(National Geographic) Jane Goodall Joins Campaign To Plant A Trillion Trees By 2030

National Geographic - Michael Shapiro

Trees for Jane will support efforts underway, mostly in the developing world, to replenish the earth's trees.

British primatologist Jane Goodall walks at the CosmoCaixa science museum in Barcelona, Spain, in 2018. Photograph by Enric Fontcuberta, EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Jane Goodall, the renowned primatologist, is launching Trees for Jane on Tuesday, joining a global campaign to combat climate change by planting a trillion trees by 2030.

Goodall, a longtime National Geographic Explorer, made it clear that planting is just one aspect of Trees for Jane; there’s something even more important. “The key is protecting existing forest because those big trees already have stored CO2,” she said in a National Geographic interview.

Trees for Jane is one of a growing number of tree-planting campaigns around the world, aimed at removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Among others, Goodall’s effort joins the Trillion Tree Campaign and 1t.org, backed by the World Economic Forum and partnering with Trees for Jane.

Goodall, a United Nations Messenger of Peace, feels a strong “spiritual connection” to trees, she said in a Zoom conversation from her family home in southern England. “Trees absorb carbon dioxide. They give us oxygen. They help to make rain. So they are a gift.”

In A Trillion Trees, a short film being released during the UN’s Climate Action Week, which started on Monday, Goodall calls trees “God’s gift to humanity.” The number of trees Trillion Trees Campaign, 1t.org, and Trees for Jane seek to plant or preserve is staggering: 128 trees for every human on Earth.

Yet there’s a reason for that goal, Goodall said. The world now contains roughly three trillion trees, and the planet loses 15 billion trees a year, according to a 2015 mapping study in the journal Nature.

“I know that a trillion sounds like an insane number,” said Jeff Horowitz, Trees for Jane’s co-founder. “We’re not saying flat out that we’ll be able to succeed, but we want to come as close as we can.”

Supporting existing efforts

Trees for Jane will support “existing on-the-ground efforts” to protect and restore our planet’s biodiversity, Horowitz said. “Right out of the chute, we'll probably have 300 to 400 groups ready to go when it comes to planting trees for Jane. Shovels ready, trees in the ground on day one.”

Donations to Trees for Jane will support local groups working to stop deforestation, he said. And those who plant are asked to agree to care for the trees and monitor them until they’re established.

Forest preservation and tree planting are among natural climate solutions that together could provide up to one-third of the mitigation needed by 2030 to “avoid catastrophic warming,” said Susan Cook-Patton, senior forest restoration scientist for The Nature Conservancy. “We don’t always need to plant trees. When conditions are right, trees can grow back perfectly well on their own at a fraction of the cost.”

Of course, tree planting is not a substitute for reducing emissions, Cook-Patton said. “The most important action is to reduce fossil fuel emissions. However, even if we rapidly reduce emissions, we’re still going to need to remove carbon from the atmosphere to prevent catastrophic warming. That’s why carbon removal strategies like re-growing trees remain important.”

Some tree-planting efforts have come under fire from some scientists as being ineffective and counterproductive, since many programs don’t plant native species, essentially creating tree farms, not helping forests.

Cook-Patton’s message is clear: “Plant the right trees, in the right places, in the right way.” This means planting native trees where they historically lived. Goodall said this aligns precisely with the mission of Trees for Jane.

The U.N. warned last Friday that the world isn’t doing nearly enough to curb climate-changing emissions and is predicted to warm by a “catastrophic” 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit [2.7 degrees Celsius].

Advancing a movement

Tree planting to help the environment isn’t a new concept; it advanced in the 1970s when Kenyan activist Wangari Muta Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement. The group organized local women to plant a million trees as part of a broader environmental restoration effort in Kenya. Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, showed how tree planting could improve local ecosystems and empower communities by giving them new sources of income.

Trees for Jane seeks to build on that model and will work with communities in Africa and throughout the developing world. The TACARE program in Tanzania, supported by the Jane Goodall Institute, works to preserve the Gombe forest where Goodall studied chimpanzees. It’s one of many groups ready to work with Trees for Jane, Goodall said.

