Tag: Climate Change

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Nearly three months after COP28, are we actually delivering on its promises?

The day before COP28 began in the UAE last November, a damning report was released by the Centre For Climate Reporting, confirming what many had already suspected: COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber had taken multiple meetings with various oil-producing countries throughout the year, likely swaying his priorities for the conference ahead. While Al Jaber’s legitimacy had already been in question, this latest report put his credibility on a cliff. As such, COP28 began with damage control: The first move of Al Jaber’s presidency was to operate the Loss and Damage fund based on recommendations from the Transitional Committee, achieving its passage with unanimous support.

It was an easy win, but not a big enough one—and just a couple months into 2024, I worry what was and wasn’t achieved at COP28 might be an arbiter for climate action in the year to come.

Although the fund’s operation was a step in the right direction—facilitating financial resources for countries already suffering the impacts of climate change—as written, many factors could prevent it from working as intended. Most notably, the Transitional Committee’s (questionable) recommendation to name the World Bank as the operation entity, and the absence of the equity principle, would both affect the fund's ability to assist the nations most vulnerable to climate inaction. To help with this, after the failure of an agreement at SB58, COP28 agreed on the Santiago Network as the fund’s host, operationalizing technical assistance for these countries in loss and damage matters. But it’s unclear if it will be enough.

It also wouldn’t be the only agreement reached during the conference that left something to be desired. After enabling the Loss and Damage fund, the parties focused on the most pressing matter of COP28: the global stocktake decision. In Article 14, the Paris Agreement defined a period of five years for reevaluating the treaty's implementation and projecting priorities for the following period, with COP28 designated for the first assessment. This year, the most polemic aspect of this negotiation focused on the phrase “fossil fuel phase out” (FFPO), an expression embraced and proposed by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) at COP23, in hopes of more ambitious climate action. Regrettably, based on the strong opposition of various oil-producing countries, the initial presidency draft of the global stocktake did not include the phrase FFPO anywhere in the text, causing upset among those supportive of its inclusion. This latter group comprised 127 parties, including the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC), the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), the EU, and even the US. However, despite overwhelming support, universal consensus is vital for adopting new decisions at COPs—and oil-producing countries did not give in to their demands.

Eventually, compromise was reached between the two opposing sides, and instead of using FFPO, the language was changed to include "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems" and “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” enabling the parties to reach an agreement. Although this small move towards ending fossil fuels is valuable, the latest draft of the stocktake leaves much room for interpretation as to what those two phrases mean—its language too vague to hold many parties accountable. For example, the text only calls for transitioning away from fossil fuels when used in energy systems, thus excluding some industries, such as transportation, from being asked to the same. There has also been talk of "transition fuels," which would be very favorable to the interests of polluting actors, allowing greenwashing commitments to take the place of actually transitioning away from fossil fuels. Ultimately, all of this suggests that although the revised text of the global stocktake decision was an improvement from the first draft, it does not ensure that polluting states and companies will not continue to exploit fossil fuels: It is merely a first step towards a better horizon, but still a very fragile one.

Helping to fortify that step, it was also decided that the Just Transition program—which advocates for shifting from an extractive to a regenerative economy worldwide, and is likely to be a vital part of the next global stocktake in 2028—would go into operation "immediately after" the end of COP28. But regarding climate finance—in other words, the means by which climate action is funded—it was decided a draft decision would be written later this year, the same year in which three workshops and three work program meetings will be held. The substance of what’s to come will remain for SB60 and COP29, and is perhaps the most impactful element of the upcoming negotiations.

In the interim, there is much that must be done—with a few key factors standing in the way. Consensus is a crucial element in climate negotiations, requiring broad agreements across parties to implement the objectives of the UNFCCC. But it remains unclear how exactly “consensus” is defined at these conferences, as Article 42 of the UNFCCC’s procedural rules—which present two alternative means to reach consensus—has not yet been adopted, leaving much space for interpretation and thus, conflict. At COP16 in Cancún, for example, Bolivia interpreted consensus to mean unanimity, and tried to block the agreed decision, believing it wasn't ambitious enough. In response, the COP16 presidency insisted that "the consensus rule does not imply unanimity, much less does it imply the possibility of a delegation exercising a right to veto after years of hard work and sacrifice [of the other parties]." Without an explicit definition, the possibility that some groups or states will attempt to block other agreements remains open.

