The Five Innovations That Shaped Sustainability In 2016

The Guardian - Laura Parker

From edible cutlery to drone vaccines, we celebrate the technologies and innovations that promise to advance sustainability efforts in the years ahead

Drones could soon be employed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to help endangered ferret species. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

It’s been a rollercoaster of a year. In the world of sustainability alone, we saw the landmark Paris climate change agreement come into force; learned how rising temperatures in the Arctic are negatively impacting local residents; and watched as the world’s top conservationists mourned the declining state of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
And then, a bombshell: a certain “short-fingered vulgarian” won the US presidential race and called into question everything from America’s basic environmental protection to Nasa’s ongoing climate change research. Corporate America took evasive action, signing a letter telling Donald Trump it is serious about sustainability, while others began unpacking Trump’s emphasis on “clean coal” and what it really means for the future of energy in the US.
But it hasn’t all been doom and gloom. While the rest of the world struggled to come to terms with the aforementioned craziness, innovators, scientists and tech heads worked quietly from the sidelines to come up with solutions. And some succeeded: from a trashcan that sucks up ocean garbage to a drone that delivers vaccines to endangered ferrets, here are our top picks for this year’s best sustainable tech.

A trashcan for the ocean

Peter Ceglinski, left, and Andrew Turton invented the Seabin device, which traps garbage floating around marinas and docks. Photograph: Seabin

It’s no secret that our oceans are turning into swirling garbage dumps. There are some 5.25tn pieces of floating plastic debris in the oceans right now, and it’s estimated that some 8m metric tons of plastic waste enter global waters every year.
Earlier this year, Peter Ceglinski and Andrew Turton, two surfers from Australia, came up with a device they’re calling the Seabin – a kind of submersible garbage can that captures floating trash. Picture a cylinder, with the upper opening just below the surface of the water. An electric pump draws water through the bottom of the cylinder, creating a vortex around the upper edge that pulls in water and floating trash. A bag filter, made of natural material, collects the trash and allows water to pass through.
After raising more than $267,000 in an Indiegogo campaign to help build the device, Ceglinski and Turton are keen to start selling the Seabin to marinas around the world. First stop: Miami, Florida, where Miami Beach’s marinas manager wants to start using the Seabin in 2017 to counter the bags, bottles, paper plates and forks found daily in the water.

A handheld cancer-detecting device

A startup has invented a DNA analyzer that could potentially revolutionize healthcare in the developing world. Photograph: QuantuMDx

Earlier this year, British-based tech firm QuantuMDx developed a new, low-cost diagnostic DNA analyzer the size of a smartphone which is being billed as a “handheld lab”. The device – called Q-Poc – can accurately diagnose everything from cancers to infectious diseases in minutes. Although it is currently in alpha testing stage, the company hopes to get the product in the hands of doctors by early 2018.
Q-Poc runs on a solar-powered battery and it’s designed to read biological samples submitted via a credit card-size cartridge. It can work with a range of sample types: swabs can be used to detect sexually-transmitted infections, while saliva is used to detect tuberculosis. (Tests for other diseases will be added at a later date.) The device uses mobile technology, enabling the test results to be geo-stamped and shared in real time.
The prospect of a speedy diagnosis at a patient’s side is exciting, particularly in countries where access to medical care is a challenge. Subject to regulatory approval by the World Health Organization (WHO), QuantuMDx hopes to initially roll out the Q-Poc unit in South Africa, before expanding to other markets.

Stuff you can eat (instead of throwing it away)

Even if the spoons aren’t eaten, once used, they can decompose in a few days. Photograph: Bakeys

It was a big year for edible everyday items, like cutlery and beer cans. First up, an Indian cutlery company, Bakeys, invented cutlery that you can eat as a way to tackle plastic waste in oceans and landfill. (Welcome to a new geological epoch of trash – scientists are calling it the manmade Anthropocene.)
Plastic cutlery significantly contributes to this problem – estimates suggest the US alone uses 40bn plastic utensils a year. Hence the need for edible versions. Bakeys makes vegan-friendly cutlery from rice, wheat and an ancient grain called sorghum, which was picked because it doesn’t go soggy when immersed in liquid.
The cutlery comes in three flavors: savory (salt and cumin); sweet (sugar); and plain. And, if you’re wondering – it kind of tastes like a dry cracker.
Why not wash down the cutlery with an edible beer holder? Americans are consuming more beer it seems – 67bn beer cans each year, apparently. According to the Brewers Association, this number is expected to grow significantly as craft breweries get more popular.
The problem is that plastic beer can holders pose a threat to fish and marine wildlife when they end up in the ocean. Saltwater Brewery, based in Florida, has come up with a solution: biodegradable, edible beer pack rings made from wheat and barley waste. The rings disintegrate within two hours of being in the ocean, which prevents fish or other sea animals getting stuck. They’re also harmless if ingested by curious fish.
More than 50 craft breweries have already contacted Saltwater expressing an interest in using the edible rings. The brewery is now developing metal molds capable of making 400,000 rings per month and hopes to build a centralized production facility by 2017.

