95% of Greenland, the largest island in the world, is covered by an immense ice sheet. Alarming news about Greenland’s accelerating ice loss (30 million tonnes per hour) appears daily. Less newsworthy, but equally dramatic, is what is happening on the 5% of Greenland’s land that is ice free – it is becoming green.

“Arctic greening” is the climate change phenomenon where land once covered by ice and snow is being colonised by plants. The plants themselves are also changing. Diminutive tundra vegetation is growing taller (so-called “shrubification”) and new plants and insects are moving in from the south.

Across the Circumpolar North (a region spanning three continents that includes eight countries), scientists have observed increases in greening of between 20% and 40% in recent decades. The consensus is that greening is accelerating across diverse Arctic regions.

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Greening sounds good compared to deforestation, but in the Arctic, the expansion of plant life amplifies dangerous feedback loops. When we think of plants storing carbon from the atmosphere, we typically think of the above-ground plants that we can see. But in the Arctic, carbon storage is mostly below ground, in the frozen soil – permafrost. Permafrost holds more carbon than all the above-ground plants on Earth and twice as much as in the atmosphere.

The growth of trees and shrubs accelerates the thawing of permafrost, increasing global heating in a part of the world that is already warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet. So, Arctic greening doesn’t just take over land exposed by retreating ice – it probably accelerates ice melt.

But this kind of Arctic greening is not the phenomenon that I came to investigate. I was interested in the deliberate transformation of Greenland into a literally “green land” via new forests, gardens, and farms. This kind of greening began 1,000 years ago with Erik the Red, the Viking who first farmed Greenland’s southern fjords. In one of the earliest real estate boondoggles, Erik named the settlements Greenland (Grœnland in Old Norse) in order to inspire more farmers to follow him to this icy world.

Today, the ancient project of making Greenland green continues in modern, multi-ethnic Greenlandic culture, from mining to gardening to forestry. Intrigued by this convergence of two different kinds of greening – one due to climate change and the other due to human desires – I came to Greenland to understand the connection between them.

So in May 2024 I headed to the Greenland Arboretum in Narsarsuaq, a community of around 100 people near Erik the Red’s farms. The arboretum was established in 2004 but its origins in Nordic forestry go back to the 19th century. Nordic foresters have spent decades planting species from northern Asia, Europe and North America, inspired by scientific curiosity into what can grow, and a colonial assurance that they could decide what should grow.

I have been studying the Arctic for many years, from the controversial legacies of Arctic exploration to my forthcoming book on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and I was astonished by what I found. Not only is the deliberate cultivation of new plants happening on a remarkable scale, but there exists a near total absence of laws regulating plants – an approach that appears unique to Greenland. In this legal vacuum, it is not only plants that are flourishing. I learned that Greenland’s plants are thriving because of the entangled efforts of an international mining company, gardening enthusiasts, farmers, and the dedication of a few remarkable men.

I discovered that significant tree planting is funded by a mining company, keen to show its green credentials by “offsetting” its extraction plans. Amaroq Minerals, which holds the most exploration licenses in Greenland, is a key player in the country’s recent critical minerals resource boom. Greenland now rivals China as the planet’s main source for rare minerals essential for green technologies.

Extractive industries that embrace such tree-planting schemes may do so because they are keen to show their green credentials by “offsetting” their extraction plans. Amaroq, however, is keen to point out that it “currently has no plans on accounting for any sequestration on carbon offset”.

Though Amaroq was not involved in the initial set up of the arboretum, by funding tree plantations it is joining Greenland’s 1,000-year experiment in deliberately greening the land. For decades Greenlanders have been working to introduce exotic plants onto their land “to make the city green”, as one gardener told me. It is as if the nation is conducting a large-scale experiment in multiple locations with no controls to see what would happen if the power of plants is unchecked.

Getting lost in the arboretum

The Greenland Arboretum is in Narsarsuaq, a former US base. Today, Hotel Narsarsuaq staff fly Greenland flags out front, reminders of this nation’s autonomy in all matters (except foreign policy and security).

I was here to meet with a Danish biologist, Anders Ræbild, who is conducting research alongside the man largely responsible for the aboretum’s existence, Kenneth Høegh. Høegh is an agronomist and businessman who grew up in Narsaq, a few miles south. He planted his first trees there (Siberian Larch) at the age 14 and he proudly told me they still live today. He now serves as the Greenlandic Ambassador to the US, but in the world of Greenland’s trees, he holds a much more influential position.

This was my first day in Greenland, and even before I reached the arboretum’s treeline, my ears registered the surrealness of this forest in a supposedly treeless land: birdsong was everywhere. Tiny Common Redpolls were careening through the air, feasting on the seeds of the trees. On this sunny, warm day hovering around 0°C, the forest was ringing with their frenzied pursuit of food and sex. The short Arctic summer was just beginning, and all Arctic life, plants included, takes advantage of these few months with abandon.

I was travelling with my son River, a university student, and we followed the trees as they climbed up the thin soil of a small mountain peak. Neither arboretum nor forest accurately describes this beautiful place. It is too incoherent to be the former but too ordered to be the latter. Stands of 20 or 30-foot Siberian Larches, Norwegian Spruce, Lodgepole Pines from Colorado, Stone Pines from Mongolia, and the occasional deciduous Alaskan Balsam Poplar were arranged together. This is a meeting place of trees from across the northern world, not a coherent forest from any particular part of it.

It is also remarkably large at nearly 400 acres. So large in fact, that though we were supposed to meet in the forest and could hear one another yelling, we couldn’t find each another within it. I knew the maths in the abstract but I was still overwhelmed by the numbers on the ground – over 100,000 trees planted in all, from over 100 species, since the 1970s.

The man who loved trees

Later that evening, we met Høegh and his colleagues at his cabin for dinner – lamb for them from local farms, cabbage and potatoes for River and me, flown in from Europe like most Greenlandic food.

Høegh is a charismatic man, who was head of the Consultancy Service for Agriculture for the Greenlandic government before he began diplomatic work. After spending several hours in his company, it is clear that regardless of his profession, the trees are his vocation. Høegh described being hand-picked as a student by his predecessor, a Danish forester, along with another forester. The three of them travelled the world for decades, collecting trees. Together these three men appear to have individually directed the planting of the vast majority of trees in Greenland.

At this point, you might be thinking, what about the risks of importing foreign species into an island ecosystem? The potential pests hitching rides in these seedlings? Given that the trees overshadow the tundra plants, what could happen to the local biodiversity given the influx of so many new species? Who is paying for all this? And finally, what are the laws and ethics governing such a large-scale ecological engineering project? These were the questions that brought me to Greenland.

I asked Høegh the question regarding the dangers of importing non-native plants on such a scale. He posed a counter question: when do plants become native? This is a great question, because not just where, but when matters. Plants, like animals, are always on the move and their “native” ranges change over time. We tend to speak of native species in only spatial terms: what is native or non-native to particular places now. When speaking of changes over time, we typically draw the line at what was introduced or eradicated by European colonisation, or humans more broadly.

If people introduce a new plant, this makes it non-native. If animals do it in their fur, feathers, or poop, that is “natural”. The assumption is that humans stand apart from nature, and that nature was in pristine balance before humans (especially Europeans) meddled with it. This Edenic idea is prevalent today, in numerous religious and secular beliefs, including conservation sciences. Regardless of where one stands, the consensus that “native” ecologies are inherently good or easily defined is now highly contested.

Growing a forest

Høegh’s approach to the question of native plants is to take the long view (the extremely long view, in fact) reaching back to Greenland’s ancient forested past. Before the last Ice Age, Greenland was forested with the tree species introduced in the arboretum. Most living things in Greenland migrated there after the ice began retreating 10,000 years ago. All are newcomers, with humans only just behind the pioneer plants, arriving 5,000 years ago.

Høegh suggested that since yews, firs, spruce, and poplar were at home in Greenland long ago, why not now and in the future, when our warming climate is expected to resemble that of the Pliocene epoch, between 2 and 5 million years ago.

When I asked him if he is growing a forest, Høegh said modestly that he sees his work “like a stamp collection”. He is content that the Arboretum can be different things to different people. For him it is a living collection, and for others, it may be a forest or potentially a source of income or even a sacred place.

Waiting for a ferry in Qaqortoq, I heard a rare local voice of dissent. Fredrik, who grew up there, knew many fellow Inuit who had volunteered to help plant the arboretum. Despite that, he said: “I don’t see the meaning of it.” The forest does not move him or interest him, he said, and he has no intention of visiting. Fredrik described seeing alarming ecological changes in the last two years: a new kind of snail plagues his yard in large numbers and he is concerned that the trees are bringing in such pests.

An experiment without controls?

I had asked Høegh about the dangers of importing new plant life, given the potential risks of invasive species. He replied that they always obtain a permit to plant. River, an environmental science student, asked how the trees are altering the soil chemistry and affecting established species. The answer was that no one knows. Greenland’s Arboretum appears to be a large-scale experiment, but I was starting to wonder: where are the controls?

This is where Greenland’s unique political and legal status comes into play. Greenland is one of the few nations that does not recognise international laws against the importation of plants. Laws against the import or export of animals –crucial to hunting and tourism – are very strict. But you can theoretically come into Greenland with any live plant material you like. Once here, there are no clear restrictions on what you can plant in your garden or in open spaces.

I was intrigued by this absence of plant controls. Unlike Denmark, Greenland is not bound by the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO) or the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC). Greenland was exempted from these international treaties governing plant quarantine in 2005.

The head of Greenland’s agricultural department confirmed to me that the country “does not currently have legislation regulating plant health”. He also directed me to Greenland’s 2003 “Law on Nature Conservation” which states that the government “can grant permission” and “can set conditions” for foreign plants.

But when I followed up in person at the Qaqortoq municipality office, where permits would be granted, I was told apparently contradictory information: that planting permits are requested and issued verbally, with no paperwork. There are no forbidden species and there is no scientific input. Another administrator confirmed that there weren’t “any standards or rules about what you can bring in or plant”. When I asked him about the local appetite for introducing rules, he said these “would be very hard to administer”. After speaking to many people in Greenland, it does not appear to me (or to many of them) that plant regulations are applied consistently.