For the climate regime's success, decisions adopted by the COP must be widely supported and legitimized. Currently, multilateralism and civil society both help ensure this is possible. At COP28, when oil-producing states opposed including FFPO in the decision text, both developing and developed nations joined forces to create the language in the current draft. But they were able to achieve this compromise, in part, because of outside support. Usually, the role of civil society is especially relevant in each stage leading up to every COP. Reports, statements, and advocacy are vital for influencing state agents in pursuing, prioritizing, and incorporating climate ambition into their decisions. At COP28, the typical preambular role of civil society was extended into the very conference itself. After receiving the presidency draft of the global stocktake decision, several demonstrations were organized within the venue in an attempt to pressure delegates to make improvements to it, and to make evident the public opinion that the original presidency draft would entail a regression for climate action. I believe these last minute demonstrations were crucial for the parties who wanted more climate ambition: Without their work and effort, the final version of the decision text would likely not have even mentioned fossil fuels at all.

Still, more consistency and clarity are needed to continue advancing climate action in the right direction, both in 2024 and beyond. The gaps in the "transitioning away" formula adopted by the parties will require immense caution moving forward. It is essential not to repeat COP26’s and COP27’s mistakes, where the former merely mentioned fossil fuels but the latter did not deliver any progress. The prospect of COP29 will not be easy, with another oil-producing host country and a former oil industry CEO as President of the Conference. All of the elements that prevented COP28 from being a fiasco are required and must be maximized in Azerbaijan. Achieving the phase out of fossil fuels depends on developing countries, especially, increasing climate action, and at COP29, developed countries should demonstrate their willingness to achieve the FFPO by committing and effectively transferring the necessary resources to these developing nations. As such, climate finance must be a priority. The fragile progress of COP28 requires a growth curve in the following COPs, setting ambitious targets and equivalent means for achieving them. Let's dream of a COP30, with the background of the Amazon in Belém do Para, actually establishing and moving towards the FFPO.

[post_title] => The State of Climate Action in 2024 [post_excerpt] => Nearly three months after COP28, are we actually delivering on its promises? [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => climate-action-2024-conference-of-the-parties-cop28-oil-ffpo [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6660 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

February 26, 2024August 28, 2024

The State of Climate Action in 2024

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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And why more effective climate multilateralism is how we can fix it.

According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released last year, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.” In other words, very little has changed from what we’ve known for decades: Climate change is real, it’s largely our fault, and we still aren’t doing nearly enough to reverse it.

After meticulous review of more than 14,000 papers published in the most prestigious journals, scientists from all 195 countries have once again firmly established that the Earth’s temperature has been steadily trending upwards since the Industrial Revolution. Climate disasters are worryingly increasing, and rising summer temperatures are already reaching levels unbearable for humans, ecosystems, and wildlife. Meanwhile, violent floods and unexpected rainstorms are ravaging cities and towns around the world. There are also the less perceptible and slower-onset symptoms, which have only further aggravated the bigger climate crisis. The North Pole’s steady decline, for example, is already wreaking havoc on vulnerable ecosystems and communities, decreasing coastal land for Small Island Developing States due to rising sea levels. Newly and acutely exposed, these nations have been forced to risk their lives and their little resources to cope without larger international support.

Echoing the movie Don’t Look Up, science is once again telling us that climatic distortions are happening, and every day the dimension and frequency of those distortions will only get more severe. Yet, despite the strong IPCC evidence and the current lived reality of climate impacts, certain segments of society, including large swaths of the media and various industries and governments, would still prefer not to “look up” at all. For them, opting for business-as-usual remains the more comfortable and profitable option, perpetuating a hazardous path of inaction. Even more concerning, these inactive groups have had a large influence in critical spaces for climate action, including recent international climate negotiations.