A drone that helps endangered species

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) hope to bombard a ferret habitat in Montana with a vaccine administered via specially designed drones. Photograph: Will Singleton/AP

One of 2016’s most heartwarming stories revolved around a cunning plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to bombard a ferret habitat in Montana with a vaccine administered via specially designed drones that can “shoot” pellets in three directions at the same time.
All this in a bid to save the endangered black-footed ferret. The vaccine pellets are actually intended for the prairie dog population inside the habitat at the UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge. The ferrets are dependent upon prairie dogs for food and shelter, but a flea-borne disease called sylvatic plague has slowly been killing the prairie dogs off.
The FWS came up with a “glorified gumball machine” to spit out the vaccine pellets. The machine which can be attached to a drone which uses GPS to drop the pellets throughout the habitat. Oh, and if you’re wondering: the FWS said lab tests show that prairie dogs find the bait in the vaccines “delicious”.

Using 3D printers to eliminate plastic waste

A report by a leading markets analyst predicted the 3D printing materials market would grow by nearly 266% over the next five years. Photograph: Alamy 

As we’ve established, humans produce a lot of trash – apparently of the more than 300m tons of plastic produced globally every year, one refuse truck’s worth ends up in our waters, landfills and streets every minute.
One of our favorite stories this year came from India, where a local entrepreneur has set up a production facility at a local rubbish dump, where waste pickers convert high-density polyethylene (HPDE) – mostly used for plastic bottles – into 3D printing filament to eventually be sold to 3D printing companies.
The market for 3D printing filament – the majority of which is made from virgin plastic – is growing rapidly. A recent report predicted the 3D printing materials market will grow by nearly 266% in the next five years.
And, while the market for ethical filament is still relatively small, the greatest potential 3D printing seems to be offering the developing world is employment – there are an estimated 15 million people globally who currently make their living from waste picking, for example.

Links

• US advances on clean energy with first offshore wind farm
• Donald Trump supports 'clean coal' – but does it really have a future?
• What businesses want Trump to know about climate change
• Trump's influence on the future of clean energy is less clear than you think
• The Guardian view on climate change: good news – but not yet good enough
• Can our need for a carbon-free future override our fears of nuclear energy?

Cabinet Papers 1992-93: Reluctant States Held Back Policy Greening

The Australian - Graham Lloyd

Deep divisions between the state and federal governments over ­climate change policy can be traced back to the earliest negoti­ations on the issue more than a quarter of a century ago.
Keating government cabinet records show Canberra's biggest challenge on greenhouse gas actions came from reluctant state and territory leaders.
In contrast to today, when states are outbidding the federal government on renewable energy targets and demanding tougher action, the call in 1992 was for limited action of "no regrets" with a focus on the economy.
In May 1992, state leaders ­argued the federal government was "seeking to settle policy ­positions within too tight a time frame".
By that October, state and territory officials had supported the "general no-regrets framework and phased approach".
But some were "cautious about the question of incorporating ­externalities in energy pricing ­because of the current policies aimed at reducing energy prices for consumers".
The international negotiations on climate change action that eventually led to Australia signing the Kyoto Protocol coincided with a struggle inside the Keating cabinet on environment policy as the government sought to reposition itself from the Hawke years.
Keating wanted a more muscular, business focus but was compelled to lead Australia's response to building international negotiations on climate change.

Keating archives 1992-93
The 1992 cabinet records document a year-long process to bring reluctant state governments on side. State and territory leaders made it clear they were "not strongly committed" to either ecologically sustainable development or greenhouse reduction strategies, and resented the pace at which the federal government sought to settle policy positions.
Finally, cabinet endorsed support for the UN Framework Convention on ­Climate Change, in particular by assisting developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region to develop capacities for adaptation — with the caveat of no commitment to binding targets before other developed nations.
Ministers agreed in December 1992 that "our capacity to continue to protect Australia's economic and trade interests" remained the priority.
Analysis of the cabinet papers shows deep divisions about the balance between environment and economic development.
As treasurer, Keating was central to the group of finance and ­resource ministers, whose dissatisfaction with the "green" compromises tolerated or favoured by Hawke fed into leadership ­ructions.
Keating's decision not to join 108 heads of state or government at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992 is often taken as indicative of disengagement, but his cabinet ultimately approved arrange­ments for ­ecologically sus­t­ainable development, including a greenhouse gas ­response.