Greenland’s exemption from international plant regulations stems from its growing autonomy from Denmark. Colonised by Denmark since 1721, Greenland is a multiracial (Danish and Inuit) and majority-Indigenous autonomous nation moving rapidly toward full independence. After Greenland gained Home Rule in 1979, it pulled out of the European Community (EC) in 1985, and having achieved Self Rule in 2009, it is poised to pursue full independence. Denmark’s participation in European and global plant treaties had meant Greenland too followed those rules. Once Greenland left the EC and colonial status, its plants entered a legal limbo.

Greenland’s trajectory towards full independence is entwined with its booming extractive industries. Full independence would mean the end of the Danish block grant of DKK 3.9 billion (just over £435 million) that provides about half of Greenland’s public budget.

The question now is how Greenland will self-fund its future. After several reversals of policy on uranium and oil exploration, in 2021 a new Indigenous-majority Greenlandic government committed to extracting rare earth elements and minerals for a fossil fuel-free future.

While all eyes have thus focused on Greenland’s extractive potential, plants have slipped through the cracks. But my research has uncovered a previously unknown connection between the two.

Mining, greening and offsetting

Significant tree plantings are currently funded by Amaroq Minerals, which is opening a new gold mine in South Greenland. Registered in Canada, Amaroq is part of a new generation of mining companies extracting the rare earth minerals needed for the wind turbine magnets and car batteries crucial to the green energy transition.

I discovered this link between the trees and mining when I visited the Upernaviarsuk Research Station farm to learn how agriculture is coping with the destabilising climate. I was surprised to see thousands of tree seedlings growing in their vegetable greenhouses. Farm director Kim Neider told me the trees were funded by Amaroq and destined for the arboretum.

In subsequent conversations with Amaroq’s leadership, I learned that they have been active in funding Greenlandic tree plantations for several years, and that 2023 was the first year in which they actually produced seedlings, for Qanasiassat, another plantation that Høegh is expanding near the arboretum. In 2023, Amaroq funded the cultivation of 14,500 seedlings, committing DKK 348,500 (worth about £38,740 today). They have agreed to a further $2,000 Canadian dollars per year going forward, although the company has said there is not a limit on this figure.

Amaroq has a social vision almost as ambitious as its extractive vision, fuelled by its extensive exploration licenses and gold mine opening in Nalunaq, South Greenland, in 2024. Using the profits from this mine, its young CEO, Eldur Olafsson, explained to me, they intend to become a “climate company”, helping to build a sustainable hydroelectric power grid (currently, most smaller communities run on diesel).

Funding tree planting could give Amaroq carbon credits, which many companies purchase to offset their high carbon emissions – this approach has been criticised by many as a form of greenwashing. Amaroq says it “currently” has no plans to do so – “perhaps in the future,” I was told.

But primarily the plantings are a part of their social vision to benefit local livelihoods (like forestry) in the future, Olafsson wrote in an email to me. If this sounds like Høegh’s vision for the arboretum, that is because he arranged the funding partnership with Amaroq and calculated their carbon offset, according to Amaroq’s executive vice president who confirmed this to me over Zoom and email, sharing the carbon calculation with me. Amaroq later told me this was an “informal calculation”.

Granting any carbon offset credit for tree planting in the Arctic is controversial because it generates more greenhouse gases than the trees can capture. One quarter of the northern hemisphere is permafrost, a frozen accumulation of thousands of years of dead plants (and pathogens) storing vast amounts of carbon. The tree roots deepen the active layer of the permafrost (the thin layer of soil that thaws and refreezes each year). They introduce microbial activity into the frozen soil, accelerating the permafrost thaw and allowing for decomposition (and carbon release) to continue through the winter. Scientists describe the smell of thawing permafrost as anything from a “pooey vinaigrette” to a “peaty Scotch”. Also, the taller the plants, the more they absorb the sun’s energy instead of reflecting it like the snow beneath them would.

Greenland’s trees are also capturing carbon dioxide. But because trees grow more slowly in the Arctic than elsewhere, it will take decades before any carbon benefit can balance the carbon they release now. And even at the global scale, in 2023 scientists were alarmed to discover that the “carbon sink” (the plants) we rely on to absorb our carbon emissions failed to absorb a net amount of carbon for the first time ever.

Greenland is pursuing independence and extraction simultaneously in this volatile new climate. Amaroq’s involvement with tree planting in Greenland shows that plants are present in both pursuits.

I believe Greenland’s laissez-faire attitude to plants is directly related to its move towards independence. It is not an oversight, but a reaction against the policy of isolation that Danish colonisation imposed for so long. For two centuries, Denmark controlled Greenland’s contact with the outside world: movement of people, plants, animals and goods to or from Greenland required Danish government permission. This economic and cultural paternalism that Greenlanders endured helps explain their libertarian attitude to plants today. Greenland can at last choose its own laws, and its own plants.

‘We always wanted to live in a forest’

But Amaroq and the arboretum are not acting alone and are relative newcomers compared to the established efforts of farmers and gardeners when it comes to greening the land. As I visited farms and gardens, I was surprised by the passion of Greenlanders for their plants. But my surprise was due to my own assumptions of what Greenlanders should care about.

When I visited the garden of one Qaqortoq gardener, Alibak Hard, I understood the inadequacy of these assumptions. He told me stories about his individual plants, including Greenland’s only maple tree (planted by Høegh) and even a pansy, flowering at my feet in freezing temperatures. I asked Alibak about the source of his passion for exotic plants and he said: “We always wanted to live in a forest.”

You can be born and live your life in this Arctic land dominated by ice and yet dream of alien plantscapes – forests full of red-leaved maples, strange flowers underfoot. I told Alibak that many of my fellow academics would say bringing foreign plants into Greenland reflects a colonial, not a Greenlandic, attitude to nature. He replied: “Why shouldn’t we change the land like we want?”

Another Qaqortoq gardener told me about the garden club he began in the 1980s, which had over 100 members who would collectively import new plants from Iceland every year. Their goal, he said, was “to make the city green”.

When Greenlanders assert such a desire to shape their lands, to diversify the plants in their daily lives, it runs counter to outsider ideals of what Greenland should be. Greenland has been imagined as a sublime icescape onto which outsiders projected their desires – for primordial nature, or authentic Inuit culture unspoiled by modernity. Listening to Greenlanders’ views on plants challenged my expectations of what resistance to colonialism looks like. Transforming your lands and plants as you wish can be a powerful exercise of independence.

Ultimately, no one knows how the introduction of hundreds of new species via gardens, farms, and tree plantations is affecting Greenland’s ecology now that the warming climate enables these plants to thrive. I collected many anecdotes about ecological novelties – red beetles never seen before, new birds, new snails, an outbreak of caterpillars. The most obvious newcomer required no one to alert me, because this purple plant was everywhere I walked in Qaqortoq: Nootka lupines.

This Alaskan plant was introduced multiple times in Greenland because it can enrich soil by fixing nitrogen and can combat erosion. Gardeners also introduced them for their beauty. Once established, though, Lupines can rapidly become invasive.

Icelandic conservationists recruited lupines in the 1970s to reverse soil erosion, but today those ecosystem engineers have expanded their range by a shocking 35-fold. There is now open biological warfare between locals and lupines in eastern Iceland. Arctic greening appears purple on the eastern slopes of Iceland, and south Greenland may be heading in the same direction.

Without clear laws on which plants cannot be introduced, there is theoretically nothing to stop someone also experimenting with Giant Siberian Knotweed or gorse. Such pioneer plants are brilliant at thriving in disturbed environments and can help establish a succession of new life, even as they decrease biodiversity by crowding out established plants.

Stefano Mancuso is a biologist fascinated by invasive plants because of their remarkable survival skills, which he believes are signs of their intelligence. “The invasive species of today,” he writes, “are the native flora of the future, just as the invasive species of the past are a fundamental part of our ecosystem today.”

I share the long view with Høegh and Mancuso, that “native” species need to be rethought in both space and time, given the dynamic movements of plants in their 400+ million years evolving on Earth. But in the short term in Greenland, I worry that living solely with this long view without safeguards on moving plants in the present is dangerous.

And this assumption that it is okay for a few men to initiate the transformation of hundreds of acres of communally-owned land is a cavalier one. It resembles the colonial-era attitude that Greenland is a site suitable for social or environmental engineering.

Is it possible to hold these different timescales in mind simultaneously, to act both with short and long-term perspectives? I say yes, it is both possible and necessary to do this. Before releasing thousands of plants onto Greenland’s tundra because they can grow there, or they used to grow there, there should be public consultation, considering whether they should grow there today.

Høegh and his affiliates like Greenland Trees (which accepts international donations to plant trees for carbon offsets) engage local schools to help plant the trees, but it is unclear if ecological education plays a role. Amaroq likewise partners with Siu-Tsiu, the state programme helping young Greenlanders develop new jobs. This may be admirable social engagement, but it follows the lead of select individuals or external groups to green Greenland, rather than a collective desire to do so.

Future warming

Greenland had little to fear from pests, wildfires and invasive species in the past due to its cold climate. But today, the risk perception of these hazards lags behind the new warming climate. And Greenland’s laws governing plants also lag behind the new climate.

But the embrace of tree planting, cosmopolitan gardening, and farming by many Greenlanders also reflects their extraordinary ability to innovate. Greenlanders are not just skilled at adapting to change, argues anthropologist Mark Nuttall, but at anticipating change proactively.

Extraction and greening are rapidly co-evolving in Greenland, following the expanding networks of mines, roads, military bases, farms and airports. The trees planted by Høegh and Amaroq reveal their seamless integration. I asked scientists if they could foresee what these new forests might look like in 50 or 100 years. They agreed that the situation was too complex to predict.

Yet the scientific consensus holds that “future warming is likely to allow growth of trees and shrubs across much of ice-free Greenland by year 2100,” including its far north. The question remains then: will people, from gardeners and farmers to mining corporations, aid more plants in reaching these warming lands, despite the risks?

Greenlanders speak with many voices on questions of what to extract and how, and which plants to grow and where. In this modern society, climate change intensifies the importance of paying attention to the plants in the present, literally and legally. To see the plants in the foreground of a changing Greenland is to perceive the dramatic changes they too are creating at breathtaking speed.

