How a State Plans to Turn Coal Country Into Coding Country
Driven by a tech-industry vision of rural economic revival, Wyoming is requiring all of its K-12 public schools to offer computer science.
Category Archives: Climate Change
Carbon stored in Collective Lands
- Indigenous Peoples and local communities manage at least 17 percent (293,061 Mt) of the total carbon stored in the forestlands of assessed countries—a global estimate that is 5 times greater than shown in a previous analysis of aboveground tropical forest carbon, equivalent to 33 times the global energy emissions of 2017.
- Twenty two percent (217,991 MtC) of the forest carbon found in the 52 tropical and subtropical countries in this analysis is stewarded by communities, and one-third of this (72,079 MtC) is located in areas where Indigenous Peoples and local communities lack formal recognition of their tenure rights—putting them, their lands, and the carbon stored therein at risk.
- Soil organic carbon accounts for almost 65 percent (113,218 Mt) and nearly 90 percent (105,606 Mt) of the total forest carbon managed by communities in tropical and non-tropical forest countries, respectively. By protecting their forests and lands, communities are not only maintaining the carbon stored in the trees (above and below ground), but are also in effect protecting vast reservoirs of carbon that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere if the overlying forests were destroyed.
- Carbon storage in collective lands is far greater and more extensive than what can be assessed through available data. This assessment remains an underestimate of carbon stored in collective forestlands worldwide. The full extent of forests and other lands held by indigenous and local communities—and particularly those where communities have yet to achieve legal recognition of their rights—is unknown and spatially explicit data concerning these areas remains lacking. Thus, vast stores of carbon within collective lands in carbon-rich countries such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo remain undocumented. https://rightsandresources.org/en/publication/globalcarbonbaseline2018/#.XUnary2ZPOQ
Conflict and Food Security in Biodiversity hotspots
Global Hotspots of Conflict Risk between Food
Security and Biodiversity Conservation
Access to full text: http://mdpi.com/2073-445X/6/4/67
David Suzuki speaks out
Naomi Klein in her book, This Changes Everything, puts her finger right on the problem; and that is capitalism; the construct that we’ve made. And yet, capitalism, the economy, markets, corporations — these are human creations. You can’t change the rules of Nature. Our chemistry and biology dictate the way we have to live.
Yet — national borders, economies, or concepts like capitalism or communism — it’s crazy to act as if these things come before everything else. We can change those things; we can’t change Nature.
The Green Climate Fund is drafting a standard for Indigenous Peoples that could lift many other standards
With the call for public input just ending, the GCF will be incorporating more protections for Indigenous Peoples. Will this bring a new era of respect for Indigenous Peoples’ lands and resources, whether those lands have been formally titled or not? Will it lead to respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights in conservation and public protected areas? Already Indigenous Peoples and local communities conserve as much area as is in government-managed protected areas and invest significantly in protection and conservation activities.
http://www.greenclimate.fund/disclosure/ess-reports
http://www.greenclimate.fund/what-we-do/newsroom/announcements
Call for Public Input
Green Climate Fund Indigenous Peoples Policy
Deadline: 12 August 2017 at 23:59 Korean Standard Time
Peru government trying to stop illegal logging against powerful traders
Threats & violence against #Peru forest agencies follow attempt to seize illegal timber scheduled for export. http://larepublica.pe/impresa/politica/723051-operacion-amazonas-la-historia-de-la-mayor-incautacion-de-madera-de-origen-ilegal
Please RT! Support #Peru’s forest agencies working hard to shut down the illegal timber trade, despite violence & threats. #environmentaldefenders [ADD PHOTO OF COFFINS; SEE BELOW]
#Peru’s forest enforcement agency leaders’ names written on symbolic coffins after attempt to seize illegal timber bound for U.S. [ADD PHOTO OF COFFINS; SEE BELOW]Gov of #Peru must support forest agencies working to stop #illegallogging & illicit trade, as biggest exporters implicated in recent bust.VIDEO @repblumenauer’s speech on #environmentaldefenders in #Peru. US can use #LaceyAct, #FTA to fight timber mafias http://www.c-span.org/video/?401484-1/us-house-morning-hour&start=47
@Ollanta_HumalaT Congratulations on Peruvian agencies hard work to fight illegal timber trade, despite violence & threats.@Ollanta_HumalaT Excelente trabajo en luchar contra el comercio de madera ilegal, a pesar de la violencia y las amenazas.@Ollanta_HumalaT Perú está haciendo su parte en luchar contra el comercio de tala ilegal. Ahora le toca al Gov EEUU@Ollanta_HumalaT Urgente: protección y apoyo para las valientes instituciones del gob Peru luchando contra comercio de tala ilegal
Will the SDGs be as bold as the environmental agreements the World already signed on to
U.N. Post-2015 Development Agenda Adopted Amidst Closed-Door Deals
Bhumika Muchhala is Senior Policy Analyst, Finance and Development at Third World Network
The linked article by Bhumika reports on negotiating the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the World and finds that bolder language already in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the updating of the Climate Change conventions is being watered down in the SDGs. Why? Are we going backwards? In 1972 we wanted to ‘ensure’ sustainability, now it seems the negotiators want to replace all that ‘ensurance’ with just ‘promoting’ it. Forward or back?
Bumblebees are put on IUCN’s RED LIST of threatened species
The recently published European Red List of Bees revealed that 24% of Europe’s bumblebee species are threatened with extinction and 46% have a declining population. While this was only a regional assessment, it is likely that bumblebees in other parts of the world are faring similarly badly. Changes in land use, including agricultural intensification, as well as climate change and introduced pathogens are among the main threats to the world’s bumblebees.
Habitat destruction and degradation as a result of urbanisation and especially agricultural intensification is a major cause of bumblebee decline. Wide-scale conversion of wildflower meadows to monocultures deprives bumblebees of forage and potential nest sites. Agricultural insecticides can spread widely into the surrounding environment. They are often picked up by foraging bumblebees and carried back to their nests, poisoning working colony members as well as the developing brood. Herbicide use can also detrimentally affect bumblebees by killing their preferred forage plants.
Climate change is another growing threat to bumblebee populations, either affecting bumblebees directly or indirectly via their food plants. For example, the Vulnerable Bombus alpinus, a boreal-alpine species favouring higher altitudes, is declining in the southern Alps due to climate change reducing the amount of suitable habitat.
Trails and Tangents 