Since 1992, governments worldwide have convened at least twice a year, functioning under the umbrella of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), with the goal of increasing climate action. It is at these conferences that the states have adopted previous conventions, including the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement: The annual Conference of the Parties (COP) serves as the “supreme decision-making body of the Convention” and the key organ for the implementation of the year’s negotiations.

However, in recent years, momentum has stalled. While the urgency and need for climate action has only grown, the tide of inaction has, as well. The pace at which we are fighting climate change is too slow in comparison with how quickly severe climate effects have accelerated. After I returned from the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB58) this past June, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated: Slow action amidst rapid climate change is only going to lead to more critical scenarios—and the only path out of it is embracing multilateralism.

The vital role of climate multilateralism

The literature on climate change qualifies it as a “common concern of humankind,” reinforcing its global nature and, therefore, the shared responsibility of every country to confront it. At the same time, climate multilateralism acknowledges that certain countries share a greater responsibility for causing it, and should contribute more resources to its solutions. Developed nations, historically responsible for the vast majority of emissions that are today heating up our planet, must take the lead in reducing them and provide more vulnerable nations with the necessary resources to tackle the climate impacts they’ve caused. Similarly, groups that are disproportionately affected by climate change—including non-party stakeholders—deserve representation when it comes to discussing its solutions, an expansion of the concept that the UNFCCC defines as "inclusive multilateralism.”

The significance of climate multilateralism cannot be overstated; it has been the bedrock for previous crucial negotiations and agreements. Without it, we would be trying to face the global climate threat as individual nations rather than a cohesive whole, leading to fragmented strategies and inefficient outcomes. But it also comes with its own problems—less with the concept of climate multilateralism itself, and more with enhancing its efficacy.

"In other words, very little has changed from what we’ve known for decades: Climate change is real, it’s largely our fault, and we still aren’t doing nearly enough to reverse it."

Slow progress in climate negotiations

Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, climate negotiations have struggled to make major progress, due to everything from administrative issues to more fundamental challenges, like the constant obstacle of the fossil fuel industry’s interest in preventing it. But perhaps one of the biggest hurdles for progress has been how effectively time is spent at these conferences, and how negotiations are prioritized. For example, I had the opportunity to follow, as an observer, the Just Transition program negotiations in Bonn. This program advocates for a global shift “from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy,” and is one of multiple, ongoing negotiations that aims to ensure equitable outcomes when considering climate mitigation and adaptation. Initially, the discussions focused on making sure participating nations understood the concept of Just Transition, and different views emerged. Some developed countries stressed a narrow view of the program, connecting it only to labor and energy aspects, and excluding how various communities might potentially be affected by it. Alternatively, some developing countries, alongside a few developed ones, advocated for broadening the program’s framework, arguing for the necessity of fair transitions for different communities, and a more extensive scope beyond energy issues.

Having heard the discussion, and having done additional research on Just Transition, I was hopeful. These kinds of debates were necessary for global forums, and any agreements reached could eventually contribute to more commitments and implemented actions. However, my optimism dwindled during the second week, when—rather than continue with the negotiations—the negotiators chose to dedicate two days to discussing when they might be able to schedule a workshop on the topic for the parties and stakeholders interested.

While workshops are undeniably invaluable for complex issues, which in turn can facilitate agreements on more substantive matters, spending two sessions picking a date for a workshop seemed both inefficient and a waste of resources to me. Gathering delegations from almost every country is costly, so it’s crucial attendees prioritize agendas and methodologies that actually drive progress on climate action—not stall it further.

Sitting in the Just Transition negotiations, it became clear another crucial aspect affecting the efficacy of climate multilateralism is fairness. Delegations from less developed countries, often smaller in number, rely heavily on climate multilateralism in order to be heard. These nations, assuming huge efforts, send delegations to represent the voices of the most vulnerable communities from their respective countries. It is against the equity principle of the climate regime, then, to prioritize discussions on topics that while important, could be addressed elsewhere. This bureaucratization of negotiations impedes agreements on more substantive and relevant areas, and ignores the financial and operative efforts required of less developed countries, often preventing them from participating. Indeed, during the Just Transition program negotiation, it was the EU who began the debate on the date of the workshop, disregarding the efforts and budgeting of poorer countries and organizations, hoping to return to their home countries with more substantive and positive news than news of a forthcoming workshop.