Re-greening urban centers is also part of the Trees for Jane plan. This could help take the heat off cities, said Ellie Cohen, CEO of The Climate Center, a California-based policy-action group. “Tree planting in urban areas with appropriate species can have benefits in addition to sequestering carbon, particularly in mitigating the heat-island effect,” she said.

“Study after study has shown that the poorest neighborhoods have the least amount of cooling vegetation. So tree planting in those areas can be essential to the survival of our communities.”

Goodall, noting that Trees for Jane encourages people to plant trees themselves or donate to support global efforts, said her love for trees dates back to her childhood. “Out there in the garden is Beech,” she said of the beech tree she could see through the window of the home where she grew up, and where she is now living.

“When I was a child, I loved Beech so much. I did my homework up there. I read books up there. I went to the tree when I was sad. When I was ten, I wrote out my own version of a will,” Goodall said. It stated that her grandmother, who owned the house, would leave Jane her favorite tree. “She signed it and left me Beech.”

Nearly eight decades later, Goodall is working tirelessly to share the gift of trees with the entire world, for the sake of the planet.

Links

• Trees for Jane Campaign
• Trillion Tree Campaig
• Conserving, restoring and growing 1 trillion trees by 2030
• Planting 1 trillion trees might not actually be a good idea 
• Are Huge Tree Planting Projects More Hype than Solution?
• Mapping tree density at a global scale
• Tree-planting programs can do more harm than good
• Planting trees helps fight climate change—but we need billions more seedlings

(AU SMH) UN Climate Official Warns Low Ambition Is Costing Australian Growth

Sydney Morning Herald -  Nick O'Malley

Australia’s failure to set a clear net zero target is taking the nation “further and further into an isolated corner on the world stage”, damaging its reputation and economic outlook, a senior United Nations climate official has warned.

UK Prime minister Boris Johnson at the launch of the UK-hosted COP26 UN Climate Summit, being held in partnership with Italy in Glasgow in November. Credit: Getty

“Australia and its companies stand to lose both reputationally and economically if it continues to stay on the outer of international efforts, and throws good money after bad,” said Nigel Topping, who was appointed UN High-Level Climate Action Champion by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as host of November’s COP26 climate talks in Glasgow.

“For the first time, there is now a fully unified G7 commitment to net zero by 2050, and Australia’s big client countries are stepping up their 2030 targets as well,” Mr Topping told a webinar on the business case for pursuing net zero targets, hosted by the UK high commission in Australia.

“There is no room whatsoever for any further investment in fossil fuels. And coal power must be phased out by 2030. Full stop.”
Nigel Topping, UN High Level Climate Action Champion.

“The IEA’s 1.5C report earlier this year could not have been clearer - there is no room whatsoever for any further investment in fossil fuels. And coal power must be phased out by 2030. Full stop.”

Glasgow summit

Xi says China will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said Australia will reach net zero as soon as possible, preferably before 2050, but Australia has not yet increased its goal of cutting emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030 in the face of increasing international pressure in the lead-up to COP26.

Mr Topping told the webinar, which was attended by NSW energy and environment Minister Matt Kean along with executives from the energy sector, that there was “international confusion” about the Australian government’s position given that the Paris Agreement required all countries to update their targets by COP26, “reflecting ‘their highest possible ambition’.”

Mr Topping said it was rare for him to address an audience in a country that had benefited so much from natural assets that have fed the carbon-intensive industrial revolution of the 20th Century, “but that also sits happily (and some may say, unfairly) on many of the golden eggs that will feed the necessary and now-inevitable transition to a net zero world”.

He was also heartened by the number of Australian companies that were working towards net zero.

He called on Australia and its business sector to join the “Race to Zero” campaign associated with COP26 and not be drawn into a debate over the need to set more ambitious targets or support technology development.

“We clearly need both.”

Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor told Sky News in August that the government was ambitious to meet and beat its targets.

“At the end of the day, the only thing that matters for global emissions is bringing them down, achievement. We have a very strong track record of achievement,” he said.