For you: more from our Insights series:

• Climate scientists: concept of net zero is a dangerous trap

• The overshoot myth: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C

• We found over 300 million young people had experienced online sexual abuse and exploitation over the course of our meta-study

• Novelist J.G. Ballard was experimenting with computer-generated poetry 50 years before ChatGPT was invented

To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.

Adriana Craciun, Institute Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, and Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Chair of Humanities, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia has long tried to be two things at once – a trusted friend to Pacific nations in a bid to reduce China’s influence, and a giant exporter of fossil fuels. This diplomatic tightrope has become increasingly hard to walk, as Pacific nations see climate change as an existential threat.

This week, Australia’s government was forced to make a choice in a very public forum. It chose fossil fuels.

Disappointed by the slow pace of United Nations climate talks, Vanuatu and other Pacific nations launched a case at the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands to clarify the obligations countries have to prevent harm to the Earth’s climate system for current and future generations.

While international climate negotiations are often conducted behind closed doors, this case is being broadcast in public. We can clearly see the arguments Australia has laid out and the countries it has aligned itself with.

In the courtroom on Monday, Australia sided with major emitters and fossil fuel exporters such as Saudi Arabia, the United States and China to try and minimise their legal liability in contributing to climate change.

What’s at stake in this case?

This week marks a milestone in a five-year legal campaign, travelling from a university tutorial in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, through the halls of the United Nations in New York and now to the world’s court in the Hague. The International Court of Justice is the only international court able to settle disputes between United Nations member states.

In 2019, 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific were given a challenge: find the most ambitious legal pathways towards climate justice. They decided filing a case with the world court fitted the bill.

In 2023, Vanuatu and other nations succeeded in passing a resolution at the UN General Assembly requiring the world court to give an advisory opinion on two questions – what obligations do states have under international law to protect the climate from greenhouse gas emissions, and what are the legal consequences for states causing “significant harm” to the earth’s climate?

Ahead of the hearing, the world court has received a record number of written submissions. Justices will hear two weeks of oral submissions. They will then produce an advisory opinion, expected to set a new benchmark in international law, by clarifying the legal obligations countries have to tackle emissions.

While an advisory opinion is not binding, the court’s findings will feed into national court cases and UN climate talks.

For Australia, this case presents a direct challenge. It has no plans to phase down fossil fuel exports. In fact, it plans to expand them.

If the court’s opinion draws clear lines between fossil fuel exporters and climate damage, it could have severe implications for Australia. It could, for instance, pave the way to compensation lawsuits for climate damage.

Since 2000, Australia has approved more than 700 oil, gas and coal projects. Dozens more are in the approvals pipeline. Just this week the federal government cleared the way for three new coal mines.

Australia is now one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and gas. This is relatively new. While coal has been exported since 1801, large-scale exports of liquefied natural gas only began a decade ago.

When burned overseas, emissions from Australia’s fossil fuel exports are now more than double those of its entire domestic economy. These emissions damage our global climate, increasing risk of harm to people in Australia and worldwide.

What did Australia argue at the Hague?

In bringing the case, Vanuatu has argued actions causing climate change are unlawful under a range of international obligations including the law of the sea, human rights law and environmental law.

Australian delegates commended Vanuatu’s leadership in bringing this case and reiterated Australia’s commitment to working with the Pacific on climate.

But after the diplomatic niceties, Australian Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue got down to business. He told the court only the Paris Agreement – which requires countries to set targets to cut domestic emissions – should apply when it comes to mitigating climate change.

Donaghue also argued greenhouse gas emissions are different to, say, one country’s toxic waste damaging the environment of another. This, he argued, was because emissions have many sources.

Donaghue and the Australian delegation argued the court should take a narrow view of obligations to cut emissions and suggested responsibility for harms caused by climate change could not be pinned on individual states.

Australia has also argued protecting human rights does not extend to obligations to tackle climate change.

In 2022, Torres Strait islanders told a UN Human Rights Committee that a failure to address climate change violated their human rights. In response, the Australian government used very similar arguments, claiming climate change was best addressed through UN climate negotiations.

What does this mean?

The court’s opinion will be handed down next year.

Despite Australia’s arguments, recent rulings by other courts and tribunals suggest the court may not decide in our favour.

For example in May, the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea found greenhouse gas emissions were a form of marine pollution (because they acidify and heat the ocean), which countries have obligations to prevent. The tribunal rejected arguments that state obligations were limited to implementing the Paris Agreement.

A ruling on a similar case from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is expected before the end of the year.

Relationships with Pacific states are likely to come under strain as the proceedings in the Hague roll on.

Matters could come to a head next year, when the court will release its advisory opinion.

A decision is still pending on whether Australia will host COP31, the 2026 UN climate talks, alongside Pacific island countries.

If our COP bid succeeds, it could give Canberra a chance to signal a shift away from fossil fuel exports in favour of green exports such as critical minerals and green iron. Doing so would align Australia’s interests with the Pacific – and present it much more clearly as a partner of choice.

Wesley Morgan, Research Associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney and Liam Moore, Lecturer in International Politics and Policy, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s ecosystems face an unprecedented crisis. From rainforests in the continent’s north to the alpine bogs and fens of the alps, ecosystems are being pushed towards collapse.

Why? To date, the reasons for declines across all types of ecosystems have not been well summarised. Our new research set out to shed light, providing the first national synthesis of threats to 103 ecological communities listed as threatened under Australian environmental law.

Our study exposed a sobering reality. Our ecological communities face 49 diverse threats, ranging from land clearing and grazing to pollution and changed fire patterns. Many ecosystems face multiple serious threats. Recovery will be complex and difficult – but not impossible.

Australia is renowned for its unique and diverse ecosystems, which are home to species found nowhere else. Every day we delay conservation action, we risk losing more of what makes Australia special.

Supporting humanity’s survival

An ecosystem is a complex and dynamic interplay between living and non-living parts, including plants, animals, soil, water and climate. Collectively, ecosystems perform vital processes such as nutrient cycling, cleaning air and water, storing carbon and pollinating plants. Humanity’s survival depends on many of these services.

The terms “ecosystem” and “ecological community” technically refer to slightly different things, but are used interchangeably in conservation management. For accuracy, here we refer to “ecological communities” because these are the entities listed for protection under Australia’s national environment legislation.

Since European colonisation, Australia’s ecosystems and ecological communities have been under immense pressure. More than 100 are now at risk of collapse. They range from coastal swamp forests, rainforests and vine thickets in Australia’s east, shrublands and woodlands of the west, and giant kelp forests in the south-eastern oceans.

But while the perils facing Australia’s threatened species have been heavily researched, comparatively little is known about threats to entire communities.

We wanted to close that knowledge gap.

A perfect storm

We developed a comprehensive dataset of threats to Australian threatened ecological communities – eight broad threat categories and 49 specific threats in all.

We found each community is affected by multiple threats – ranging from six to 27 threats each.

Take, for example, the community known as “White Box-Yellow Box-Blakely’s Red Gum Grassy Woodland and Derived Native Grassland”. It’s dominated by a range of eucalypts, along with several native tussock grass and other plant species in the ground layer.

This ecological community once covered large areas of Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and southern Queensland. But more than 90% of this has been cleared. It now faces 23 distinct threats in the remaining area, including fragmentation, increased nutrients in the soil from fertilisers and inappropriate livestock grazing regimes.

Meanwhile, the “Alpine sphagnum bogs and fens community” – in southern NSW, the ACT, northern Victoria and Tasmania – also faces multiple threats. These include invasive herbivores, more frequent and intense bushfires, and droughts. Combined, these threats damage fire-sensitive vegetation and peat soils that store water and carbon, and have limited capacity to recover between fires.

Nearly all communities are impacted by invasive species and disease, and habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation (99% and 98% of communities, respectively).

Overall, we found 49 different threats affecting the communities we examined. The following were present across almost all, or many, communities:

• habitat loss, driven primarily by agriculture (91%) and urban development (56%)

• invasive weeds (90%)

• climate change and severe weather events (85%)

• changed fire regimes (84%), either too frequent or suppressed.

Where to now?

Our results are a powerful reminder of the severity and scale of the conservation challenges Australia faces. The situation is dire. But our research also points to potential solutions.

Almost all threatened communities could benefit from three key management strategies: habitat restoration, invasive weed management, and improved fire management.

Restoring ecosystems involves reversing damage caused by land clearing and other threats, and replacing vegetation where it has been lost.

Invasive weed management involves controlling or removing plants that out-compete native species for resources or exacerbate other threats such as fires.

In the critically endangered Cumberland Plain Woodland, for example, removing invasive African Olive can help restore native understorey.

Fire management could involve reintroducing First Peoples’ cultural burning practices in some areas or creating ecologically appropriate fire regimes in others.

Importantly, we’ve previously found an overlap between threats impacting ecosystems and species at the same location. This presents an opportunity for integrated, more streamlined conservation efforts.

Hope on the horizon?

The next steps are clear.

A more consistent approach is needed to identify, document and categorise threat data for ecosystems.

We need a coordinated national approach to restoration, and more funding for on-ground conservation. This would help Australia meet the global goal of restoring 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030.

Australia also needs stronger environmental protection to prevent further irreplaceable loss.

Finally, we must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to do our fair share to tackle climate change.

Australia’s threatened ecological communities are in a critical state. Without rapid and strategic intervention, they will continue to decline. The time for targeted conservation is now.

Javiera Olivares-Rojas, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Monash University and Jessica Walsh, Lecturer in Conservation Science, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Some A$13 billion in taxpayer dollars and 30 years of policy reform have failed to arrest the devastating decline in the health of Australia’s most important river system, the Murray-Darling Basin, new research shows.

The four-year study released today involved 12 scientists from Australia’s leading universities, and draws on data from 1980 to 2023. It is the most comprehensive report card to date on government policies to protect the Murray-Darling.

We found expensive and contentious reforms, including the once-vaunted Murray-Darling Basin Plan, have mostly failed to improve outcomes for people and nature along the river system.

The result is deeply alarming for a natural asset so fundamental to Australia’s environmental, cultural and economic wellbeing. Here, we outline our findings, and present a plan to turn this situation around.