Links

• Cabinet Papers 1992-93: Australia Reluctant While World Moves Towards First Climate Treaty
• 25 years ago the Australian government promised deep emissions cuts, and yet here we still are
• Carbon coups: from Hawke to Abbott, climate policy is never far away when leaders come a cropper
• Fair's fair: time for China and India to step up at climate talks
• Government doesn't need climate bodies: it needs commitment

Bleached: Laura Jones's Hope For The Reef

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

The artist says her undeniably sad portraits of bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef are about resilience: 'It's not a fragile delicate flower … it's so important to be optimistic and do what we can to protect it'
Laura Jones is pained by the delicate balance she wants to strike. Her paintings of coral bleaching are going to be engulfing, immersive and undeniably sad. But she wants them to express hope and resilience, too.
It's something she keeps coming back to before, during and after I visit her studio, where she is preparing a major exhibition.
"It's not a fragile, delicate flower," Jones says of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. "It's quite resilient. Somehow I need to show that in the paintings. But still show that we're really hammering it."
Partly inspired by the Guardian's in-depth coverage of coral bleaching in 2016, including around Lizard Island in the northern reef, Jones packed her bags and became an artist-in-residence on the island for 10 days in August.

Diary note from 19 August
I set out for Lizard Island after being in Melbourne for three days for a series of art fairs. After a quick stop at my home in Sydney to pick up my camera, art supplies and a wetsuit, I headed for far north Queensland. From Cairns I made the trip to the research station on a tiny six-seater plane. The journey included spectacular views of the reef and the bright blue sky looked like it was melting into the ocean.

When she got there, she landed in the epicentre of what was the worst bleaching event the Great Barrier Reef had ever seen. Just a few months earlier, about a quarter of the coral on the entire 2,300km length had been killed, with 85% of that mortality in the northern third – right where Jones landed.
She would go snorkelling or diving for four hours a day, and then go back to her workspace – a desk in a lab shared with scientists – where she would sketch what she saw and write in her diary.

21 August
I am preparing to work by stretching my paper to make watercolour drawings and wetting and taping my paper to the table so that it won't buckle. I'm really enjoying painting and drawing with scientists in the room while they do their research. It's my own private and highly entertaining scientific podcast! They are great fun and I'm starting to see that there are a lot of quirky similarities between artists and scientists.

In the months since, she has been developing an exhibition of what she learned from her time there. She plans for it to be immersive, and already the canvases that wrap around her studio in Sydney's Marrickville make you feel submerged in an alien, underwater world.

One of Laura Jones' coral artworks. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

"I thought it was important to kind of make it feel like the reef was in the room," she says.
To do that, she's producing a series of huge oil paintings, with thick layers of paint that emerge from the canvas, creating sense of depth and translucence. "Hopefully I will build the reef inside. And I'm choosing to do large-scale paintings too, because I want it to be an immersive show."
In her studio she keeps a stack of watercolour and ink sketches she made each day while she was on Lizard Island. Some of them are playful and some of them are very literal drawings of what she saw there.
"The drawings for me were a process of discovery," Jones says. "The drawings were me getting a feel for what I was looking at – documenting the experience of being at Lizard. I was memorising the colour of what I saw under the water – not in a literal way but in an emotional way. Those impressions are then what feed into the paintings.
"A drawing is a tiny window of an idea … It's easy to be playful with drawings … And then there's always something in your studio that grounds you and you can go back to. They remind me to open up or be playful or do something that is a bit unexpected.
"More than a photograph, they provoke a stronger memory of the time."

LARGE	LARGE	LARGE
LARGE	LARGE	These watercolour and ink sketches were made by Laura Jones during her visit to Lizard Island. 'The drawings were me getting a feel for what I was looking at – documenting the experience of being at Lizard,' she says, adding: 'Those impressions are then what feed into the paintings.'

She's also creating a series of what she describes as "unreal and unscientific" sculptures of the bleached coral. "They're sort of growing organically," Jones says. "They start – I don't know how they're going to end up. I just build them – it's like the way coral grows, I suppose."
But her 10 days on Lizard Island, tagging along with scientists, has made her painfully aware of the intricacies in communicating about environmental disasters. "The message I got from the scientists was that it's so important to be optimistic and do what we can to protect the reef," she says. "It's not over for it."

A bleached coral sculpture by Laura Jones. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

22 August
I'm thinking back to the branching coral everywhere, still standing, but covered in algae. The soft corals disintegrating and rotting … It's frightening that it happens over such a short time frame … I am overwhelmed by the scientists here because they are optimistic despite all the damage, and threat of future bleaching events. In June 2016, the coral started creeping back and that is what I am seeing here now in August. In November there will be the spawning, where new corals (polyps?) will appear and settle onto the reef and start to grow. Parrotfish bite bits of coral off, like snapping a carrot in two, creating a good spot for the coral to settle on. Anne tells me there is still a good enough population of coral that regeneration is possible. But the overwhelming message is that we can't keep hammering our reef. It knows how to regenerate. We're lucky it can do that, but we need to manage for resilience.

