Environment

Mystery solved: A poison formed by blue-green algae cause of mass extinction of bald eagles in southeastern US

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A substance from a previously unknown blue-green alga, also known as cyanobacteria, that lives on ground nettles in freshwater lakes is responsible for making various birds and other animals sick, according to research by teams at the University of Halle-Wittenberg in Germany and the University of Georgia.

The harmful substance finds its way into herbivorous fish, water birds, and turtles, which were eventually eaten by the bald eagles, say the researchers, solving the long-running mystery of the mass extinction of bald eagles in the southeastern US. Since the 1990s scientists have been searching for the “eagle killer poison” that causes nerve disorders in the birds which then lose control of their bodies and die.

Though it remains unclear why the bacteria produces the poison in some lakes but not in others, a unique bromine compound may be responsible, say researchers. It turns out that the bacteria need bromine to produce their poison and the scientists point out that a herbicide containing bromine is used in some lakes to destroy the invasive ground nettle.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Latin American Leftists not-so-hot on global warming

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Unlike in the US and Europe, the political left in South America is often mum on climate change, says an analysis by Americas Quarterly, which identifies a trend of diverging goals between leftist leaders and environmentalists in the region.

The report notes how Bolivia’s Evo Morales opened up the Tipnis Protected Area for energy exploration, and how in 2019 his country matched Brazil’s pro-deforestation record of President Bolsonaro with massive torchings inthe Amazon. Mexico’s Lopez Obrador and Venezuela’s Maduro are singled out as actively indifferent to environmental concerns, and former far-left Brazilian president Lula’s lack of criticism of Bolsonaro’s active deforestation. In all cases, says the report, environmental conditions have worsened considerably over the last years.

By Milan Sime Martinic

South Sudan to begin oil sector audit

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JUBA, South Sudan – South Sudan’s government has directed a full audit into its oil resource management after years of reports of mismanagement of the environment in the oil producing areas.

Caesar Oliha Marko, deputy chairperson for a government oversight committee to oversee implementation of the audit revealed that a U.S.-based firm will audit production and sale of crude since the independence of South Sudan in 2011.

The oversight committee was established in a presidential decree on Feb. 18 this year.

“It is a very serious audit — it is for the first time since 2011,” Marko told reporters in Juba on Monday.

The audit will “ensure the government adopts measures to ensure that loss and wastage of petroleum resources in the course of extraction, processing, transportation and exportation is kept to a bare minimum so that the country derives maximum financial benefits from its exploitation,” Marko said.

Commenting on the humanitarian side of the issue, Marko said, “We have heard about children born with deformities and we are yet to establish real findings to prove it true and if it is true, someone will be held accountable for and that is why someone has to do work to prove it scientific to us.”

“In regard to when the auditing will start, we have already started and that is why we are here we are working out procedures and the real work will start when the audit plan is approved by the government,” Marko said.

The Ministry of Petroleum announced the tender in January of 2020 targeting competent international companies to bid to undertake an environmental audit in the oil producing northern Upper Nile, Unity states and the newly created Ruweng Administrative Area.

By Benjamin Takpiny

‘Joujou’ is another name for hope in the Brazilian wetlands

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A male jaguar named Joujou has returned to his home sweet home in the wild.

In Brazil he has become a symbol of the efforts of environmentalists, volunteers and firefighters to protect and restore a much affected strip of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland area, which was ravaged by the fires last year.

Little by little, vegetation returning to the Serra do Amolar, a chain of mountains considered an environmental treasure because of the large number of species it houses.

Before the fires, 62 jaguars had been monitored in the region. Today, researchers are unable to say how many have survived and how many have returned to their habitat, which was scorched in the worst sequence of fires in 14 years. Between January and September of 2020, 2.3 million acres have been on fire, an area which is two times as big as the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Joujou the catJoujou has become a symbol of hope because he was shown on national TV with his paws burned. Some Brazilians said they cried in front of the screen when they saw the big cat suffering so much. In November, two jaguars were rescued. They could barely move. One of them didn’t make it. Joujou was taken to a center for housing and treatment of wild animals in the city of Campo Grande, capital of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

After months of intensive care, this example of the Americas’ biggest feline has recovered entirely and was flown back to Pantanal. Joujou now has a tracking collar and will be monitored for a year. He reached the hospital weighing just a hundred pounds. He now weighs almost 180 pounds.

Many other animals – including anteaters, armadillos, snakes, alligators and other jaguars – did not survive the blaze. However, Joujou, beautiful and strong, has been returned home safe and sound.

By Jorge Valente

Brazilian rainforest land for sale on Facebook’s Marketplace

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Plots as large as 2000 acres are being sold on the hyperlocal Marketplace section of the platform.

The Bolsonaro administration has taken criticism for looking the other way on encroachment into protected areas and deforestation, and indigenous groups have told the BBC that it is unwilling to stop these sales. “A common strategy is to deforest the land and then plead with politicians to abolish its protected status, on the basis it no longer serves its original purpose,” said the BBC report.