Oil and gas lobbylists: Wolves in sheep's clothing

Another critical factor affecting climate negotiations is the substantive participation of lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry. These lobbyists, usually sponsored by countries with fossil fuel interests, have a clear objective: to impede and delay meaningful climate action. According to Global Witness, at COP 27, 636 registered fossil fuel lobbyists participated in climate talks, representing an increase of over 25% from COP 26. The same report points out there were more fossil fuel lobbyists than delegates from the ten countries most impacted by climate change at the same conference.

Although these lobbyists have the legitimate right to attend climate negotiations, their immense financial resources and support from oil-producing nations causes them to be overrepresented and to wield too much power. In addition, many of them are not transparent about the interests they represent, often adopting environmental or government badges to camouflage their advocacy against climate action.

A paradigmatic case that highlights the potential dangers of this was last year, when BP’s chair, Bernard Looney, alongside four other BP employees, attended COP 27 as delegates of Mauritania, a country where the company holds major investments. Mauritania, meanwhile, is a country that has been dramatically affected by climate change, showing the conflict of interest between the country’s most vulnerable communities and the people sent to represent them.

Fortunately, there have been positive steps toward promoting transparency and legitimacy in climate negotiations. During the last plenary of SB58, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell announced that from now on, “every single badged participant attending the event will be required to list their affiliation and relationship to that organization.” This significant transparency measure aims to ensure greater accountability for attendees, especially regarding the role of the fossil fuel industry in climate negotiations. During COP 28, scheduled for later this year, delegates will be required to fill a form designating the organization they represent, enhancing the integrity of negotiations and potentially combating some factors delaying progress.

As the pace of climate effects exceeds the progress of climate multilateralism, it becomes imperative to rethink and improve the way that our discussions and agreements take place. Climate multilateralism is indeed the most essential instrument for attaining global agreements and actions, making it crucial to enhance its efficacy in alignment with the urgent climate crisis—and we must take steps to ensure its success.

Transparency measures, combined with continued vigilance and accountability, are a good first step to help safeguard the integrity of climate negotiations. So is rethinking how best to delegate time and efforts at the conferences themselves: Effectiveness, efficiency, and fairness are all vital to maximizing and fostering actionable commitments, strengthening climate multilateralism, and galvanizing collective efforts towards a more resilient and sustainable world. By acknowledging the urgency of the situation and collectively working towards decisive action, we can build a more secure and thriving future for generations to come. Now, we just have to do it.

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September 29, 2023August 28, 2024

Why Global Climate Negotiations Have Stalled

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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Like most train enthusiasts, I’m all for high-speed rail. But there are benefits to taking the slow route.

Everyone had assured me the Nevada desert was the most boring part. Maybe because we happened to be there when the sun was setting, or maybe because my cabin was on the left side of the train, the highway out of sight, I thought it was the most spectacular.

I was heading east on the California Zephyr, an Amtrak train that joins Emeryville, California with Chicago, and all I could see out my window was desert, as vast and inhospitable as it must have looked a hundred and fifty years ago. I had always wanted to take the train through the American West, and a sale on last minute fares meant, for the first time, I could do it. For only slightly more than the cost of an airline ticket, I had purchased an 18-hour trip from the Bay Area to Salt Lake City via private room. By the time the sun was setting, I had about ten hours left in my trip—an hour more than I had been scheduled for, after a delay—but I didn’t care. I could have stayed on for days more and been happy.

Why couldn’t I go everywhere this way?

With climate change forcing some difficult decisions, expanding passenger rail transportation seems like one of the easiest ones we could make. Even at less than full capacity, trains emit far less carbon dioxide per passenger than any form of mechanized mass transit. But when national and regional governments talk of rail travel as a climate solution, the conversation inevitably tilts towards a certain category of rail—not trains like the California Zephyr, which are legacies of an earlier era of intracontinental transport and lurch at 80 or 90 kilometers per hour, but high-speed rail, like we see in Japan, China, and much of Europe. In the last two years, new high-speed trains that can run at speeds at or above 300 KPH have appeared in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Another, connecting Indonesia’s two largest cities, will take its first passengers as soon as next year. The European Union has vowed to triple its high-speed capacity by 2050, and there’s even an ambitious, but struggling, plan to bring actual, Japanese bullet trains to Texas.