A river system in peril

The Murray-Darling river system starts in southern Queensland, winds through New South Wales and Victoria and reaches the sea near Adelaide in South Australia.

Historically, state governments have allowed too much water to be taken from the system, primarily to irrigate crops. This has caused extensive environmental damage such as toxic blue-green algae blooms, dramatic falls in bird and fish populations and undrinkable town water supplies, to name just a few.

The damage has been exacerbated by invasive species, climate change, dams that block water flows, and bush clearing which makes water running into rivers more salty.

What’s more, colonisation dispossessed the nearly 50 Indigenous nations in the basin. They now collectively have rights over less than 0.2% of surface water in the river system.

Government reform to improve the health of the basin dates back more than three decades. In 1994, Australian governments agreed to cap further licenses to extract water from the Murray-Darling. In 2008, Prime Minister John Howard’s “once and for all” reform, known as the Water Act, became law. It aimed to reallocate water from irrigation to the environment.

The reform is largely being implemented through the $13 billion Murray Darling Basin Plan enacted in 2012. The historic deal between state and federal governments was supposed to rein in the water extracted by farmers and make sure the environment got the water it needed.

Almost $8 billion was spent implementing the plan to June 2023. But has this massive taxpayer investment delivered the promised benefits for people and nature? Our new findings suggest the answer is largely no.

Applying expert eyes

When the basin plan was adopted, governments cut funding to the independent audit which monitored the river system’s environmental health. It was replaced with far less effective monitoring systems.

The new systems did not set clear targets to be achieved, or assess real-world outcomes for people and the environment. For example, a government might measure the timing and frequency of water flowing at specific river locations, rather than the numbers of threatened fish species across the basin.

The indicators are also complex and monitored by government agencies and their consultants, so the results are not independent.

For this study, we developed our own monitoring system. It involved 27 indicators of success across the themes of Indigenous, environmental and social wellbeing, economic performance and compliance with water laws. We used publicly available data spanning more than 40 years.

The study released today reports our essential findings.

What we found

Troublingly, we found that after more than a decade of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, 74% of success indicators were not met. This means there was either no improvement or worsening conditions.

In particular, only two of 12 environmental indicators were met.

Among our findings were:

• flows required to achieve environmental outcomes were not met at 65% of river gauge sites assessed

• water returned to rivers is not effectively used to restore the environment. For example, 79% of Commonwealth environmental water releases from 2014–19 stayed in river channels rather than spilling out to rejuvenate floodplain wetlands

• the abundance of waterbirds is declining and the incidence of very large fish-kill events is increasing, as witnessed at Menindee Lakes, NSW, twice in the past decade

• Indigenous rights over water are declining as a percentage of surface water, and water flows to Indigenous-controlled wetlands has not increased. This grossly inadequate situation prevents Indigenous Peoples from managing water on Country, harming their health and wellbeing

• the basic human right to access adequate, safe drinking water is not being met in many towns, including predominantly Indigenous communities such as Wilcannia, NSW.

The findings are not all negative. We found irrigation communities are not necessarily suffering economically from federal government buy-backs of water entitlements. For example, the period of most water buybacks coincided with marked increases in profits for irrigated farms.

The finding is contrary to claims in several studies, including one commissioned by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

Two environmental indicators show an upward trend. Populations of large-bodied freshwater fish are improving, coinciding with the end of commercial fishing. Pleasingly, nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations in the Murray River have fallen.

What does all this mean?

So what can we learn from these failures to ensure the Murray-Darling river system is brought back to health?

In 2023, the federal Labor government enacted the “Restoring Our Rivers” laws, to increase the return of water to the environment. This was a very important step, but there’s a long way to go.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is due for review in 2026. Clearly, monitoring to date has been inadequate. Our paper outlines ways to fix this, so real outcomes are achieved.

Among our suggestions, river ecosystems could be mapped to ensure Australia meets its international obligation this decade to restore 30% of inland water ecosystems and include 30% of these ecosystems in protected areas.

And those responsible for implementing the basin plan, primarily state and federal government agencies, should be held accountable when targets are not met.

Urgent reform is needed to ensure Australian taxpayers get a return on their investment. We must ensure the Murray-Darling basin and the communities that rely on it can prosper in the decades ahead.

Jamie Pittock, Professor, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

United Nations-backed talks for a global treaty to end plastic pollution wrapped up without an agreement in the early hours of Sunday, December 1. A new round of talks is expected in mid-2025.

Negotiations foundered over a cap on plastic production, restrictions on the use of certain chemicals in plastics and financial support to help developing countries switch to less polluting business models. These are staunchly opposed by the “like-minded group” of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and other major oil producers with powerful advocates for the petrochemical and chemical sectors, for whom plastic offers a rapidly growing market.

While no deal was agreed in Busan, South Korea, where the talks took place, there was a feeling of renewed determination to create an ambitious and robust plastics treaty. In a memorable moment during the debate, a delegate from Rwanda spoke about the need for reductions in plastic production to confront mounting pollution, and was met with a standing ovation.

A delegate from Mexico read out a list of 95 countries that support a global phaseout of plastic products containing chemicals of concern to prolonged cheering by aligned delegations. The spirit of collaboration and multilateralism was tangible.

Why plastic talks faltered

During the late-night meeting, countries supportive of legal obligations to cut plastic pollution refused to accept a treaty limited to voluntary measures. The treaty must take action at each stage of a plastic item’s life cycle, they asserted. That includes reducing how much plastic is made.

The like-minded group prioritised better waste management and recycling, avoiding the fact that excessive overproduction of plastic is set to overwhelm even the most advanced systems.

Yet, observers also criticised the way in which Indigenous peoples were sidelined during the discussions, with no access to closed-door negotiations. The draft treaty text also failed to address gender equality and intergenerational equity.

Towards the end of the night, delegates agreed that the fifth intergovernmental negotiation committee would reconvene sometime in 2025 to continue developing the text of a treaty to end plastic pollution. Critically, delegates agreed that the next round of talks will build on progress made in Busan and not return to older drafts.

Many issues remain for consideration at the resumed negotiations in 2025. Here are three of the most significant.

1. Finance

Developing countries in particular need money to adopt business models to transition away from reliance on polluting single-use plastics. However, there is little consensus on how this money should be paid.

There is significant disagreement over whether to create a dedicated plastics fund, paid into by developed donor countries, or use existing mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility.

The draft treaty text mentions fees or taxes on plastic production, which many delegates felt was essential for raising enough money to implement the global treaty. This is a red line for many plastic producer countries that see any such measure as punitive and imposing an unreasonable cost on trade.

2. Plastic production

The high-ambition coalition co-chaired by Rwanda and Norway considers measures to reduce plastic production essential, a position backed by considerable evidence.

Panama submitted an ambitious proposal requiring countries to adopt a global target to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels once the treaty is agreed.

However, targets for the reduction of plastic production are another red line for oil-rich countries. In the closing plenary, statements on behalf of the like-minded group, and the Arab group and others made it clear that they would not accept any such measures.

3. Safety

Research shows that over 16,000 chemicals are used or present in plastics and, while safety information is lacking for over 10,000 of these, 4,200 are known to be of concern.

Effectively regulating the use of chemicals in plastics must be a cornerstone of any plastics treaty. However, despite proposals and the support of over 100 member countries for global phaseouts of harmful chemicals, the draft treaty text only has passing reference to chemicals.

Agreeing the text of a treaty to end plastic pollution is difficult. More time will not guarantee an ambitious agreement, but it does provide for further discussions to unlock consensus on this most critical of global challenges.

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Steve Fletcher, Professor of Ocean Policy and Economy, University of Portsmouth and Samuel Winton, Postgraduate Researcher, University of Portsmouth

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Beetles are the most diverse group of animals on Earth, accounting for nearly a quarter of all known animal species. Australia is thought to be home to a whooping 30,000 beetle species, and they are crucial to keeping our ecosystems healthy.

Beetles can be distinguished from other insects by their hard, shell-like wing covers called “elytra”. Unlike other insects, beetles hide their soft, thin wings beneath these protective covers when they are not in use.

Summer is a great time to go beetle-watching in Australia. While beetles can be found all year round, many species are more visible and numerous when the weather heats up.

Beetles come in a brilliant range of colours, patterns and textures – even metallic – which makes them especially fun to spot. Here are five beautiful beetles to look out for this summer.

1. Flower chafers

Although bees get all the glory, beetles are the unsung pollinators of many native plants.

Flower chafers (from the subfamily Cetoniinae) are named after their habit of visiting flowers to feed on nectar and pollen. This makes them important pollinators.

Flower chafer larvae live in rotting wood or leaf litter. There are 146 species in Australia, found in all states and territories..

One of the most common is the fiddler beetle (Eupoecila australasiae), found along Australia’s east coast. It features striking black, green and occasionally yellow markings in a fiddle-shaped pattern.

Female fiddler beetles lay eggs in soil or rotting logs. The larvae burrow through the soil to feed, emerging as adults in the spring.

The fiddler beetle feeds on native flowers such as Angophora, Melaleuca and Leptospermum (tea trees) and may occasionally eat rotting fruit.

Beetle-pollinated flowers are often white or cream, with nectar placed where beetles can readily reach it. The below video shows a native tree on which multiple species are feeding at once.

2. Stag beetles

The larvae of stag beetles (from the family Lucanidae) feed on decaying wood – breaking down tough, fibrous material and returning essential nutrients to the soil.

Adult stag beetles have been described as “beautiful baubles” for their shimmery exoskeletons in shades of gold, green, purple and blue.

Stag beetles are most abundant in Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria, but are also found in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

3. Christmas beetles

In southern and eastern Australia, the festive season is traditionally marked by the arrival of large numbers of iridescent Christmas beetles (Anoplognathus).

Of the 36 species of Christmas beetle, all but one are found exclusively in Australia, making them a truly iconic part of the country’s natural heritage.

Although Christmas beetles were once reliable heralds of summer, their numbers now appear to be declining. A lack of long-term population monitoring makes it challenging to confirm this trend, however.

4. Jewel beetles

Jewel beetles (from the family Buprestidae) feature brilliantly coloured, metallic bodies – features thought to deter predators.

Australia is lucky to have 1,200 species of these beautiful living jewels, found all across the continent.