She has researched the issue, reading scientific papers about how unmotivating it can be to hear about environmental catastrophes. After our meeting, she emails me the paper, telling me: "I liked the quote 'catastrophism is intimately connected to despair, an emotion that can counteract the very passion and sense of agency to which such discourses seek to appeal'.
"I liked it because I want to make an exhibition that simply inspires people to talk about the reef," she wrote. "I don't want the paintings to feel so dark that people just see a blur of mud and algae and no hope. I want them to see that the bleaching is like an alarm telling people to make noise about it."

'I'm choosing to do large-scale paintings too, because I want it to be an immersive show,' says Jones. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

23 August
It is particularly obvious today that the staghorn corals are nearly completely wiped out. I see some struggling and looking almost dead, which just highlights how … common the algae-covered skeletons are and how beautiful it would have been before. I find a little bright purple stag horn coral and make sure I get a good photo of it so that I can draw it later. As I swim I think about how I'm going to paint and draw things the whole time. I don't want to only paint dead or dying coral, I want to paint the survivors, too.

As a result of all that contemplation, her paintings and sculptures, many of which are still being completed – and others yet to be started – walk a poignant line between beauty and tragedy. They don't capture the way the coral looks exactly – but the way they made her feel.
"These paintings are not at all literal," she says. "They're sort of an amalgamation of images I was given, and the feeling of being there.
"I think paintings have a lot of emotion and I'm hoping to bring that to this conversation. I want to inspire people not with scientific depictions of the reef but with an emotional depiction."
All that contemplation about the message she communicates has changed the direction of the work and will now take her on a second adventure.

Scenes from the studio. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

In February she'll pack her bags again and head to Heron Island. "I think it's really important to have a narrative in the work and I'm slowly building that up. But I don't want it to be a catastrophic ending."

24 August
Decided to go snorkelling just out the front of the research station, not far from the shore. It's the first time I've just swum out rather than gone on a boat. So much of the coral is dead. It's like a graveyard … Mauve and mustard are the most dominant colours under the water. I find myself craving more of a spectrum, and imagine what it would have looked like as a full and healthy underwater garden.

She says she wants to see what it might have looked like around Lizard Island before the bleaching, and what it is that is worth saving.
Jones' previous works have mostly been still life exhibitions of flowers – something she found herself doing after growing up in the Blue Mountains, surrounded by wildflowers, and then working as a florist during her studies.
"I've always been someone who paints about the beauty of nature and life so I think it's really important that I have healthy coral paintings too," she says.
"I want to draw people in and go, 'Look how beautiful this is. We have to protect it,' rather than just have a room full of dead stuff." 

Laura Jones' solo exhibition, tentatively called Bleached, will be shown at the Olsen Irwin Gallery in Sydney between 17 May and 14 June 2017

Links

• Great Barrier Reef: Unesco pushes for tree-clearing controls 
• Leonardo DiCaprio given rival invitations to visit Great Barrier Reef 
• Sections of Great Barrier Reef suffering from 'complete ecosystem collapse' 
• This election, what hope is there for the Great Barrier Reef?  
• Ellen DeGeneres urges Australians to help save Great Barrier Reef  
• Great Barrier Reef election explainer: how do the parties compare? 
• The Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare  
• Coalition's Queensland dam bonanza 'threatens Great Barrier Reef'

These Are The 10 Most Important Climate Stories Of 2016

Climate Central - Brian Kahn

This year is likely to remembered as a turning point for climate change. It's the year the impacts of rising carbon pollution became impossible to ignore. The world is overheating and vast swaths of the planet have suffered the consequences. At the same time, it's also a year where world leaders crafted and agreed on a number of plans to try to turn the tide of carbon pollution and move toward a clean energy future. It's clear 2016 was a year where planetary peril and human hope stood out in stark contrast. Here are the 10 most important climate milestones of the year.

The world struck an airline carbon pollution deal
The friendly skies got slightly friendlier. Air travel counts for about 7 percent of carbon emissions globally. That number will need to come down in the coming decades, and the International Civil Aviation Organization, the world's governing body for airlines, put a plan in place to start that transition. The plan, which was signed off on by 191 countries, is focused on letting airlines buy credits that will help fund renewable energy projects to offset airplane emissions. It isn't a perfect solution since it doesn't directly reduce carbon pollution from air travel, but it's a first step for an industry that will have to find novel, carbon-free ways to produce the fuel needed to fly you home for Christmas vacation.

An extremely potent greenhouse gas is also on its way out
Hydrofluorocarbons are the chemicals in your air conditioner that help keep you cool in the summer (and the food in your refrigerator cool year round). Ironically, they're also a greenhouse gas that's thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere. Reducing them is critical to keep the planet from heating up much more and in October, international negotiators struck a deal to do phase them out. Countries still have to ratify the agreement — and it could face a major roadblock in the U.S. Senate — in order for it to take effect, but if approved, it will provide strong targets and a timetable to find replacement chemicals to keep you cool in a warming world.