Like many (maybe most) rail enthusiasts, I’m all for high-speed rail. But what if we’re missing something by devoting so much attention to this ultra-advanced mode of transport? There are benefits to taking the slow route. When speed is an overriding concern for our mass transit plans, entire towns and regions get left out. We lose more than just scenery, but the people who live outside major cities, or care to visit them. Solving climate change requires building a transit system that serves everyone, and to do that, we’ll need slow trains, too.

If high-speed rail is like a taut rope strung between city centers, slow rail is like a chain with many links that branch out into other chains—an often intricate web that connects entire regions. It’s why, in the heyday of passenger rail, when a train was typically the fastest and often the only way to travel long distances overland, it gave rise to entire corridors of human activity. Italy’s formation as a unified nation state, Canada’s consolidation of British Columbia into its burgeoning union, Russia’s conquest of Siberia, and the United States’ settlement of the American West all depended on railroads. Like any high-speed project today, those railroads were also major infrastructure projects. But the simplicity of their components meant they could meander in places, and be extended and adjoined with shorter lines as needed, like creeks feeding into major rivers, finding people where they were.

Where slow trains are the progeny of a 19th century legacy, high-speed trains are descendents of a completely different mode of transportation. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, passenger jets were just taking off and threatened to dominate long-distance travel all over the world. Fearing the end of long-distance overland travel, Japanese planners wanted to maintain a role for passenger rail, but the only way to do so was to make trains that were just as fast as the emergent passenger network in the sky. The realization led to the development of the world’s first high-speed train network, the Shinkansen. As Bob Gwynne, a curator at the British Railway Museum, explains in a video tour of one early Japanese bullet train, the Shinkansen’s designers—many of whom engineered military aircraft during World War II—wanted their trains to look their part as passenger jet competitors by adapting the same aesthetics, like bulbous nose cones and front windows that joined at sharp angles to resemble cockpits.

Even today, high-speed rail enthusiasts still talk about their favorite trains like earthbound passenger jets. It’s a comparison that invokes not just an image of speed, but also a certain kind of passenger—namely, business people who travel frequently and value comfort, but mostly just want to get from the center of one major city to another fast and with space to work on their laptop. For these travelers, high-speed rail is very nearly the perfect mode of long-distance transportation. But reworking the rail network to suit them hasn’t exactly benefited everyone else in the same way.

The reason is cost. High-speed trains à la the Shinkansen or France’s TGV not only cost more to ride, they also cost a lot more to build. Since they can’t run on slow-speed tracks, they need dedicated infrastructure, and that necessitates some enormous capital investments—often with very little return. A 2019 report from the European Court of Auditors found that various EU governments have spent enormous amounts of money on high-speed rail lines for often marginal gains. The Madrid-Galicia route, for instance, opened in 2019 and cost almost €14 million per kilometer to build. Its trains are designed to reach 300 KPH, but its average speed is only about a third that fast. Other routes, still under construction, have come at a higher cost with more questionable benefits. An incomplete Munich-Stuttgart route costs around €40 million per kilometer to save passengers, on average, less than an hour of travel time. These figures don’t even account for the enormous amount of power required to keep high-speed trains rolling. Even the most committed environmentalist can be forgiven at this point for wondering if the costs of tripling the size of the European network, as EU member states plan to do, would not outweigh the benefits—and whether the money might be better spent on some other, slower part of the rail system.

Even as humanity becomes an increasingly urban species, with a greater proportion of people living in cities than ever before, slow rail continues to link small and mid-sized towns to metropolitan centers, distributing the benefits of economic growth across a region. Riding the train across the American West today, one can begin to appreciate the vastness of the region and rail’s essential role in making it a single place. The train crosses farmland, mountains, and desert, with stops in big cities, like Sacramento, and small towns, like Colfax, California (population: 2,000) and Winnemucca, Nevada (7,400)—towns that were founded as railroad stops, and still benefit from Amtrak’s service.