Adult jewel beetles feed on nectar and pollen, while their larvae usually bore through the wood of trees or the roots of plants.

5. Diamond weevils

The diamond weevil (Chrysolopus spectabilis) is the crown jewel of Australia’s weevil family. It comes in a startling array of colours, from blue to yellow and green.

Diamond weevils are found commonly along the east coast of Australia, eating plant material such as Acacia leaves.

The species is one of Australia’s first insects named by European scientists. It was first collected in 1770 by naturalist Joseph Banks, who landed at Botany Bay with Captain Cook.

Saving our beetles

Despite their ecological importance and phenomenal diversity, beetles are understudied. Scientists are constantly finding new species, such as the adorable fluffy longhorn beetle (Excastra albopilosa) recently discovered in the Gold Coast hinterland.

Unfortunately beetles – like many other insect species – face increasing threats from habitat loss, climate change and the misuse of insecticide.

A few simple actions can help native beetles to thrive.

Planting nectar-rich natives helps provide a reliable food source for flower-feeding beetles. Choose native plants with large, bowl-shaped or flattened flowers which makes the nectar easy for insects to reach. Good examples include the dwarf apple (Angophora hispida), white kunzea (Kunzea ambigua) and rice flower (Ozothamnus diosmifolius).

As a bonus, flowers also attract pest-eating beetles such as ladybirds.

Many beetles rely on decaying leaves and wood for food and shelter. So try to avoid disturbing or removing rotting wood and leaf litter from natural habitats.

Avoid using insecticides in home gardens. Many insecticides commonly used to target pest beetles, such as the invasive Argentinian scarab, indiscriminately kill beneficial ground-dwelling beetle larvae.

And help scientists better understand beetle populations and their conservation needs by uploading beetle sightings to online platforms such as iNaturalist and Canberra Nature Mapr.

Public sightings can have a big impact. Participants in the annual Christmas Beetle Count have rediscovered seven species not seen for decades.

By protecting our valuable – and stunning – Australian beetles, we can ensure they survive for future generations to enjoy.

Tanya Latty, Associate Professor, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney and James Bickerstaff, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Australia National Insect Collection, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Chicken – or chooks, as they are affectionately known in Australia – have been a mainstay in backyards for generations.

More and more Australians now keep chickens, after the COVID pandemic triggered food shortages and prompted concern for egg supplies. At the same time, the welfare of egg-producing chickens is also in the spotlight, leading to an increase in the sale of free range eggs.

Globally, academic research into the trend has largely focused on public health and biosecurity risks. The human relationship to backyard chickens has not been deeply explored. Our recent research sought to change this.

We surveyed backyard-chicken owners in Adelaide, and found their relationships with the birds blur the lines between pet and livestock. The results throw up interesting questions about animal welfare, our trust in food systems, and how we relate to the non-human world.

What our research found

We interviewed 44 people who keep chickens at home. The in-depth discussions were conducted either over the phone or at suburban fodder stores, where chicken feed is sold.

We questioned participants on their motivations for keeping chickens in their backyards. Some saw their chickens as pets – in fact, one participant told us “they’re my babies”. Another respondent said:

Chickens as pets are a heap of fun and they’ve got such personalities and character and that’s one of the reasons why I like to have them out and about.

Backyard chickens provided an ongoing supply of fresh eggs from a trusted source. One person said:

I like fresh eggs. I don’t like buying eggs […] I get better quality […]  And less stress to the chickens. I know that the chickens are happy. They’re not barn, they’re not cage, they’re definitely free range.

Others valued being able to recycle their food scraps by feeding them to chickens.

Some respondents said backyard chooks provided an educational experience for their children. One told us:

Hatching baby chicks has been an amazing experience for us and I think as our kids have grown up the whole thing has taught them a bit about life cycles and life and death.

Others said keeping chickens helped teach their children how to care for animals and educated them about where food comes from. Many recounted having chickens when they were children, and wanted the same experiences for their children or grandchildren.

Backyard chickens also provided some people with opportunities to connect with neighbours, by sharing food scraps and gifting eggs.

A few ethical quandaries

Interestingly, while some participants ate chicken, many emphasised that they would not kill or eat their own birds. Some had a preference for free-range chicken, but others said their keeping of backyard chickens had not influenced the type of meat they buy.

And while people valued their chickens for their ability to provide eggs and companionship, they were not likely to allow the animals inside the home. They were also unlikely to take them to the vet if they were unwell. As one person told us:

I personally just can’t justify the cost of the vet versus the monetary value of my chickens.

So while chickens are seen as pets, they are not considered as valuable as cats and dogs, which would usually be given vet care if needed.

This is worrying from a biosecurity perspective. Backyard chickens are capable of spreading highly pathogenic diseases such as avian influenza, and preventing this is difficult if chicken owners don’t take the animal to the vet.

What’s more, sick or injured chickens that don’t receive vet care may suffer unnecessarily, raising animal welfare concerns.

What all this means

Our results suggest backyard chickens are valued primarily because they provide eggs – but importantly, not meat. They are also valued for the human experiences they produce.

Owners consider their chooks to have distinct personalities and other attributes associated with pets. Yet the animals are not afforded the same care as cats and dogs.

This suggests backyard chickens occupy an in-between space on the human-animal relations spectrum – they are neither livestock nor companion animals.

As the trend of keeping backyard chickens grows, policymakers should consider the biosecurity risks and welfare of these and other animals that exist outside traditional categories.

This is especially important given the potential for a particularly virulent strain of avian influenza known as H5N1 to arrive in Australia and devastate wild and farmed bird populations.

Earlier this year, food security issues again came to the fore when Coles limited egg purchases in most of its supermarkets due to a bird flu outbreak in Victoria. It coincided with consumer concerns about and the rapidly increasing costs of food, including eggs.

Our results suggest more research is needed into consumers’ lack of trust in food supply systems, and the diverse ways Australians navigate the issues.

Emily A. Buddle, Research Fellow in Humanities, University of Adelaide and Rachel A. Ankeny, Professor and Chair of Philosophy, Wageningen University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Cairngorms national park has some of Scotland’s wildest rivers. The Spey, Dee and Tay are famous for salmon fishing. The mountain headwaters of these rivers have reliably provided cold, clean water and suitable rearing habitat for Atlantic salmon for thousands of years. These are among the least disturbed, most highly protected rivers in Europe, designated as special areas of conservation for the preservation of salmon and other species.

Paradoxically, these rivers have recently seen unprecedented levels of heavy engineering as part of expensive, publicly funded schemes intended to help salmon conservation in response to climate change. Unfortunately, this probably won’t enhance salmon populations and may do more harm than good. So what is going on?

Most salmon rivers have seen a dramatic decline in catches over recent decades. This probably relates to the complex, far-reaching effects of climate change.

In Scotland, warmers winters means less snowfall and lower summer river flows, with stream temperatures increasing by about 1°C over the last 50 years and now sometimes approaching harmful levels for salmon. Recently, increased winter rainfall has caused unprecedented flooding and changes to river channels.

So, fisheries managers and conservation organisations have tried to increase the resilience of salmon streams.

The resulting projects focus on installing high numbers of artificial, engineered wooden structures in rivers. These comprise the trunk and root networks of several dead, wind-blown trees. Proponents claim – based on assumptions rather than scientific evidence – that this will enhance salmon populations by providing shade, shelter from floods and predators, and diversifying salmon habitat by creating new patterns of erosion and deposition.

Salmon ecology is complex and relies on rivers providing a diverse mix of habitats to sustain them at different life stages. Fish need spawning gravels in the stream bed for adults laying their eggs, areas of fast currents for juvenile feeding and slow-flowing areas and pools for shelter.

But, there’s little evidence that lack of such suitable habitat currently limit salmon production in designated Cairngorm streams or that re-engineering rivers with wood will enhance populations.

Unfortunately, the strongest climate change impacts probably occur in the Atlantic feeding grounds where juvenile salmon migrate to grow into mature adults. Here, warming temperatures have altered food webs, affecting prey species such as sand eels. As a result, salmon populations have declined and, in extreme cases, numbers of adults returning to spawn have fallen by 90%. This triggers a downward spiral: fewer returning adults mean fewer eggs, fewer young fish then migrate to sea and even fewer adults return the following year.

This has socio-economic and political implications. During their upstream return journey, adult salmon are sought by fishermen, with angling generating £135 million annual revenue and sustaining more than 4,000 jobs in rural areas. So, the decline of salmon creates political pressure to act.

In response, the Scottish government’s 2022 strategy for wild salmon advocates the protection and recovery of salmon rivers. This coincided with the governments Nature Restoration Fund, administered by NatureScot, providing over £50 million for projects addressing the climate and bioversity crises. These initiatives rapidly stimulated a growing number of landscape-scale, often salmon-focused, habitat “restoration” projects affecting over 100km of rivers in the Cairngorms national park.

These usually centre on tree planting along river banks to provide shade and offset increasing temperatures. But proponents also argue that trees eventually die and fall into rivers, further diversifying the habitat in ways that may benefit salmon. As this will take decades, managers seek to accelerate the process with engineered wood.

Engineered wood features are usually fixed in the stream bed or banks. This requires using 14-tonne diggers to excavate many tonnes of stream sediments for installation.

Examples of recent schemes involve up to 100 engineered wood structures spread over a few miles of stream. Often in rivers that already provided high-quality salmon habitat. The ecological consequences of such large scale interventions have not been established.

Disturbance is damaging

However, such extensive engineering risks damaging the pre-existing habitat long-used by salmon that management usually seeks to protect. Movement of heavy machinery can damage fragile in-stream and riverside habitats. Fine sediments disturbed during wood installation can be lethal to salmon and degrade downstream habitats when deposited.

Fixing engineered wood structures in upland salmon streams is highly questionable given most recent science. Fixed structures restrict a river’s freedom to adjust to disturbances such as floods, which probably makes channels less able to accommodate expected climate extremes and maintain salmon habitats.

So why haven’t these rivers been protected from such unnecessary engineering? Inadequate regulation seems to be an issue. Placing wood in streams is exempt from licensing by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency which encourages small-scale use of engineered wood for restoration of degraded rivers.