“We’re on track to meet and beat our 2030 targets. We’ve updated our projections each year, and we’ve improved them every year we’ve been in government.”

Links

• (AU The Age) Australia Can Up Its 2030 Climate Change Target, But Will It Be Enough
• (AU ABC) Most Fossil Fuels 'Must Stay Unburned' For One-In-Two Chance Of Meeting 1.5c Warming Limit
• (UK The Times) Climate Change Promises Dropped From UK-Australia Trade Deal
• (AU SMH) Top UN Official Calls For Australia To Urgently Dump Coal
• (AU The Guardian) Morrison Government Urged To Set Sector-Specific Emissions Reduction Target
• (The Conversation) Australia Is At Risk Of Taking The Wrong Tack At The Glasgow Climate Talks, And Slamming China Is Only Part Of It
• (AU ABC) Australia Widely Criticised Over Emission Reduction Targets Ahead Of COP26 Climate Talks

(AU AFR) Why Australia Is A Bigger Carbon Pariah Than We Think

AFR - Adrian Blundell-Wignall

Counting carbon-based exports burned and smelted by others makes Australia the world’s third largest emitter. We can’t disown them as easily as all that.

Australia has to share responsibility for China’s emissions.  Bloomberg

Author Adrian Blundell-Wignall writes on the world economy and is a former director of the OECD.

The Glasgow summit on climate change is looming, and we continue to see Australia pretending to be a small emitter of carbon dioxide on the global stage.

It is not by any means. It’s all about Scope III emissions. A subject that Australian governments don’t want to hear about. Both sides of politics are no better than the other, they both put their electoral interests ahead of any vision for the future.

As other countries begin to reduce demand for our mining products, Australia will need that vision to replace wishful thinking that promotes statements such as: Technology will fix things; If we don’t sell carbon-intensive products someone else will; We’re only responsible for 1.5 per cent of the total carbon dioxide emissions; It’s China and India that need to change, not us.

I find myself wondering what future Australian generations will come to think of our current decision-makers.

But let’s get to the heart of the matter, Scope III emissions. Australia puts out data on Scope I and Scope II emissions, covering what we burn here, fugitive emissions, and purchased electricity and other energy.

Scope III emissions for companies look at the whole supply chain, such as transporting resources and, most important of all, the use of our supplied products.

So, for example, if we dig out a lump of coal it doesn’t contribute much to global carbon dioxide. But when we ship it, and someone else burns it the carbon dioxide release is much larger.

To say we dig it out and supply it, but hey it’s not our responsibility if they choose to burn it, ignores the world our grandchildren will face.

It’s like those ads on television that push sports betting and other forms of gambling: Here is the product to bet all you want, but please be responsible with betting.

We don’t publish official Scope III emissions in Australia and, to be fair, part of the reason is that full supply chain calculations are not easy to make and only a handful of large-sophisticated companies do so.

Fortunately, these do include large mining companies such as BHP and Rio Tinto. They deserve credit for doing so (and may yet be the ones to take leadership for a sensible climate strategy).

So, using factors from their calculations we can have a go at applying them to just three basic product types: metals, petroleum/gas and coal, for Australia as a whole.

If someone can supply better Scope III data, please do so. But, in the meantime, let’s try to put some magnitude on our supply chain responsibility.

From 1.15pc to 9.4pc of emissions

In a nutshell, we take the mining company Scope I, II and III calculations, excluding anything produced in their overseas operations (like the Gulf of Mexico, Canada, etc).

The factors from this calculation are then applied to the government Scope I and II carbon dioxide data for metals, petroleum products and coal for the whole country. This focus is on mining and excludes Scope III from other industries.

Calculated this way, Australia is responsible for a total of 3320 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2019, roughly five times the official Scope I and II number.

Instead of 1.15 per cent of global carbon dioxide, Australia would be responsible for 9.4 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide, third place globally.

If every country calculated their carbon dioxide including Scope III in this full supply chain sense, our Scope III carbon dioxide would need to be removed from other country’s numbers to avoid double counting.

