14/09/2019

World Losing Area Of Forest The Size Of The UK Each Year, Report Finds

The Guardian - 
A deforested area of the Amazon in Pará state, Brazil. The global rate of tree loss is 26m hectares a year. Photograph: João Laet/AFP/Getty Images


An area of forest the size of the UK is being lost every year around the world, the vast majority of it tropical rainforest, with dire effects on the climate emergency and wildlife.
The rate of loss has reached 26m hectares (64m acres) a year, a report has found, having grown rapidly in the past five years despite pledges made by governments in 2014 to reverse deforestation and restore trees.
Charlotte Streck, a co-founder and the director of Climate Focus, the thinktank behind the report, said: “We need to keep our trees and we need to restore our forests. Deforestation has accelerated, despite the pledges that have been made.”
The New York declaration on forests was signed at the UN in 2014, requiring countries to halve deforestation by 2020 and restore 150m hectares of deforested or degraded forest land.
But the rate of tree cover loss has gone up by 43% since the declaration was adopted, while the most valuable and irreplaceable tropical primary forests have been cut down at a rate of 4.3m hectares a year.
The ultimate goal of the declaration, to halt deforestation by 2030 – potentially saving as much carbon as taking all the world’s cars off the roads – now looks further away than when the commitment was made.
In Latin America, south-east Asia, and Africa – the major tropical forest regions – the annual rate of tree cover loss increased markedly between 2014 and 2018, compared with 2001 to 2013. While the greatest losses by volume were in tropical Latin America, the greatest rate of increase was in Africa, where deforestation rates doubled from less than 2m hectares a year to more than 4m.
Guardian graphic. Source: World Resources Institute analysis based on 2019 data from Global Forest Watch
The report uses data up to 2018 in most cases, so the figures do not include the impact of the most recent burning in the Amazon. The report’s authors note that in June, deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 88% compared with the same month last year.
Streck warned the recent fires were a particular concern because, whereas in previous decades when the humid nature of the rainforest made it hard to burn, with the lush vegetation acting as an effective firebreak, global heating in recent years has dried out parts of the forest and made it easier to combust.
“The fires are coming at the beginning of the dry season, which is when you would have expected the forests to be at their wettest and hardest to burn,” she said. “This shows we could be entering into a feedback loop.”
Tropical deforestation has increased
since the New York declaration on
forests was signed in 2014.
---
Average annual tropical tree
cover loss, million hectares
Guardian graphic | Source: World Resources Institute analysis based on 2019 data from Global Forest Watch. Note: Tree cover loss calculated using a >25% tree cover density threshold. Improvements to methodology starting in 2011 may result in higher estimates of loss in 2011-18 compared with 2001-10
Feedback loops are feared by climate scientists because they amplify the effects of heating. In the case of forests, climate change dries out trees, making them more flammable, and increasing temperatures so they burn more easily, which then contributes more carbon dioxide, which fuels heating.
Keeping existing forests standing, particularly in tropical regions, and restoring wooded areas that have been damaged, has long been recognised as one of the cheapest ways of tackling the climate crisis. The cost of preserving key forests globally has been estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars a year, compared with the trillions needed to shift to low-carbon infrastructure.
Jo House, a reader in environmental science and policy at the University of Bristol, said: “Deforestation, mostly for agriculture, contributes around a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. At the same time, forests naturally take up around a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
“This natural sink provided by forests is at risk from the duel compounding threats of further deforestation and future climate change. The continued loss of primary forests, at ever-increasing rates, despite their incalculable value and irreplaceability, is both shocking and tragic.”
One of the difficulties highlighted by the report is that of gaining private sector support and investment for keeping forests standing. While there are clear economic benefits to cutting down forests, in the form of timber production and expanded agriculture, there are few investments being made in keeping existing forests healthy.
Annual deforestation in Brazil fell below
2m hectares for seven years to 2016
Guardian graphic. Source: For 2001-13, Tyukavina, A., Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Stehman, S. V., Smith-Rodriguez, K., Okpa, C., & Aguilar, R. (2017). Types and rates of forest disturbance in Brazilian Legal Amazon, 2000–2013, Science Advances, 3(4), e1601047; For 2014-18 data, Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S. A., Tyukavina, A. et al. (2013). Tree Cover Loss (Hansen/UMD/Google/USGS/Nasa). Global Forest Watch database.
Another complicating factor is that many governments offer subsidies to agriculture, which provide perverse incentives for deforestation.
The report from a coalition of 25 organisations is being presented in New York before a series of events focusing on the climate crisis in the run-up to the UN secretary general’s summit later this month. At the meeting, world leaders are expected to come up with new proposals for tackling the climate emergency.
But Streck said the failure to meet the pledges made five years ago undercut the value of such promises if they were not backed up with finance, detailed plans and on-the-ground implementation.
“We don’t need more important guys standing up making pledges,” she said. “We need to go beyond declarations. Implementation is complicated, but it’s what we need.”
There have been some bright spots. The rate of loss of primary forest in Indonesia slowed by nearly one-third between 2017 and 2018. Palm oil plantations in the country are a major cause of deforestation, but companies and the government have come under pressure from consumers and aid donors. Wetter weather that reduced forest fires also helped.
While some countries have embarked on tree-planting schemes, notably in Ethiopia, but also in Mexico and El Salvador, these have been far outweighed by the loss of existing forests. Tree planting does not compensate for the loss of standing forests, because established growth yields benefits beyond carbon uptake, through the whole ecosystem.
“It can take centuries for forests to recover their full carbon-absorbing and weather-regulating capabilities,” Streck said.