July was the hottest month ever recorded. Then August tied it
The Arctic had a crazy heat wave this winter, but the planet as a whole really roasted through July and August. The summer is usually the warmest time of the year by dint of the fact that there's more land in the northern hemisphere. But this summer was something else. July was the hottest month ever recorded, and it was followed by an August — usually a bit cooler than July — that was just as scorching. Those epically hot months helped set this year up for record heat (but more on that in a bit).

Arctic sea ice got weird. Really weird
The Arctic was probably the weirdest place on the planet this year. It had a record-low peak for sea ice in the winter and dwindled to its second-lowest extent on record. The Northwest Passage also opened in August, allowing a luxury cruise ship to pass through. Those milestones themselves are a disconcerting harbinger of a warming world, but November brought an even more bizarre event. Normally it's a time when night blankets the region and temperatures generally plummet to allow the rapid growth of ice. But a veritable heat wave ratcheted temperatures 27°F above normal, hitting pause on ice growth and even causing ice loss for a few days. December has seen a similar warm spell that scientists have found would be virtually impossible if it wasn't for climate change. The Arctic is the most rapidly warming region on the planet and 2016 served as a reminder that the region is being dramatically reshaped by that warming.

Divestment and clean energy investments each hit a record
Climate change is a huge, pressing economic issue as countries will have to rejigger their economies to run on renewables and not fossil fuels. Investors are attacking that switch at both ends, and 2016 stands out for the record pace at which they're doing it. On the fossil fuel side, investors representing $5.2 trillion in assets have agreed to divest from fossil fuels. That includes massive financial firms, pension funds, cities and regional governments, and a host of wealthy individuals. Not bad for a movement that only got its start in 2011. On the flip side, a report showed that investors poured $288 billion into new renewable projects in 2015, also a record. That's helping install 500,000 solar panels a day around the world and ensuring that 70 percent of all money invested into energy generation is going to renewables.

The Great Barrier Reef was decimated by warm waters
Coral has had a rough go of it around the world for the past three years. El Niño coupled with climate change has caused a massive coral bleaching event around the globe. Nowhere have the impacts been more stark than the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Up to 93 percent of the reef was rocked by coral bleaching as record-warm waters essentially boiled coral to death. A third of the reef — including some of the most protected areas — are now dead. Researchers found that climate change made the record heat up to 175 times more likely, offering a glimpse into the dystopian future reefs face. A 1.5°C rise in the global average temperature would essentially mean game over for corals around the world.

The world breached the 1.5°C climate threshold
So about 1.5°C. It's a threshold that's crucial for low-lying island states to continue their existence (to say nothing of Miami or other coastal cities). Passing it would mean essentially issuing a death sentence for these places, corals and Arctic sea ice and other places around the world. The globe got its first glimpse of 1.5°C in February and March this year. Climate change, riding on the back of a super El Niño, helped crank the global average temperature to 1.63°C above normal in February and 1.54°C above normal in March compared to pre-industrial times. While the abnormal heat has since subsided a bit, it's likely that 1.5°C will be breached again and again in the coming years and could become normal by 2025-30.

Carbon dioxide hit 400 ppm. Permanently
Scientists measure carbon dioxide in parts per million and in 2016, and it hit a not-so-nice round number at the Earth's marquee carbon observatory: 400 ppm. Despite the seasonal ebb and flow, there wasn't a single week where carbon dioxide levels dipped below 400 ppm. It's the first time on record that's happened. Because carbon pollution continues to rise, the world isn't going to see carbon dioxide dip below 400 ppm again in our lifetimes (and likely a lot longer than that). Carbon dioxide also breached the 400 ppm threshold in Antarctica, the first time that's happened in human history (and likely a lot longer). And in a report that was published this year, the World Meteorological Organization revealed that carbon dioxide passed the 400 ppm milestone globally in 2015. So yeah, 400 ppm was kind of a thing this year.

The Paris Agreement got real
The world got together to deliver the Paris Agreement in 2015, but the rubber really hit the road in 2016. Nearly 120 countries have ratified the agreement, putting it into force on Nov. 4. That includes big carbon pollution emitters like China, the U.S. and the European Union, and tiny ones like Mongolia, the Cook Islands and Sierra Leone. While there's concern that President-elect Trump could pull the U.S. out of the agreement, signatories have stressed that they'll go forward to meet their pledges regardless. With the rubber on the road, the next step is to get the wheels spinning.

It was the hottest year on record. Again
In case it wasn't clear, the clearest sign of climate change is heat. And this year had lots of it. Hot Arctic, hot summer, hot water, and so it's only fitting that the biggest climate milestone of the year (in a year that itself is a milestone) is record heat. Of course, that was the biggest story in 2014. And 2015 for that matter. This year marks the third year in a row of record-setting heat, an unprecedented run. It's a reminder that we've entered a new era, where our actions have changed the world we call home. We also have the ability to decide what comes next.