Should such large numbers be a surprise? Australia is the largest exporter of iron ore, gas and metallurgical coal. It runs second in thermal coal. They are smelted and burned away from our shores.

This sheeting of supply chain responsibility to the home country, of course, is not going to happen. But these back of the envelope calculations illustrate the magnitude of the responsibility that Australia wishes to disown.

It is a case of “please take our products and if you choose to use them, well then it is nothing to do with us”.

Instead, both sides of politics duck and weave. Like swearing they didn’t ask the UK to go easy on them in the FTA. Or the frenzied diplomacy to stop the UNESCO World Heritage Centre from declaring that our Great Barrier Reef is “in danger”, astounding as that seemed to most Aussies. All upside you would think.

But there were the coal ships to Japan, China, India and Korea to think of. Promises about zero net emissions in 2050 without pricing carbon because they will use things like carbon capture technology (that doesn’t deliver).

The government of the biggest mining state literally crowing about growth and its budget surplus that is no fault of its own and oblivious to Australia’s large Scope III role in climate change.

All the while catastrophic climate events trend upwards. In the 1980s, such events averaged 292 a year., according to Munich Re, then 462 a year, in the 1990-2010 period, 730 in the last decade, and a record 980 in 2020.

I asked earlier what future generations will think of our current decision-makers? I suspect a future government dealing with the mess of climate change will probably apologise to the nation for the short-sighted leaders of today who didn’t have a plan that included our kids.

Links

• Decarbonising starts with unglamorous tiny steps
• Australia’s access to capital may be strangled over climate stance
• Banks are two-faced when it comes to climate action: Market Forces
• Coal exports to plunge 80pc if world stays below 1.5 degrees, RBA says
• Let’s plan for net zero pains and gain
• 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan
• IFM Investors to carve out thermal coal exposure by 2030

(Vice) A Warning Sign Of A Mass Extinction Event Is On The Rise, Scientists Say

Vice - Becky Ferreira

Toxic microbial blooms thrived during the Great Dying, the most severe extinction in Earth's history, and they are proliferating again due to human activity.

Image: Andrew Lichtenstein / Contributor via Getty Images

Fish die as a result of algal bloom in Florida, 2021. 

If you live near a freshwater river or lake, odds are good that you have seen warning signs about harmful algal and bacterial blooms posted on its shores.

Alarmingly, a new study reports that these blooms may be early indicators of an ongoing ecological disaster, caused by humans, that eerily parallels the worst extinction event in Earth’s history.

Some 251 million years ago, the end-Permian event (EPE), popularly known as the “Great Dying,” wiped out nearly 90 percent of species on Earth, making it the most severe loss of life in our planet’s history.

Ominous parallels of that upheaval are now showing up on Earth, according to a team led by Chris Mays, a postdoctoral researcher and palaeobotanist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

The researchers found that toxic algal and bacterial blooms during the Great Dying are similar to a recent microbial proliferation in modern lakes and rivers—a trend that has been linked to human activities such as greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide), deforestation, and soil loss. 

“We are not there yet,” Mays said in an email, referring to the conditions of the EPE. “There was probably a six-fold increase in carbon dioxide during the EPE, but today carbon dioxide levels haven't yet doubled since pre-industrial times.” 

“But with the present steep increase in carbon dioxide, we're playing catch-up pretty well,” he cautioned. “And the chances of harmful microbial bloom events, along with many other deleterious facets of change (e.g., intense hurricanes, floods, wildfires), also rise...all the way up this steep carbon dioxide slope.” 

The repeated correlation of these blooms with mass extinction events is “a disconcerting signal for future environmental change,” report the researchers in a study published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications. Indeed, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest we are currently in the midst of yet another mass extinction event, caused by humans. 

Not only do microbial blooms transform freshwater habitats into “dead zones” that can both choke out other species, thereby increasing the severity of extinction events, they can also delay the recovery of ecosystems by millions of years, the team noted.

Mays and his colleagues reached this troubling conclusion by analyzing fossil records near Sydney, Australia, that were laid down before, during, and after the end-Permian extinction.