However, availability of large amounts of restoration funding has rapidly accelerated upscaling of such engineering projects in our least disturbed streams without enough environmental assesment. Although many such rivers retain conservation designations under residual EU legislation, it is unclear what protection this now provides.

While managers might feel pressure to do something in relation to salmon declines, the notion that adding engineered wood to upland streams will improve climate resilience needs scrutiny. Projects need to be evaluated on the basis of clear evidence. This needs thorough assessment of risks, scientifically robust monitoring and provision for adaptive management. At present, expensive and weakly regulated “restoration” schemes in Scotland risk doing salmon more harm than good and opportunities to learn from practical experiences are being missed.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Chris Gibbins, Professor, School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Nottingham and Chris Soulsby, Professor of Hydrology, University of Aberdeen

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels continue to rise and 2024 is likely to be the world’s hottest year on record.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require much more than existing efforts to reduce emissions and decarbonise industry. We also need to remove enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, 7-9 billion tonnes a year.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says carbon dioxide removal technology will be required to achieve global and national net zero targets. In other words, there is no net zero without CO₂-removal, because emissions of greenhouse gases are not declining anywhere near fast enough.

There will be trade-offs, as CO₂-removal can be costly and often uses up energy, water and land. But Earth is hurtling towards a climate catastrophe, with more than 3°C of warming under current global policies. We must do everything we can to avert disaster, which means slashing emissions as much as we possibly can, and removing what’s left.

Within the international scientific community the debate about carbon dioxide removal has moved on from “could we, should we?” to “we must” – recognising the urgency of the situation. So it’s worth coming up to speed on the basics of carbon dioxide removal technology, both old and new, and the role we can expect it to play in Australia’s net-zero future.

Why do we need carbon dioxide removal?

Carbon dioxide removal accelerates natural processes such as storing carbon in trees, rocks, soil and the ocean. It differs from carbon capture and storage, which seeks to remove carbon before it enters the atmosphere.

As Australia’s Climate Change Authority states, reaching the national goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 does not mean all emissions are eliminated across the economy. Some emissions are likely to remain – about 25% of Australia’s 2005 emissions under the current plan – and they need to be dealt with.

So how much carbon dioxide are we talking about? Some 133 million tonnes a year by mid-century, according to the authority. This equates to billions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide removal over the next 25 years.

Ways to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are among the federal government’s national science and research priorities. So let’s take a look at the technologies we are using now and what we might need.

What technologies do we need?

The international scientific community divides carbon dioxide removal technologies into “conventional” (nature-based) and “novel” (new) approaches.

The conventional technologies rely on biological processes, such as planting trees, boosting soil carbon levels and increasing carbon stores in coastal ecosystems such as mangroves. The carbon is typically stored over shorter timescales, from a decade to a century.

Unfortunately, many of these natural carbon stores or “sinks” are already becoming saturated. They will also become increasingly vulnerable in a changing climate. For example, forest fires are releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere annually.

To reach net zero emissions, the world will need to find more durable ways to remove CO₂ at scale from the atmosphere. This is where the new technologies come in.

Examples include adding crushed carbonate or silicate rock to the ocean or farmland. Research suggests waste rock from mining could be used for this purpose.

Concerningly, novel approaches currently comprise less than 0.1% of total global carbon dioxide removal.

Avoiding potential pitfalls

Like all technologies, carbon dioxide removal comes with potential risks and tradeoffs.

In a market worth as much as US$1.1 trillion dollars (A$1.7 trillion) by 2050, there’s always a risk of overstating the benefits.

To counter this, the IPCC is developing evidence-based methods to ensure the amounts of carbon removed can be verified and included in national accounts. This should promote transparency and reduce the risk of greenwashing or making misleading claims.

Carbon dioxide removal can also affect the environment. For instance, some approaches such as tree planting may compete with agriculture or biodiversity conservation for water and land. This challenge is compounded by climate change.

Other approaches, such as direct air capture and storage, currently face technical challenges in extracting CO₂ from air without consuming high amounts of energy.

The interests and rights of Australia’s First Nations communities must also be considered. A global survey of Indigenous people in 30 countries around the world, including Australia, found positive attitudes to climate intervention technologies. However, this is only a starting point. Greater engagement is needed nationally concerning specific carbon dioxide removal approaches.

More work is needed to understand these challenges, including how to manage them and their impacts on Australian communities.

A new industry for Australia?

Australia’s large land mass and vast oceans mean we have far greater physical capacity than other nations to store carbon.

Australia also has access to renewable energy used to power the technologies, and a skilled workforce to develop and run them.

Much like solar and wind energy, tackling carbon dioxide removal in Australia at the scale required will require a new industry with its own infrastructure, institutions and processes.

CSIRO and other organisations are advancing the technology, but more is needed. Australia requires a national dialogue and clear vision around how to deliver carbon dioxide removal responsibly and sustainably.

Of course, prevention is better than cure. It’s always better to cut emissions and stop carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere in the first place, than trying to remove it afterwards. But time is running out, carbon dioxide levels are already too high and we need to reach net zero by 2050.

Carbon dioxide removal is now essential, along with deep and urgent emissions reduction. We must get moving on permanent carbon dioxide removal if we are to preserve the planet for future generations.

Andrew Lenton, Director CarbonLock, Environment, CSIRO and Kerryn Brent, Research scientist, CSIRO

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the 1993 movie “Jurassic Park,” Dr. Ian Malcolm, a fictional math genius specializing in chaos theory, explains the “butterfly effect,” which holds that tiny actions can lead to big outcomes. “A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking,” Malcolm posits, “and you get rain in Central Park instead of sunshine.”

What about when a federal agency flaps its wings? Should bureaucrats be required to think through the extended effects of decisions like funding a highway intersection or approving an offshore wind farm?

Congress opened the door to this question in 1969 when it passed the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA. This law requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental effects of major proposed actions before making decisions.

On Dec. 10, 2024, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, the first major NEPA dispute before the court in 20 years. The Supreme Court’s ruling could significantly affect how NEPA applies going forward, especially with respect to climate change.

The ‘rule of reason’ test

Under NEPA, federal agencies considering major actions must prepare an environmental impact statement – a detailed analysis of the “reasonably foreseeable environmental effects” of the proposed activity. The Council on Environmental Quality, a White House office that advises the president, has adopted rules that divide potential outcomes into three categories:

• Direct effects, such as cutting down trees to build a highway;

• Indirect effects that occur later in time or farther away, such as development spurred by building the highway; and

• Cumulative effects of the action when added to the effects of other past, present and reasonably foreseeable actions, such as building multiple highways in a region.

The Supreme Court last addressed NEPA when it unanimously ruled in 2004 that an agency only needs to consider effects that have a “reasonably close causal relationship” with the proposed action. The court also explained that where an agency lacks legal authority to prevent a certain effect, the agency cannot be considered legally to have caused that effect.

Together, these limitations are known as the NEPA “rule of reason” standard. The tricky issue has been defining how far out in time, location and causation an agency should project when it analyzes potential effects.

Only a small percentage of federal actions require an environmental impact statement, but those reviews can consume years in the timeline for approving major projects. Defining how broad they need to be is, thus, a critical question for industries such as transportation and energy production.

A rail line in Utah

The Eagle County case stems from a proposal by a coalition of railway project developers to build an 85-mile rail line in Utah to transport waxy crude oil from wells to the interstate rail network. The developers sought a license from the Surface Transportation Board, an independent federal agency, which prepared an environmental impact statement and ultimately approved the license in 2021.

Officials in Eagle County, Colorado, sued, along with several environmental groups, arguing that the environmental impact statement was defective. In their view, the Surface Transportation Board should have gone further in considering “upstream” environmental effects that the railway would induce, such as increased oil drilling, and “downstream” effects of refining and consuming that additional oil.

This upstream/downstream effects question has been a hot NEPA topic over the past decade, mostly in connection with greenhouse gas emissions induced by oil and natural gas pipelines. In 2023, the Council on Environmental Quality issued guidelines addressing the question. Lower federal courts have grappled with it as well. Agency practice and judicial decisions since 2004 align more closely with a broad analysis approach, although the lines aren’t clearly drawn.

Arguing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, lawyers for the Surface Transportation Board asserted that the agency didn’t have enough information to analyze in detail where oil development might increase as a result of building the rail line, or how that oil might be used. But the court found that the agency had failed to adequately explain why it could not employ “some degree of forecasting” to identify those impacts.

The board also had decided that it was not required to consider effects of increased oil production and refining, because it had no authority or jurisdiction over those activities. The D.C. Circuit rejected that argument, asserting that the agency could prevent those effects by exercising its authority to deny the license.

What should agencies have to consider?

Now, the Seven County Coalition is asking the Supreme Court to resolve whether NEPA requires an agency to study environmental impacts “beyond the proximate effects of the action” that the agency regulates.

This question unpacks two themes that define how agencies should analyze projects’ indirect effects. First, to what extent does tort law – the body of law that addresses wrongful actions one person causes to another person – guide application of NEPA?

Under tort law, a person claiming that someone else wrongly injured them must show that the accused could have reasonably foreseen the harm, and that their action was its proximate cause. To date, courts have expected agencies to consider the effects of their actions more broadly under NEPA, since a federal agency decision can affect many people and NEPA is intended to inform the public about the proposed action, not to resolve injury claims.

Making the tort law approach standard for NEPA reviews, as the Seven County Coalition advocates, would allow agencies to limit consideration of indirect effects.

The second question addresses the scope of agency authority. The Seven County Coalition argues that NEPA does not require regulators to study indirect effects outside the agency’s direct control under their permitting authority. The coalition asserts that the D.C. Circuit’s broad-scope reading of the rule of reason risks saddling the Surface Transportation Board with “endless make-work far outside its wheelhouse.”

Other interest groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say the broad-scope version gives agencies effective power to regulate far beyond their delegated permitting authority.

Conversely, Eagle County and the environmental groups argue that the board has the power to deny the rail line a license because of its indirect effects, so the agency should be required to consider those effects in its review. And in an amicus brief, the Howard University Law School Clinic argues that NEPA’s broad indirect effects scope has proved to be a “vital civil rights tool that empowers those who have historically been excluded from decision making processes.”