Links

• The U.S. Has Been Overwhelmingly Hot This Year
• Warming is Sending Mountain Glaciers 'Off a Cliff'
• Temperatures Are Soaring at the North Pole . . . Again
• Obama Bars Arctic Drilling Ahead of Trump Inauguration

5 Ways Climate Change Is A Women’s Rights Issue

International Women's Development Agency

Climate change is not gender neutral. If you’re a woman, you’re more likely to feel the negative consequences of natural disasters and, left unchecked, climate change only stands to make gender inequalities worse.

Women during the Myanmar floods. Photo: Myo Thame/UNICEF

1. Collecting drinking water becomes harder, and violence becomes more common

In 63% of rural households worldwide, it’s a woman’s job to gather drinking water for their families. Climate change means more droughts and flooding, so finding access to clean water has become harder than ever. This puts added pressure on women and girls, with many having to travel longer and farther to access clean water. By travelling further from home and into the night, women are also more likely to be sexually assaulted by men.

Cambodian woman collecting water. Photo: Eric Sales/ADB

2. Women’s health is in danger

In times of disaster, illnesses such as malaria and cholera can spread quickly, and water contamination is a serious concern. For women who are pregnant or giving birth in such unhygienic conditions, the risk to a mother and her baby is huge. And in the event her family gets sick, it is almost always the woman who is in charge of caring for them. This means she is unable to work, which further weakens her financial independence and deepens the cycle of poverty.

A women receives a dignity kit and a health check-up in Ayeyawady Region of Myanmar. Photo: Benny Manser/UNFPA

3. Women farmers lose their income           

In some places, women do up to 80% of the farming work, with agriculture often being one of the few income sources available to women. This means that in the event of natural disasters, women face not only water shortages and loss of land to farm, but a loss of the income they rely on to survive.

A farmer from the Palaung hill tribe in Myanmar. Photo: Jean Qingwen Loo/UN Women

4. Violence against women increases during natural disaster

During natural disasters, men are more likely to perpetrate violence against women.  This is particularly true for women or girls displaced or living in temporary accommodation, where there is a far greater risk of rape and physical violence. Worse still, with police and medical services overwhelmed during times of disaster, women may have nowhere to go to seek support.

Women walk among the destroyed homes in the wake of Cyclone Winston in Fiji. Photo: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

5. It’s even harder for single or lgbtqi women to access emergency services

If women are already discriminated against in their communities, access to emergency services during natural disasters can be incredibly difficult. During the recent Cyclone Winston in Fiji, women of diverse sexual identities were choosing to stay in homes that were hazardous and remote – because they felt the evacuation centres were unsafe and unwelcoming for them. Those with healthcare issues were unable to reach doctors, and for poor households food, water and housing security immediately dropped.

The devastation left by Cyclone Winston. Photo: FWRM

Links

• Climate Change and Women
• How Does Climate Change Affect Women?
• Is climate change a gender equality issue?
• Women need to be at the core of the humanitarian response on climate change
• The Consequences of Climate Change
• Consulting Women on Climate Change
• Rural women at the frontline of climate change are taking action through innovation
• Does climate change affect us all the same?

Cabinet Papers 1992-93: Australia Reluctant While World Moves Towards First Climate Treaty

The Conversation - Marc Hudson

Despite international efforts, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to grow. Coal image from www.shutterstock.com

Cabinet papers from 1992 and 1993 released today by the National Archives of Australia confirm that Australia was a reluctant player in international discussions about climate change and environmental issues under Prime Minister Paul Keating.
Internationally, it was an exciting time for the environment. In June 1992, the UN Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro. Here the world negotiated the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (which last year gave us the Paris Agreement) and opened the Convention on Biological Diversity for signing.
So what was Australia doing?

Australia stumbles towards climate policy
Domestically, the focus was on Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD), a policy process begun by Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Working groups made up of corporate representatives, environmentalists and bureaucrats had beavered away and produced hundreds of recommendations.
By the final report in December 1991, the most radical recommendations (gasp – a price on carbon!) had been weeded out. Democrats Senator John Coulter warned of bureaucratic hostility to the final recommendations. Keating replaced Hawke in the same month.
The August 1992 meeting, where the ESD policies were meant to be agreed upon, was so disastrous that the environmentalists walked out and even the corporates felt aggrieved.
Two interim reports on the ESD process from the cabinet papers fill in some of the detail.
The first interim report, in March 1992, said that government departments had not been able to identify which recommendations to take on board. Cabinet moved the process on, but the only policies on the table were those that involved:

…little or no additional cost, cause minimal disruption to industry or the community, and which also offer benefits other than greenhouse related.