Though the exact mechanisms behind the Great Dying are a matter of debate, it was driven in part by an intense bout of volcanic eruptions that sparked a dramatic uptick in global temperatures and greenhouse gases emissions. Wildfires, droughts, and other disruptions swept across the woodlands, causing a collapse of plant life and widespread deforestation. 

The sudden loss of forests, which act as a sink for carbon, created a noticeable “coal gap” during the end-Permian that exposes this long-term interruption in carbon sequestration. Nutrients and soils that had once been metabolized by these botanical ecosystems instead seeped into nearby freshwater habitats, bolstering microbial blooms that were already thriving as a result of higher temperature and atmospheric carbon. 

These microbial communities are an integral part of freshwater ecosystems worldwide, but the effects of human-driven climate change—including wildfires, deforestation, soil loss, and drought—are driving a new bloom boom. 

“The three main ingredients for this kind of toxic soup are accelerated greenhouse gas emissions, high temperatures, and abundant nutrients,” Mays said. “During the EPE and other extreme warming events, volcanic eruptions provided the first two, while sudden deforestation caused the third. Specifically: when the trees were wiped out, the soils bled into the rivers and lakes, providing all the nutrients that the microbes would need.”

“Today, humans are providing all three of the ingredients in abundance,” he noted. “Carbon dioxide and warming are the inevitable byproducts of burning fossil fuels for hundreds of years, and we've provided copious nutrients into our waterways, mostly from agriculture and logging. Together, this mix has led to a sharp increase in freshwater toxic blooms.”

This pattern threatens to spread the reach of toxic sludge and create the kind of dangerous dead zones that contributed to the enormous ecological turmoil, and slow recovery, of the Great Dying. Indeed, Mays’ team drew comparisons between the End-Permian’s blooms and those that are flourishing today, including their texture, filamentous structure, strong fluorescence, and concentrations. 

“The concentrations of algae from the end-Permian event, the worst mass extinction in Earth's history, were as high as some bloom events we see today,” Mays said. “But the EPE blooms occurred without humans helping.”

The team notes that “the optimal growth temperature range” for these freshwater microbes is 20–32°C, which matches the estimated summer air temperatures during the early Triassic, the period that immediately followed the Permian, and is also within the range of projected temperatures at mid-latitudes for the year 2100, according to the study. 

“The beauty of looking at prehistoric extreme warming events, like the end-Permian, is that they provide, arguably, a cleaner signal of the consequences of climate change,” Mays noted. “This is because the fossils and rocks show us the results of warming without additional messy influences from humans” such as “nutrient influx from agriculture, deforestation via logging, extinctions by poaching/overfishing,” and more. 

“As it turns out, you can cause a large number of extinctions simply by releasing a lot of greenhouse gas in a short time frame,” he continued. “It doesn't matter where the gases come from―volcanoes, airplanes, coal-fired power plants―the results may end up the same.”

Clearly, it’s not encouraging to see the same ecological trends of the worst mass extinction event in Earth’s history popping up in freshwater systems all around us. Tracking the continued emergence of these blooms could help scientists predict the environmental costs of the climate crisis in the coming years and decades, which may also include an extremely delayed recovery of the ecosystems lost to the advance of microbial dead zones.

Mays and his colleagues also plan to study the role of wildfires in mass extinction, as well as the burning of crucial carbon sinks such as the wetlands of South America or the peatlands of Siberia.

“As we've seen in the fossil record, without these regions of carbon-dioxide-drawdown, the world can stay intolerably warm for hundreds of millennia,” Mays said. “While wildfires play an important role in some ecosystems, I think most scientists would agree that preventing the burning of carbon sinks should be a global priority if we want to help minimize the long-term impacts of warming.”

“Unlike the species that suffered the mass extinctions of the past,” he concluded, “we have the opportunity to prevent these toxic blooms by keeping our waterways clean and curbing our greenhouse gas emissions.”