Concerns like these have led former federal officials and Council on Environmental Quality leaders from Republican and Democratic administrations to line up behind the rail line opponents. Members of Congress have also filed amicus briefs, with Democrats supporting the rail line opponents and Republicans supporting the developers.

Climate change and NEPA reviews

If the court supports the rail developers’ position on either of these two major questions, I believe 20 years of NEPA practice and case law under the rule of reason test will be nullified, and a new era of NEPA litigation will begin.

Many pro-NEPA observers are worried about this possibility for one very important policy realm in particular: climate change.

If the court were to move the foreseeability standard for NEPA reviews closer to tort law doctrine, it would provide agencies cover for doing little in their environmental impact statements to explore how proposed actions could contribute to climate change, beyond quantifying their direct greenhouse gas emissions.

More bluntly, if the court rules that agencies don’t have to consider indirect effects that are out of their direct regulatory control, most agencies could simply ignore indirect climate change impacts, since they have no direct control over sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Although the Supreme Court hasn’t addressed NEPA directly since 2004, many of its recent rulings seem designed to reduce the power of regulatory agencies. In my view, NEPA isn’t likely to fare well under that agenda.

J.B. Ruhl, Professor of Law, Director, Program on Law and Innovation, and Co-director, Energy, Environment and Land Use Program, Vanderbilt University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Like humans, many animals form lasting monogamous relationships. Most birds pair up to produce and raise offspring together over many years. However, as with humans, they also commonly “divorce” – terminating the pair bond well before the death of either partner.

Our new research examines the link between extreme weather events and divorce in a small monogamous tropical songbird.

We found extreme events – at both ends of the spectrum, both wet and dry – increase divorce rates in these birds.

With climate patterns becoming increasingly erratic, it’s vital to understand how such extreme events affect the species we share our planet with. If it’s disturbing their love lives, this may have dire consequences for the ability of species to reproduce and survive.

Back from the brink of extinction

The Seychelles warbler is endemic to the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean.

Once on the brink of extinction, with just 26 birds left in the world, this species now has a stable population on Cousin Island. It’s a great conservation success story – to save the species, the entire island and surrounding sea was turned into a nature reserve in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Seychelles warbler pairs can stay together for up to 15 years. But somewhere between 1% and 16% of partnerships break up every year.

Why? It’s thought divorcing may allow these birds to correct for a poor choice of partner. A poor match typically results in a failure to produce chicks and fledglings, which makes the birds reconsider their choice of partner and look elsewhere. But sometimes they divorce for no apparent reason.

Many factors could misinform these birds, causing them to separate when it is not in their best interests. Maybe even bad weather.

Using a unique dataset spanning decades, we determined the relationship status of all birds on the island over 16 years. We then related that to rainfall data from the local meteorological station.

Fair-weather friends

We found the probability of divorce was closely associated with the amount of rainfall experienced in the seven months leading up to and during the breeding season. Divorce rates spiked both when rainfall was extreme: either very wet or very dry.

A super El Niño event in 1997 caused exceptionally heavy rainfall that year: 1,430mm compared with the average 884mm. Many Seychelles warblers divorced that year (15.3%).

More couples also broke up in drought years.

It seems these birds tend to stick together when the weather is good, but separate when it turns bad.

How weather affects partnership stability

Divorce in many species is often directly linked to poor breeding success, when a couple fails to rear young in the prior breeding season. But in our study we found no evidence to suggest that’s an issue in Seychelles warblers.

While the period of rainfall that predicted divorce also influenced the ability of these birds to produce offspring, failing to become parents did not make Seychelles warbler pairs more likely to divorce. Some birds that divorced did produce offspring successfully, and some that didn’t produce offspring stayed together. This suggests other, more complex factors may be at play.

Extreme weather affects the physical environment, changing food availability, habitat and nesting conditions. Prolonged lack of rain before breeding begins can also affect the health of birds.

Maintaining the right body temperature during periods of extreme rainfall is challenging for many bird species. This may increase the level of stress birds experience and increase instability in their partnerships. But it may not necessarily result in a failure to breed altogether.

What we can learn from this

Our new research sheds light on another heartbreaking consequence of climate change: extreme events are destabilising partnerships in wild animals.

Birds such as the Seychelles warbler are particularly vulnerable to these changes because, like many other species, their reproductive strategies are closely linked to environmental conditions.

As we continue to face the challenges posed by climate change, studies such as this are essential. They offer vital information for conservationists working to protect species that are highly sensitive to their environment. This is especially important particularly for isolated populations that can’t move to adjust.

As extreme weather is becoming more common, we will likely see more dramatic shifts in the social structures of many species, affecting not only their survival but the entire ecosystems they inhabit.

Frigg Janne Daan Speelman, PhD Candidate in behavioural ecology, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

After this spring’s heat, humidity, rain and storms across Australia, you may be wondering what summer has in store.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s long-range summer forecast, released today, gives some indication of how the coming months are likely to unfold. Notwithstanding the challenges of making these forecasts, seasonal prediction can be very valuable for climate-sensitive industries such as agriculture, as well as being of great public interest.

The latest outlook from the bureau suggests we’re in for more of the unsettled weather we’ve been experiencing during spring. On average, hotter night-time temperatures and higher rainfall are expected over summer.

Meanwhile, this summer’s seasonal bushfire outlook shows an increased risk of fire across large parts of Australia, such as southeastern South Australia and western Victoria, central Australia around Alice Springs, and southern stretches of Western Australia.

Unseasonal November weather in the southeast

This spring has been a mixed bag, with wetter than normal conditions through much of northwestern Australia, as well as swings between hot and dry weather and cooler, wetter conditions elsewhere.

There were several severe weather events, starting with record-breaking heat across the north and floods in Tasmania.

In recent days, eastern Australia experienced severe storms with unusually high humidity in states such as Victoria.

So what can we expect over the next three months? That’s a simple question with a not-so-easy answer.

How reliable are long-range forecasts?

Long-range seasonal forecasting is challenging, as the science is still developing rapidly. In contrast, short-term weather forecasting has been around much longer.

For daily weather forecasts, the skill lies in knowing the recent weather conditions very well. Having more observations of properties such as temperature, wind and rainfall helps to improve these forecasts. This information is then fed into weather models, which in most places are accurate for seven to ten days.

How can meteorologists predict chaotic weather systems further in advance? They rely on the fact that while the climate is variable, it is possible to predict this variability by looking at larger-scale drivers.

In Australia, our climate is strongly influenced by drivers of variability such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which have some predictability. This lends some accuracy to seasonal outlooks.

These climate drivers have their own seasonal cycles. This means there are times in the year when seasonal outlooks are more accurate than others. El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole both have strong relationships with Australia’s climate in spring. As a result, spring outlooks tend to be more accurate than predictions for other seasons.

Over summer, more of our rainfall comes from thunderstorms. That means rainfall is more variable between places even just a few kilometres apart and also less predictable. Overall, this makes seasonal predictions for summer much harder.

How’s summer shaping up?

While it is harder to forecast summer, we can watch the climate drivers to gauge what’s likely to happen.

When the El Niño–Southern Oscillation is in an El Niño phase, the climate tends to be hotter and drier. In a La Niña, the climate tends to be cooler and wetter. But it can also be in betweeen, or “neutral”, as it has been since April. It looks likely to stay neutral over summer, though there’s a chance it might develop into a weak La Niña event.

In summer, the Indian Ocean Dipole, which can bring rain to southeastern Australia in its negative phase, tends to weaken and have less influence on Australia’s climate.

Locally, the seas around Australia remain warmer than normal, which increases evaporation and makes more moisture available for rainfall.

Taken together, this is why the outlook is pointing towards wetter-than-normal conditions for much of Australia over summer. But we can’t be sure because when the ENSO climate driver is in the neutral phase, the effect on our weather is weaker.

In many places, there’s a roughly 2-in-3 chance of a wetter than average summer. But that means there is still a 1-in-3 chance of a drier than normal summer.

Accompanying the wetter summer outlook is a prediction for warmer nights and, to a lesser extent, warmer days. Night-time temperatures tend to be higher when there is cloud and rain.

Most seasonal outlooks point to warmer than average conditions these days. That’s partly because we’re comparing the coming season to the average of all the summers from 1981–2018. It was cooler then.

Remember, Australia’s climate has already warmed by 1.5°C since 1900.

A summer of fire for some?

The National Council for Fire and Emergency Services draws on the bureau’s long-range summer forecast to develop its own seasonal outlook of bushfire risk, which was also released today.

Such seasonal bushfire outlooks are also challenging to make. Complex combinations of weather and fuel (dry vegetation) characteristics shape whether a fire is likely to occur and spread if there is an ignition source (such as lightning). But these outlooks are important when planning for managing one of Australia’s major hazards. They are also useful in raising public awareness of fire risks as the southern Australia fire season gets under way.

Areas most at risk include Western Australia’s southeastern coastline, South Australia’s lower Eyre Peninsula around Port Lincoln, and the lower southeast including Mount Gambier, stretching over the border into southwestern Victoria around Horsham.

Parts of northeast Victoria and the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne are also at higher risk, as well as northern and central southern New South Wales.

In northern Australia, the areas most at risk include long-unburnt areas in the southern half of the Northern Territory through to north of the Barkly Highway and across to the Queensland border.

Some of these areas are also regions where rainfall has been below normal in recent weeks and months. The continuing stormy conditions and potential for heavy rain over parts of Australia will hopefully reduce the risk of fires in these areas.

Be prepared

In any summer, parts of Australia will experience periods of extreme heat, risk of fires, and stormy weather that can bring hail and flooding rains. Being prepared for severe weather, keeping an eye on the forecast and following any weather warnings that are issued is important to minimise your risk.

Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Visiting a national park is good for our health and wellbeing. But the benefits are not shared equally across the community. Often the people who need it most are least able to access a high-quality dose of nature.

We wanted to quantify the benefit to the health system, in dollar terms. After all, health budgets are steadily growing while urban green spaces with high biodiversity are often degraded and squeezed by development.

Our new research puts a dollar value on the health benefits of visits to national parks within reach of the city of Adelaide in South Australia. We estimate every visit saves the health budget almost A$100 ($96).