By May, federal ministers were told that the states and territories weren't committed to either ESD or greenhouse gas policies.
The policy process rumbled on after the walkout, finally producing a National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development and a National Greenhouse Response Strategy. The greenhouse strategy contained only – surprise! – toothless voluntary measures, which proved ineffective in keeping emissions down to 1990 levels.
The November 1992 minutes mildly note that:

Most major interest groups have voiced concerns about their lack of involvement in the drafting of the NGRS [greenhouse strategy] document. Officials made provision for community input through the public comment process and a public consultative forum held in August [the one the environmentalists walked out of]. Reaction from conservation groups is likely to be negative, given the limited changes made to many of the responses in the revised strategy. They are likely to want to see more concerted efforts in areas such as fuel efficiency and renewable energy sources.

Indeed.
With equal prescience, the document warns:

Coal producers and resource-intensive industries (eg. aluminium) may express concern about their prospects in the medium to long term.

There are not many surprises here. The dithering over climate and environmental policies has been well covered by Clive Hamilton, David Cox, Joan Staples and numerous academic papers (see here, here, here, and here).
And while we won't know officially who said what for another 30 years, there are tantalising hints in Neal Blewett's A Cabinet Diary. Published in 1999, it reveals the antagonism between the environment minister and others in the Keating cabinet.

The international stage
International climate policy was dominated by the US threat, under President George Bush senior, not to attend the Earth Summit if the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) included specific emission-reduction targets. The US attended, and the UNFCCC didn't include targets.
In Australia, the cabinet papers point out, not for the first or last time, that:

Australia is the only developed megadiverse country; it is a major user and exporter of greenhouse gas producing fossil fuels and energy intensive products; it could be significantly affected by global environmental change.

In May 1992 cabinet endorsed in principle support for the UNFCCC. There are three ironies here.
First, it was a major concern that the media statement to accompany Environment Minister Ros Kelly's signing should be amended to include the fact that:

The Convention does not bind any signatory to meet any greenhouse gas target by a specified date.

Second, the minutes note that:

A decision by Australia not to sign the Convention would be criticised by domestic environment interests and could also attract international criticism, particularly in the Pacific region.

In later years, Prime Minister John Howard would not worry about this when repeatedly nixing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.
Third, an emphasis on assisting developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region with climate adaptation looks odd given there had been zero mention of greenhouse gases in a March 1992 discussion document of aid to Cambodia (that country is feeling the effects already).
Keating's willingness to let Kelly sign the convention may have been related to the following:

The Convention contains several safeguards which protect Australia's interests … [A]llowance is made for "the differences in Parties' starting points and approaches, economic structures and resource bases, and the need to maintain strong and sustainable economic growth, available technologies and other individual circumstances". Additionally, Parties are obliged to take into consideration the situation of Parties with economies that are highly dependent on the production, processing, export and use of fossil fuels. These two provisions will give relevant countries, including Australia, flexibility in fulfilling their obligations under the Convention.

And they probably thought they had more time than they actually did. The May 1992 note argues:

[The UNFCCC] is likely to take some years to obtain the necessary ratifications to bring it into force.

It took two. Australia ratified the treaty in December 1992, but not before noting that the UNFCCC would worry industry for being too strong, and environmental groups for being too weak. So no changes there.

What happened next
At least when it comes to climate policy, there are no real secrets worthy of the name. We have always known that the Australian state quickly retreated from its already hedged promise to take action, and told us all along that this was because we had a lot of coal.
While Australia's international credibility has flatlined (with a brief bump from 2007 to 2009), two other things have soared over the last 25 years: Australia's coal exports, and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Both look set to continue their upward trend.
Reading the documents, it is striking how concerned the cabinet was to minimise its financial commitments (unsurprising, perhaps, given the overall state of the economy at the time), and just how unimportant the climate issue was to leaders who ask us to trust them on the long-term future of the country. It seems it was a distant abstraction that many didn't really think was real. How times have changed.

Links

• 25 years ago the Australian government promised deep emissions cuts, and yet here we still are
• Carbon coups: from Hawke to Abbott, climate policy is never far away when leaders come a cropper
• Fair's fair: time for China and India to step up at climate talks
• Government doesn't need climate bodies: it needs commitment

Scientists Just Ran The Numbers On How Much Trump Could Damage The Planet

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

President-elect Donald Trump during the first stop of his post-election “thank you” tour, at U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati. (Mark Lyons/European Pressphoto Agency)