Links

• Underwater Volcanoes Generate Enough Energy to Power the Entire US, Study Finds
• Earth's Biodiversity Could Take Millions of Years to Recover from Human Influence
• How Scientists Discovered a Massive Toxic Dump Site Off the LA Coast
• 'Zombie' Fires Threatening the Arctic Are Getting Worse, Study Finds
• Climate Change Is Forcing Animals to Quickly 'Shape-Shift,' Study Suggests
• A Heat Wave Has Triggered a ‘Massive Melting Event’ in Greenland
• 11,000 Scientists Declared a Climate Emergency In 2019. Now It's Even Worse
• Hawaii's Big Island Is Burning With the Biggest Wildfire It's Ever Seen

(ABC) China Will No Longer Fund Coal Projects Abroad, President Xi Jinping Pledges At The UN General Assembly

ABC News - AFP

The Chinese President remotely addresses the 76th session of the UNGA at UN headquarters in a pre-recorded message, September 21, 2021. (AP: UN Web TV)

Key Points China and the US are competing at the UN General Assembly to show leadership on climate change The US has doubled its contribution to countries affected by climate change under the Paris accord Last year, China brought three times more coal-fired power into operation than the rest of the world

China will stop funding coal projects overseas, Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced, all but ending the flow of public aid for the dirty energy contributing to the climate crisis.

Mr Xi made his announcement at the UN General Assembly where US President Joe Biden, seeking to show leadership in a growing competition with China, promised to double Washington's contribution to countries hardest hit by climate change.

China is still investing in coal, reducing the impact of Mr Xi's commitment, but it is by far the largest funder of coal projects in developing countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh as it goes on a global infrastructure-building blitz with its Belt and Road Initiative.

Mr Xi has vowed to accelerate efforts for China, the world's largest emitter, to go carbon neutral by 2060.

The State Bank of China has been accused by activists of being the largest financier of coal projects worldwide. (Reuters: Stringer/File photo)

"This requires tremendous hard work and we will make every effort to meet these goals," he said in a recorded address.

"China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad," Mr Xi said.

US climate envoy John Kerry responded to China's pledge not to build coal power plants abroad, saying he is "absolutely delighted" by the move.

China's announcement follows similar moves by South Korea and Japan, the only other nations that offered significant funds for coal projects.

Helen Mountford, vice-president for climate and economics at the World Resources Institute, said it was "a historic turning point away from the world's dirtiest fossil fuel."

"China's pledge shows that the firehose of international public financing for coal is being turned off," she said.

China brought 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power into operation last year — more than three times what was brought on line globally.

Non-governmental groups in a letter earlier this year said the state-run Bank of China was the largest single financier of coal projects, pumping in $US35 billion ($48.2 billion) since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015.

Biden doubles US support for climate-affected countries

China's promise comes as momentum builds ahead of a UN conference in November in Glasgow which aims to raise the ambitions of the Paris accord.

Support for action has been growing with the planet breaking record after record on high temperatures and witnessing devastating severe weather linked to climate change, including fires, severe storms and flooding.

President Joe Biden addresses the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York, September 21, 2021. (AP: Eduardo Munoz/Pool)

One key section of the Paris accord that has lagged behind is mobilising the $US100 billion ($137 billion) a year promised for nations hardest hit by global warming.

Mr Biden, who has put the environment high on his agenda after defeating his predecessor, climate change sceptic Donald Trump, said the United States would double its contribution.

"This will make the United States a leader in public climate finance," Mr Biden said.

Experts said that the announcement would take the American contribution to approximately $US11.4 billion ($15.7 billion) annually.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "encouraged" by the "important" US and Chinese announcements but warned that far more needed to be done to address climate change.

Last week Mr Guterres warned the world was on a "catastrophic" path to 2.7 degrees Celsius heating according to a new study by UN scientists.

The figure would shatter the temperature targets of the Paris climate agreement, which aimed for warming well below 2C and preferably capped at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Links

• China’s exit from offshore coal is at once momentous and insufficient
• ‘Big line in the sand’: China promises no new coal-fired power projects abroad
• Xi tells UN China will stop funding coal projects overseas
• ‘Game-changer’: China to stop funding overseas coal projects
• Coal in China Wikipedia

(AU) Updated Mapping Shows Aussie Beaches And Homes At Risk From Sea Level Rise

NEWS.com.au - Charis Chang

New mapping shows some of Australia’s most loved beaches may be lost if the world is too slow to act on climate change.