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When Climate Distress Becomes Too Much, The Philosophy Of Eternalism Can Provide Perspective

ABC Radio National - Alice Moldovan

Heidi Edmonds says she's trying to instil a love of nature in her kids while they're young. (Supplied: Heidi Edmonds)
The first time Heidi Edmonds felt this type of anxiety creep up, she became teary and had to go into the bathroom for a cry.
"I was looking at my nieces ... and worrying about their future," she says, "not feeling like everything was going to be OK."
Dr Edmonds — who holds a PhD from Griffith University's Australian Rivers Institute — is a co-founder of Australian Parents for Climate Action, a national volunteer campaign group.
She has two young daughters and like many young parents, manages sleep deprivation and parenting stress with all of her other responsibilities at work and with friends.
Over the last year she's noticed another kind of pressure weighing on her — climate anxiety.
Dr Edmonds takes her role as a climate advocate seriously. (Supplied: Heidi Edmonds)
This week the Australian Medical Association declared climate change a health emergency, referencing a higher incidence of mortality rates from heat stress and more mental ill health.
Ros Knight, the president of the country's peak body for psychologists, the Australian Psychological Society, says many Australians report some level of concern about climate change.
She points to a 2012 study that found 20 per cent of those surveyed felt climate-related distress at times.
"It's hard to be specific about exact numbers for climate anxiety with a capital 'A'," she says. "We would call it climate change distress — we wouldn't necessarily label it one particular response."
Her organisation has an online resource dedicated to coping with this distress and lists fear, anger, guilt, shame, grief, loss and helplessness as associated emotions.
When the tearful episode happened, Dr Edmonds says she still wasn't sure how to talk to her children about climate change.
"You talk to them about nature and caring for nature, and I said to them: 'Mummy's working very, very hard to protect the frogs and the fish and nature.'"
Balancing concern and positivity is part of a long-term strategy for Dr Edmonds, who says that with the support of family and her community, she focuses on solutions.
Another element in her arsenal of hope is the philosophical idea of eternalism.

A salve for a social affliction
Dr Edmonds first came across a passage in a self-help book that incorporated eternalism over a decade ago — and says it has stuck with her since then.
"If we think about time as a tapestry, it allows us to focus on giving our children bright moments now ... so that no matter what the future holds, they'll have had these wonderful moments," she says.
This reference to a tapestry of time resonates with eternalism — a theory that joins the past, present and future in a single block of time.
Kristie Miller, the joint director of the Centre for Time at Sydney University, uses the idea of a Persian rug to explain the concept.
Eternalism compares time to a tapestry, in which the past, present and future are all situated together. (Getty: Dan Kitwood)
When you look down at a rug, she says, "you can see the whole thing".
"None of the rug is any more special than any other bit of the rug. The whole thing creates the entire picture, which is the universe."
So a person's life in 2019 doesn't take precedence over another person's life in 1519 — because there is no objective present moment.