Scaled up across the country, this means the 22 million day trips to national parks in 2019 could shave more than $2.1 billion off the nation’s health bill every year. This estimate assumes visits and benefits are similar across the country. It can pay to look after nature.

How did we estimate this?

Past research shows spending time in nature may reduce stress, depression, anxiety, obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease and lung disease. The health benefits of access to green space are often cited to support the conservation of biodiversity, particularly in cities.

But it’s hard to calculate the economic value of these benefits. There’s a lack of data on the number of people who benefit and it’s difficult to estimate how big the benefit is. For instance, how do you calculate the “dosage” of urban green space as a health treatment and measure the amount of health gained from a given dose?

To find out more, we examined the health benefits of access to nature in 20 national parks within 60 kilometres of central Adelaide over the 2018–19 financial year.

To work out how many people visited each park, and how far they travelled to get there, we used de-identified mobile phone “ping” data.

A ping is what happens when one of the apps on your phone sends a message to the nearest phone tower to check for updates. We obtained app ping data for each of the 20 national parks, which gave us the result of 1.45 million visitors over the 2018–19 year.

We combined the ping data with information from a survey of more than 1,000 park visitors about attitudes towards and use of South Australian parks. It was also combined with general Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data on South Australia’s population health.

We then estimated a health benefit from access to parks for citizens across various socioeconomic groups.

To work this out, we compared self-reported health rating data from people who did or did not visit these parks. This showed people who visit parks are much more likely to report their health as “very good” or “excellent” compared to those who don’t. We also looked at the shifts in health status for different socioeconomic groups.

We were able to control for the differences in underlying health of the people who answered the survey. This gave us a result: the difference in positive self-reported health between park visitors and those who don’t visit was between 2% and 5%.

We then used 2018-19 data on the cost of treating ten categories of major long-term chronic disease – such as diabetes, arthritis and cancer – to estimate savings to the health budget.

How much good does a visit do?

We analysed the health benefits of more than 1.45 million visits to national parks during the course of our study.

We found access to these green spaces could be worth $140 million a year in reduced healthcare costs. This is equivalent to around 4% of the total South Australian healthcare budget.

Dividing $140 million by 1,453,271 visits works out to $96 per visit.

Access to nature is not equal

We found people living in lower socioeconomic areas have to travel about three times as far to visit a national park than people in higher socioeconomic areas.

As a result, people from lower socioeconomic areas tend to make fewer visits to national parks. We found the number of visits for people from these areas was about 20% of the number of visits from people in higher socioeconomic areas.

This means the share of health benefits flowing to people in relatively disadvantaged areas is much lower. Health problems can have a greater financial impact for relatively socioeconomically disadvantaged people. So this group stands to benefit most from increasing access to nature, with greater potential savings for the health budget.

Spending on health and the environment

In total, Australia spent around $241.3 billion on health goods and services in 2021–22. That’s about $9,365 per person, on average. Health costs such as hospital spending continue to grow.

Commonwealth public hospital spending alone is expected to grow by $2 billion a year.

At the same time, spending on protecting nature makes up less than 0.1% of the Commonwealth budget and falls short of what Australians want. Almost all Australians (97%) want more action to prevent extinctions and more public investment to protect the environment and natural places (72%).

Our research suggests making nature more accessible by restoring urban biodiversity and increasing access to our protected areas can be a win for people, governments and the budget.

Health benefits for all

To fully realise and share these benefits, we need better integrated budgets which recognise how the natural world benefits our health and the broader economy. This requires being able to measure nature and our use of it in ways we have not been able to before.

Our research has attracted interest from policymakers in the recreation and wellbeing sectors. These sectors are becoming more prominent at the national level, as well as in South Australia, when it comes to valuing national parks and wildlife services.

As we come to better understand the relationships between contact with nature and health outcomes we stand a greater chance of investing well, and equitably, so everyone can benefit from improved physical and mental health.

Patrick O'Connor, Associate Professor in Natural Resource Economics, University of Adelaide; Adam James Loch, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Adelaide, and John Maclean, Lecturer in Data Science, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This year will set a record for the addition of renewables to the grid, according to figures to be released on Thursday by the Clean Energy Regulator.

It projects the average annual renewable share of the electricity market will be 45% in 2025. The Albanese government’s target is 82% by 2030.

Total added capacity of renewables is expected to be 7.2 to 7.5 gigawatts in 2024, says the CER, which is responsible for accelerating carbon abatement.

Large scale power station approvals this year are expected to exceed a capacity of 4.2 GW, after the approval of Australia’s largest wind farm, MacIntyre wind farm in Queensland at 923 MW.

The new generation capacity is mainly wind (70%) and “will result in a material step up in the share of renewables as these new power stations reach full generation in the second half of 2025”.

An extra 1.2 GW of capacity has been applied for and is expected to be approved early next year.

The CER also expects a 3.15 GW increase in small-scale rooftop solar capacity.

The Australian Energy Market Commission, which makes the rules for the electricity and gas markets, will release residential energy price trends projecting that over the next decade residential electricity costs will decline, while delays to renewables would increase costs.

The AEMC suggests a household that is fully electrified could reduce its annual energy spending by 70% (or $3500 a year).

Energy Minister Chris Bowen will use his Thursday climate statement to parliament to warn against shifting course away from renewables, arguing they will bring down prices.

In a speech released in part ahead of delivery, Bowen says the AEMC data confirms that more renewables in the system “will continue pushing energy bills down over the next ten years”.

He says the Clean Energy Regulator “is explicit in its finding that delays to renewables would in fact increase costs”.

Bowen says just under half of the 7.5 GW new renewable capacity “will come front rooftop solar, a sign that households and businesses are getting real value from the economic benefits that come when you harness free sunshine”.

He says the “world-beating uptake” means there is now more rooftop solar capacity in the system “than the entire fleet of coal-fired power stations across the country.

"That means households and businesses are winning on two fronts – looking after our future generations by bringing down emissions, and bringing down power bills today, and for years to come.”

“Suggestions that Australia should turn its back on advancements such as these and revert to a system dominated by fossil fuels will be the nail in the coffin to Australia reaching net zero by 2050.”

With a burst of hot weather this week, the NSW government on Wednesday urged businesses and households to conserve power between 3pm and 8pm. It suggested delaying the use of non-essential appliances such as dishwashers and pool pumps and if possible setting air conditioners to a higher temperature.

This followed the Australian Energy Market Operator forecasting there could be insufficient generation available to meet demand.

Questioned in parliament, Bowen played down the situation saying it was “not an unusual circumstance”.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This year’s humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) season in Australia has almost come to an end. The beloved mammals are on their way to Antarctica for a summer of feeding. Next year from April onwards, millions of people will again witness their movements and acrobatic displays – either from the coast or by joining one of the hundreds of whale-watch boat operators.

But as much as we like to watch humpback whales, we still know very little about them. They are notoriously difficult to study in the field. While they are known for their surface activities, they spend most of their time underwater and outside the range of direct observations.

One of the biggest mysteries of all is how these animals make decisions to determine what they do and where they go.

This is where our new research, published in Marine Mammal Science today, comes in. We developed a model which effectively captures key humpback whale behaviours and their resulting southward migratory movements in east Australia. It can help anticipate challenges whales may face in the future. In turn, it may aid efforts to better conserve these majestic animals.

A comeback

Following the end of commercial whaling, the worldwide recovery of humpback whale populations has been very successful. In Australia, the species was removed from the threatened species list in 2022.

However, scientists fear the effects of climate change may now be the biggest threat to their survival.

Our previous research examined which environmental factors matter in humpback whale ecology. For instance, while water temperature may have little impact in the cold Antarctic waters, breeding grounds further north that are too warm could drive humpback whales to seek better conditions elsewhere.

Currently we rely on satellite tags to inform us of their large-scale whereabouts. But unfortunately, this provides little information on humpback whale activities on a smaller scale, such as how they socialise, hunt, or react to specific conditions.

Movements through space and time

To address this, we turned to computer models, as these can deal with scarce or inconsistently collected data. In particular, “agent-based” models are designed to capture the behavioural response of an agent (in this case, a pod consisting of a humpback whale mother and one calf) to the environmental conditions they encounter. Based on this information, the models then project movements through space and time.

We developed the first such model to simulate migratory movements of humpback whale mother and calf pods between the Great Barrier Reef and the Gold Coast bay. Along this route is Hervey Bay, an important resting area due to its calm and sheltered waters, where the pairs may stay for up to a few weeks before continuing migration.

As humpback whales are almost always sighted in waters between 15 and 200 metres deep and below 28°C, we took a simple yet reasonable approach where we assumed they avoided waters too shallow, deep, or warm as they swam southwards.

This “avoidance” response would be similar to us going indoors when it is too hot outside or raining heavily: a simple decision to move away from somewhere we are not comfortable.

A combo of current and swimming speed

To estimate how fast whales were moving, we combined the speed of the current with an estimate of real-world swimming speeds by migrating mother and calf pairs along the Gold Coast.

Our simulations accurately predict the routes taken by migrating mother and calf pairs but point to a change in direction after Hervey Bay so whales remain close to the coastline.

Other research has shown that this “distance to shore” is an important variable to consider when studying humpback whales.

Results also highlight the importance of water depth when entering Hervey Bay and ensuring the whales avoid getting too close to shore or into the deep ocean.

A tool for conservation

What the model does less well is accurately predict travel time between the Great Barrier Reef and the Gold Coast bay.

There are a few reasons why this may be the case. For example, the aforementioned underwater movements and associated behaviours are difficult to capture and convert into meaningful components of our model. Research has started to reveal detailed dive profiles but is time consuming and expensive.

We also assume that swimming speed remains more or less constant over time regardless of whether it is day or night. However, research into daily activity patterns has, so far, focused primarily on feeding and mating behaviours rather than variations in swimming speed.

Nevertheless, the current version of our model provides a suitable framework for simulating humpback whale migration and can be expanded to investigate a response of this species to future changes in ocean conditions. In theory, it can be applied to other marine species too, as long as relevant behavioural response data is available.

The development of such predictive models is increasingly important to aid conservation efforts and guide effective strategies for protecting vulnerable species affected by climate change.

Jasper de Bie, Research Fellow, Coastal and Marine Research Centre, Griffith University