N4C Weekly Briefing: October 21 - November 1, 2022

Bolsonaro's defeat is a climate turning point

Axios, Andrew Freedman, 31 October

Axios covers the climate implications of Sunday's Brazilian run-off election, which will return leftist former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to office, defeating the hard right Jair Bolsonaro, are set to reverberate worldwide. Lula committed to achieving zero-deforestation in the Amazon. President Bolsonaro presided over the highest Amazon deforestation rates in 15 years, while Lula had enacted policies to protect the Amazon rainforest in his past terms. Studies show that human activities have pushed parts of the rainforest across the dividing line from a net carbon sink to a source . AP , The New York Times , TIME , The Guardian , Bloomberg , Economist , Al Jazeera , BBC , NPR , CNN , Bloomberg , The Hill , BusinessGreen , and TIME cover the election results. Mongabay , The Washington Post and Grist all report on the challenges Indigenous and environmentally conscious members of Brazil's Congress and Lula will face with a Bolsonaro loyal majority. Legal Planet shares a commentary from the Co-Project Directors of the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force celebrating the opportunity to work with a future Lula administration. Reuters reports that Lula will send representatives to next month's COP27 United Nations climate summit.

Report: Firms must boost investment in tropical forests to keep 1.5°C on track

BusinessGreen, Michael Holder, 31 October

BusinessGreen shares a new white paper from Emergent that provides an overview of emerging best practices for setting corporate climate and nature targets, and argues that investing in credible, high quality forest protection efforts and credits should form a crucial additional pillar of net zero strategies. The paper argues, even if every company adopted and implemented a science-based net zero target, there are no current trajectories for limiting global average temperature increases to 1.5°C by the end of the century without accompanying efforts to protect the world's remaining rainforests. It highlights that corporate climate leadership requires the protection of these forests, often through carbon markets, in addition to businesses' efforts to reduce emissions from their operations and value chains. Eco-Business covers a report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) that identifies the many ways forests are vital for the climate and nature, providing benefits that scientists are increasingly able to quantify, beyond just carbon storage. Reuters shares the findings of a report that states current climate pledges focus too much on land-based carbon sinks such as tree planting rather than food production and biodiversity. The Edge Singapore reports on a new white paper from Climate Impact X, Conservation International, Emergent, Natural Climate Solutions Alliance and the Wildlife Conservation Society guiding companies about using credits from High Forest, Low Deforestation (HFLD) jurisdictions within broader climate mitigation portfolios. The organizations behind the paper have formed a coalition mobilising support for the preservation of a quarter of the world’s forests that live in these jurisdictions. Financial Times covers a report that finds climate pledges made by countries worldwide are “dangerously overreliant” on tree planting and land restoration that would require an area greater than the size of the US and risked sparking conflict

Carbon Pulse reports that the Government of Nigeria is working on a? “billion dollar” voluntary carbon market as part of an African initiative to launch at COP27.

U.N.-backed investors set fresh targets in sustainable food shift

Reuters, Simon Jessop, 26 October

Reuters reports that a U.N.-backed group of global financial institutions including Dutch lender Rabobank on Thursday set out a series of company specific environmental and social targets aimed at helping drive a shift to a more sustainable food system. Set by a group of 11 firms in the Good Food Finance Network, including Nuveen Natural Capital and Mexican development lender FIRA, the new goals cover objectives such as stopping deforestation and expanding the use of agroforestry.

Scientists call for ‘climate smart’ forestry in face of global warming

Euractiv, Frédéric Simon, 27 October

Euractiv covers a letter sent to the European Commission, signed by over 550 scientists, alerting them of the deteriorating state of European forests and calling for climate-smart forestry practices – including wood harvesting for bioenergy – to bolster their resilience to global warming. Bioenergy has been criticised by environmental groups who say burning wood drives deforestation, destroys natural habitats, and undermines forests acting as carbon sinks in the fight against climate change. But the letter from the 550+ scientists disputes those claims, saying that continued forest maintenance – not blanket protection – is crucial to ensure forests continue providing so-called ecosystem services. Those arguments were refuted as “pro-biomass industry propaganda” by some environmentalists.?

The world’s healthiest forests are on Indigenous land. Here’s why.

Grist, Joseph Lee, 28 October

Grist dives into a new study that suggests that protecting Indigenous and human rights is not only compatible with climate conservation goals, but key to future efforts. Years of research has shown that Indigenous peoples are the world’s best land stewards and a crucial part of protecting biodiversity. The study in Current Biology found over two-thirds of high integrity forests have some human population and only 17.2 percent of the lands studied were wildlands: areas without any humans. Despite these results and other research highlighting the efficacy of Indigenous land management, global conservation efforts still often prioritize fortress conservation tactics, a conservation practice which holds that humans must be absent in order for biodiversity to thrive.?

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