Coastal Risk Australia Want to know what the Australian coastline may look like in 2100? Coastal Risk Australia (CRA) has been developed to show you just that. It is an interactive map tool designed to communicate coastal inundation associated with sea level rise to the year 2100. Using Google Earth Engine technology, CRA allows you to investigate the extent of coastal inundation using the latest 3D models of the Australian coastline.  Data have been captured using airborne LiDAR technology to create detailed digital elevation models (DEMs), which are then combined with ‘bucket-fill’ inundation modelling to create the map-based visualisations. This capability has been developed through long term investments and partnerships between FrontierSI and NGIS Australia. The DEMs which underpin the inundation models are now available for download from Geoscience Australia at http://www.ga.gov.au/elvis/.

Some of Australia’s most pristine coastlines and iconic beaches could be washed away if action on climate change is not taken.

Updated interactive mapping from Coastal Risk Australia reveals the damage that beaches like Byron Bay and Manly in NSW, as well as Bells Beach and Brighton in Victoria could experience if the world follows a high emissions pathway.

It comes as analysis from the Reserve Bank of Australia found house prices were expected to fall by 10 per cent or more in some areas by 2050 because of climate change.

Global sea levels have already risen by 20cm (between 1901 and 2018) and the Australasia region, which includes New Zealand, has experienced even higher rates than the global average. More coastal flooding is expected as levels rise even further.

The latest predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report reveal further increases are largely locked in, with a rise of about 15cm to 30cm expected by around 2050.

“There is high confidence that [the] sea level will continue to rise, and well beyond the end of this century,” Dr James Goldie of the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub told news.com.au last month.

“This will contribute to increased coastal flooding and shoreline retreat along sandy coasts throughout Australia.”

The changes beyond 2050 will largely depend on what the world does to bring down emissions.

Coastal Risk Australia mapping showing the impacts of a 0.84m sea level rise in Byron Bay when combined with a high tide.

Map showing current levels of flooding in Byron.

Based on the current climate pledges that countries have made, there could be 3-4C of warming by 2100 and this is likely to see sea levels rise by about 70cm. If warming is kept to 2C, sea level rise could be as low as 50cm.

If the world follows a high emissions path, levels could rise between 63cm and 101cm.

The Coastal Risk Australia website, developed in partnership by FrontierSI and NGIS Australia, has based its mapping on a rise of 84cm, which is a mid-range value for the high emissions scenario.

Previously it used a figure of 74cm for its high emissions scenario.

The update shows that a sea level rise of 84cm combined with a high tide could see Byron Bay beach and large areas around its waterways inundated.

It also found homes and streets in suburbs in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania could be increasingly flooded.

“Australia is facing significant challenges, one of which is being more resilient to climate. The Coastal Risk Australia tool aims to place scientific modelling into the hands of the people so they can see for themselves how the areas they live in could be impacted in the future by climate change,” FrontierSI chief executive officer Graeme Kernich said.

NGIS Australia executive director Nathan Eaton said the organisation wanted to communicate how the IPCC’s latest projections would impact Australian coastal communities.

“By 2050, sea level change of 15cm to 30cm will be unavoidable. This means that coastal flooding will become worse during storm surges,” he said.

Large sandy stretches of Australian beaches could be washed away, including:

● Bells Beach, Brighton, Ocean Grove, St Kilda and Wye River beaches in Victoria

● Byron Bay and Manly in NSW

● Agnes Water, Burleigh Heads, Noosa and Whitehaven in Queensland

● Cottesloe and Coogee beaches in Western Australia

● Glenelg in South Australia

Some of Australia’s most pristine and famous beaches could disappear. Picture: Tim Marsden

Homes and streets in the following suburbs could be increasingly flooded, including:

● Albert Park, the Docklands, Middle Park, St Kilda and Williamstown in Victoria

● Bulimba and Hamilton in Queensland

● North Fremantle in Western Australia

● West Lakes in South Australia

● Lauderdale in Tasmania

Popular coastal tourist spots could be inundated, including:

● Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale in Victoria

● Ballina and Byron Bay in NSW

● Busselton and Mandurah in Western Australia

Links

• FrontierSI
• NGIS Australia
• Geoscience Australia
• Elevation Foundation Spatial Data
• CRC CANUTE Sea Level Rise Calculator
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (pdf)
• Coast Adapt: A Coastal Climate Risk Management Tool
• CSIRO Climate change in Australia
• Climate Change Science in the Australian Government

(The Guardian) Climate Crisis Leaving ‘Millions At Risk Of Trafficking And Slavery’

The Guardian - Sarah Johnson

Droughts and floods forcing workers from rural areas, leading to their exploitation in cities, report warns

Flooding in Lalmonirhat, Bangladesh. Desperate to cross to India for jobs, many victims of traffickers are forced into sweatshops or prostitution. Photograph: Barcroft Media/Getty

Millions of people forced to leave their homes because of severe drought and powerful cyclones are at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking over the coming decades, a new report warns.

The climate crisis and the increasing frequency of extreme weather disasters including floods, droughts and megafires are having a devastating effect on the livelihoods of people already living in poverty and making them more vulnerable to slavery, according to the report, published today.

Researchers from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and Anti-Slavery International found that drought in northern Ghana had led young men and women to migrate to major cities.

Many women begin working as porters and are at risk of trafficking, sexual exploitation and debt bondage – a form of modern slavery in which workers are trapped in work and exploited to pay off a huge debt.

Children working in an aluminium pot factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Up to 85 million children work in hazardous jobs around the world. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty

One woman, who migrated to Accra from northern Ghana, used to farm until the land was ruined by flooding and she was forced to move. For seven years she has worked as a porter (kayayie), carrying items on her head.

She said: “Working as a kayayie has not been easy for me. When I came here, I did not know anything about the work. I was told that the woman providing our pans will also feed us and give us accommodation. However, all my earnings go to her and only sometimes will she give me a small part of the money I’ve earned.”

She dropped a customer’s items once and had to pay for the damage, which she could not afford. The woman in charge paid up on condition that she repay her. She added: “I have been working endlessly and have not been able to repay.”

A woman from the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, who moved to Kolkata after a cyclone to support her family. Now she cannot return to home without her employer’s permission. Photograph: Somnath Hazra

In the Sundarbans, on the border between India and Bangladesh, severe cyclones have caused flooding in the delta, reducing the land available for farming.

With countries in the region tightening immigration restrictions, researchers found that smugglers and traffickers operating in the disaster-prone region were targeting widows and men desperate to cross the border to India to find employment and income.

Trafficking victims were often forced into hard labour and prostitution, with some working in sweatshops along the border.

Fran Witt, a climate change and modern slavery adviser at Anti-Slavery International, said: “Our research shows the domino effect of climate change on millions of people’s lives.

Extreme weather events contribute to environmental destruction, forcing people to leave their homes and leaving them vulnerable to trafficking, exploitation and slavery.”

The World Bank estimates that, by 2050, the impact of the climate crisis, such as poor crop yields, a lack of water and rising sea levels, will force more than 216 million people across six regions, including sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and Latin America, from their homes.

Climate disasters ‘caused more internal displacement than war’ in 2020. Read more

The report is a stark warning to world leaders in advance of the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in November and calls on them to make sure efforts to address the climate emergency also tackle modern slavery.

The report says labour and migrant rights abuses are disregardedin the interests of rapid economic growth and development.

Ritu Bharadwaj, a researcher for the IIED, said: “The world cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking that’s being fuelled by climate change. Addressing these issues needs to be part and parcel of global plans to tackle climate change.”

Links

• Climate Change Could Force 216 Million People to Migrate Within Their Own Countries by 2050
• International Institute for Environment and Development
• Climate-induced migration and vulnerability to modern slavery
• Anti-Slavery International
• Slavery & Human Trafficking Booming Thanks To Climate Change Induced Migrations