Empowering or disempowering?
Dr Miller explains that eternalism can be a comfort when it comes to grief.
"It's true, of course, that your life comes to an end — in the sense that there will be later times when you don't exist," she says.
But from an eternalist perspective, she says, "all of your life is still out there in space time, so all the things that you did still exist. And some people find that quite consoling."
Dr Miller says eternalism can be either empowering or disempowering for people suffering climate anxiety. (Supplied: Kristie Miller)
The situation becomes more complex in relation to climate change, because this grief is for a future that hasn't happened yet.
On the other hand, eternalism can also exacerbate climate grief — because people can "feel fairly sure that the future that's out there is suboptimal", Dr Miller says.
So does that mean the future is already set and there's no point in taking climate action now?
Not exactly, says Dr Miller, who uses the metaphor of a Rubik's cube to explain cause and effect in eternalism. "When you twist one bit around, other bits automatically twist in response," she says.
If the past, present and future of our world were a single Rubik's cube, and we wiggled certain elements like carbon emissions now, "what you'll do is you'll wiggle the way the future is".
"The later states depend in various ways on the earliest states," Dr Miller says.
This is where optimism comes into the equation.

Change takes time
Dr Edmonds says 90 per cent of the time she feels quite hopeful. "I remain focused on hoping that I can be part of the solution to give [my children] a healthy, happy future."
Psychologists recommend being mindful that changes in attitudes take time, and one person can't do everything. (Getty: picture alliance)
To maintain perspective, she separates the sources of her anxiety, asking which parts are climate anxiety, which are "just general parenting anxiety", and which are caused by a lack of sleep.
Ms Knight says this cognitive strategy is helpful because it prevents catastrophising.
"It's about being aware of what you can and can't contribute. So you can't change everything yourself," she says.
She says maintaining positivity requires long-term thinking and relying on your community to help shoulder the effort of climate change advocacy.
And she recommends "keeping things in measure" and "realising that change does take time. And that, if we look around, we can see that change is slowly escalating."
Dr Edmonds says she's also taking action to get her work-life balance under control.
For her, that's all part of maintaining the pattern in the collective tapestry of time.

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John Hewson Urges Liberal Conscience Vote On Climate Emergency

SBS

Former Liberal leader John Hewson has joined calls for the federal parliament to declare a climate emergency for Australia.
Former member for Wentworth John Hewson. Source: AAP
A former Liberal luminary is joining ranks with crossbenchers to urge the coalition to give its MPs a conscience vote on declaring Australia in a state of climate emergency.
John Hewson has added his voice to the push from the Greens and independent MPs.
"Climate was an emergency some 30 years ago," he said on Wednesday.
The group believes if the coalition party room gives its members a conscience vote on the issue, a motion declaring the emergency can pass parliament.
"MPs and senators should have a conscience vote on the emergency declaration so that individual members of parliament can be held personally accountable by their constituents, their children and their grandchildren, indeed by all future generations, for the stance they took on the greatest economic, social, political and moral challenge of this century," Dr Hewson said.
Nearly three million Australians are living in areas where their local councils have declared climate emergencies and pledged greater action to combat climate change, including aiming for 100 per cent renewable energy and zero net emissions.
Countries including Britain, France and Canada have also made the call.
Greens MP Adam Bandt, who is leading the push in federal parliament, says the circumstances of record drought and fearsome bushfires at the start of spring underscore how severe the issue is.
"If the government can declare a budget emergency, it can declare a climate emergency," he said.
Independent Zali Steggall, who won former prime minister Tony Abbott's seat on a platform of strong climate action, cites the lessons of her business background in saying a problem has to be recognised and a plan formed before anything can change.
On Tuesday, she launched the latest Climate of the Nations report, which showed an overwhelming majority of people are concerned about the impacts of climate change and want stronger national action.
"People of all political leanings are concerned with this issue," she told reporters.
"It's something that I want to see more MPs stand up from both sides of the aisle and ask for a conscience vote.
"It should be a question for all MPs to represent their electorate and be true to the campaigns they run when they say they're going to take action on climate change."

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