There has been a lot of speculation since climate change doubter Donald Trump’s election about what the consequences could be for global climate action. Some analysts cite very dire implications, and others suggest that clean energy growth will continue apace.
But number-crunching analyses that actually calculate how much of a dent the election could have on the planet’s temperature have been rare. That’s in part because it’s no simple calculation.
Some have tried, though — and one such analysis from the think tank Climate Interactive, which we’ve unpacked here before, came up with a kind of middle-road result on this question. It found that if the United States delays addressing climate change domestically for four to eight years, this alone would not be enough to push the globe into the climate “danger” zone, which is generally described as allowing temperatures to rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above their pre-industrial level. However, if U.S. backsliding lasted longer, or if it led to corresponding actions by other countries, then the result could be severe for the planet.
A new commentary article published in Nature Climate Change on Monday presents some additional calculations that tend toward a similar conclusion.
Written by Benjamin Sanderson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Reto Knutti of ETH Zurich, the paper uses climate models to determine what the consequences would be if an eight-year delay in U.S. climate action, led by Trump, reverberates globally. The paper also considered a doubly bad scenario in which the United States also cuts back on clean energy research and then the world follows suit, and a triply bad scenario in which it also burns more fossil fuels and the world follows.
“Any delays to mitigation or cuts to renewable energy research by the U.S. will likely render the 2 °C target unachievable if a global precedent is set,” the authors write.
Let’s take this in pieces.
First and most important, the analysis finds that if the U.S. delays for eight years taking any climate action — meaning its current emissions remain steady — then that alone wouldn’t harm the planet much. This is basically the same result as the one reached by the Climate Interactive analysis. The United States is just one country and the second largest emitter. Even if it goes rogue, it cannot totally torpedo the planet.
But if the delay by the United States spreads globally — nobody cuts emissions, everybody waits for eight years — then it becomes a bigger deal. The study found that could lead to an additional 350 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, corresponding to a planetary temperature increase of .25 degrees Celsius and a lessened chance of keeping the warming of the planet within the safe range embraced in the Paris climate accord.
“The fear is that the U.S. coming out, or the U.S. having reduced ambitions in the near term, would destabilize the whole agreement,” Sanderson said in an interview.
The problem with such a delay is that there is a finite “carbon budget” before we reach 2 degrees of warming, and each successive year of emissions adds to the budget. So delays make staying within the budget a great deal harder and require much sharper cuts afterward.
In the case of an eight-year global delay (followed by global emissions cuts), that reduces the chances of staying within the 2-degree C goal from 66 percent to 50 percent, Sanderson said.
But it could be worse than that: The United States and globe could not only hold steady on emissions, but could actually emit more. And the United States might delay taking steps to create clean energy technologies better than the ones that we have now, causing a global turn away from clean energy research, including on key technologies such as carbon capture and storage.
The analysis finds that adding these problems for eight years worsens the overall problem still more, putting the 2-degree goal farther and farther out of reach.
“The bottom line is that a very short delay in global action would have very large consequences for the ability to meet these very aggressive targets, even if very globally coordinated and ambitious action happens post-2025,” said Sanderson.
Granted, the authors admit that this is a thought experiment only based on a particular set of assumptions — Trump’s policies don’t exist yet, so they cannot be evaluated directly. Nor can the world’s response to them. “We caution against overinterpreting the numbers of this analysis because of the large uncertainty in how the economic and ideological shift in U.S. governance will affect greenhouse gas emissions,” they write.

[Over 2,000 scientists urge Trump to respect ‘scientific integrity and independence’]

Indeed, some aspects of the analysis seem less realistic than others. The idea that the United States could withdraw from the Paris process, and that could then crack things up enough that other countries also slow their own ambitions to cut emissions, is not an unreasonable fear. And as the study shows, that’s a bad enough outcome.
What’s harder to believe, though, is that a global turn away from clean energy research and development could be precipitated by U.S. actions. The clean-energy trend seems too firmly entrenched at this point. In this sector, a U.S. withdrawal seems more likely to give advantages to its competitors (China, Germany, and others) than to lead them to cut back on investments as well.

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As for whether an actual increase in emissions could happen globally over the next eight years — that’s also uncertain. In the past three years, global emissions have appeared to flatten but have not yet gone down. Less coal burning in China and the United States appears to be a key driver of this trend. Once again, it’s not clear that the United States’ intransigence alone could set off more emissions growth in a world in which clean energy growth is looking pretty dynamic.
Still, despite using a very different methodology, the new analysis fits with the previous one by Climate Interactive. A Trump administration hostile to international climate agreements cannot substantially change the planet’s temperature alone over eight years — but it can cause considerably more of an impact if it leads other nations to halt their own actions, or to step back from the clean energy revolution.
It is important to reiterate that keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels was already going to be extremely difficult no matter who the U.S. elected president — and that the climate impacts we have seen so far are already pretty grave.
So really, we are on a road to considerable damage no matter what, and likely some impacts that will be irreversible on any human time-scale. In this context, while we can’t know the future, we can definitely say that disengagement by the United States has the potential to make things worse — but that it will depend on how the entire world responds.
It is, after all, global warming.

Links

• This is what it would take for Trump to truly damage the planet’s climate
• 2016’s super warm Arctic winter ‘extremely unlikely’ without climate change, scientists say
• Withdrawing Obama climate plan would ‘lead to more litigation,’ AGs warn Trump
• The U.S. isn’t the only big country at risk of falling behind on climate change. Meet Brazil
• In the age of Trump, a climate change libel suit heads to trial
• The Arctic is showing stunning winter warmth, and these scientists think they know why