Illegal deforestation for timber often clears the land for cattle grazing, increasing its value as much as three-fold, and the practice is creating a growing land rush investment opportunity with Marketplace as its platform.

Facebook, for its part, says that its policies require users to follow the law, and reportedly said it is “willing to work with authorities,” but that it would not take unilateral action to take down the ads.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Commodity demand growth will go up, due to low-income households and green energy – Goldman Sachs

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Global head of commodities research at Goldman, Jeff Currie, stated his position on the future of the sector this week, citing two big factors why commodities would continue to go up.

One was that while historically stimulus benefited high-income households, current stimulus benefits low-income, who spend a lot more on commodities.

The second factor was the future prospects of oil. Because oil will be less in demand in the future, companies won’t be investing in bringing more oil to the market, even if oil prices rise.

Demand growth for oil, Currie said, would start to slow in 2024-2025 and after 2030 would decline. “What that means, the stimulus effect of all this green spending actually amplifies oil demand,” Curry posited, but, “If we know we have a blueprint for energy transition in the U.S., Europe and China, and the clock is ticking on oil, are you going to invest in long-lived oil production? The answer is ‘no.’ So the only thing you’re going to invest in is short cycle production in the U.S., Middle East and Russia. Everything else is too risky to make investments. The hurdle rate to get investment in this sector is substantially higher than what it was historically.”

Currie saw some potential inflation risk accompanying the demand-pull factors that are driving commodity prices. Commodities prices increases, he said, are in part due to the hedging of bond-holding portfolio managers dealing with inflation possibly creeping up into the 2% range.

By Sid Douglas

There is now a blueprint for energy transition in the US, Europe, and China

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Something that didn’t exist eight weeks ago.

With U.S. President Joe Biden rejoining 190 other countries in the Paris Climate Agreement, basically all countries on Earth are participating in a unified movement to combat global warming.

Under the agreement the U.S. plans to cut carbon emissions 25% from it’s 2005 levels by 2025 and contribute $3b to the cause. The U.S. is the world’s second biggest polluter after China, which last October announced a net-zero target for 2060. The EU is aiming at climate neutrality by 2050.

Biden’s election, as well as the stated goals of other world powers, have caused green energy companies to see significantly increased investment over the past months, a trend investors see continuing.

Global Sachs head of commodities research, Jeff Currie, spoke on the subject this week and said Goldman believed the green capex is going to be worth around $16t over the next decade. He compared that figure with the $10t China spent on green capex in its boom 2000’s, which in real terms is about the same amount.

By Sid Douglas

Switzerland endangering plant species – U of Bern research

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A recent study by U of Bern researchers has identified the major causes of increasing endangerment of plant species in the country.

Anne Kempel, author of the study that involved 420 botanists and worked together with the Swiss data and information center Info Flor, said that micropollutants, fertilizer pollution, the loss of natural flow dynamics due to river straightening, the use of rivers as a source of electricity, and the draining of bog areas are all troublesome for these plants.

By Milan Sime Martinić

European public opinion puts pressure on Brazil to decrease deforestation of the Amazon

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SAO PAULO – Recently, London-based YouGov conducted the poll that surveyed people in several European countries and reported that only 12% of those interviewed supported moving forward with the pact if the current rate of Amazon deforestation continues.

Unfavorable European public opinion may, it is thought, threaten the loss of the EU-Mercosur commercial accord, worth around $19t total. Brazil deforests it’s land more than the other three Mercosur members — Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay — combined.

By Milan Sime Martinić

 

 

French bank will stop financing companies that exploit deforested land in the Amazon

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Amazon deforestation
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Continuing a trend of European businesses moving independently to protect the Amazon, France’s BNP Paribas announced it will no longer finance companies that buy cattle or soy produced on deforested or converted Amazon lands after 2008. The measure also applies to deforested lands in Brazil’s Cerrado region, a threatened tropical savanna eco-region covering 20% of Brazil that has lost half its land to agricultural clearing.

PNB said it will only finance those who adopt a Cerrado strategy of Zero Deforestation by 2025, promoting criticism from environmentalists that it is weak action that gives deforesters a 5-year free pass in an area they see spiraling into a collapse of its biodiversity.

The immediate move to fight Amazon deforestation, however, will also affect Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Guyana, and French Guiana, which hold parts of the Amazon forest along with Brazil. An area the size of the state of Maryland was lost to deforestation in 2020.

By Milan Sime Martinić

Farmer accidentally kills 2.5% of country’s condor population with poison

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A Bolivian farmer accidentally killed 35 condors with strychnine while trying to protect his livestock from a puma living in the area, according to Bolivian authorities after a slow and much-criticized investigation.

The large number of deaths was likely due to the behavior of the species at the time of feeding, with sometimes as many as 40 condors feeding on one carcass, according to Huascar Bustillos Cayoja, a researcher with the University of Bern in Switzerland and a professor of Ecology and Protected Areas at Udabol University in Bolivia.

By Milan Sime Martinić