By contrast, the extraordinary cost of high-speed rail means planning any but the most direct route can make a project unviable. In California, the French national railroad operator reportedly walked away from one of the biggest high-speed rail projects in the world partly because the state insisted on running a San Francisco-Los Angeles route inland through the Central Valley, instead of a more direct route closer to the coast. The Central Valley has been neglected from California’s development plans for decades, and the idea was to use high-speed trains to join four of its metro areas with a combined population of 2.5 million people to the rest of the state. Yet what would have made perfect sense for a slow rail project has made California’s high-speed rail plans so expensive, the entire project is now in doubt. The latest figures put the final bill at around $113 billion—more than four times the budget voters had originally approved, a figure likely to rise again before the trains are finally rolling.

By contrast, in 2021, Amtrak released a proposal for a systemwide upgrade. Among other advances, the plan called for new cars and more fuel-efficient locomotives, along with new stations in 160 areas their trains currently do not serve. Upgrading the service would increase revenue and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Amtrak said, and all for the cost of $75 billion over fifteen years. (The US Congress eventually gave Amtrak $66 billion as part of a major infrastructure bill.)

Perhaps it’s time we reconsidered our obsession with high-speed rail entirely. Instead of fixating on speed at the expense of just about everything else, we could demand a system which makes the breadth of its reach and the depth of its connection its leading ambitions. We might even retool our expectations of overland travel itself. When the time of our arrival is no longer the only thing we care about, we can turn our attention to other things—the view, the company, the book in our hands. On a trip like that, you might not think about where you’re going at all, or even care.

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December 23, 2022August 28, 2024

In Defense of Slow Rail

by Alex Park

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Everything you need to know about the treaty protecting environmental defenders in Latin America.

In 1988, three days before Christmas, Francisco “Chico” Alves Mendes Filho went to take a shower in his yard when he was assassinated by local cattle ranchers with a .22 rifle.

Mendes had been a Brazilian leader of the rubber tapper workers’ union, who advocated for Indigenous people’s rights and defended the Amazon rainforest against exploitation. The cattle ranchers who’d killed him were rural landowners, hoping to continue deforesting it. This wasn’t the first killing of an environmental defender in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), and it wouldn’t be the last. In 2016, almost 30 years after Chico Mendes's murder, Berta Cáceres, a Honduran Indigenous environmental defender, was killed by sicarios for her opposition to the construction of a dam in the Gualcarque River. Two different causes, two different countries, and two different times, but one motivation: to silence those who fought and defended the environment in Latin America.

Environmental defenders have contributed to halting 11% of environmentally damaging projects across the planet. However, the role comes with a high cost to their safety: Constant threats, violence, and hundreds of assassinations make their work incredibly dangerous. These attacks are mainly related to land disputes and environmental damage, and 70% are for defending forests.

Chico Mendes and his wife, Ilsamar, in 1988. Courtesy of Miranda Smith / Wikimedia.

The UN defines environmental human rights defenders as “individuals and groups who, in their personal or professional capacity and in a peaceful manner, strive to protect and promote human rights relating to the environment, including water, air, land, flora and fauna.” They use non-violent methods to protect the environment, contributing to preserving biodiversity and Indigenous rights. In 2000, the Human Rights Commission established the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, which included promoting environmental defenders' protection within their mandate. In 2019, the UN General Assembly recognized the contribution of environmental defenders to ecological protection and sustainable development, urging states to develop and appropriately fund protection initiatives for human rights defenders.

But this has proven tricky in Latin America. According to a 2021 Global Witness report titled “Last Line of Defence,” 165 environmental defenders were killed in LAC in 2020, a frightening number that illustrates how vulnerable activists are in the region. In addition, these attacks made up 73% of all attacks against environmental defenders in the world, making Latin America an especially hazardous area to protect the environment. The reason behind the frequency of these attacks is closely related to the region’s long history with extractive industries as a means of economic development. LAC is largely made up of developing countries, and many have opted to prioritize economic growth over environmental regulation. Vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous communities and poor local communities, have suffered the impacts of this the most, and in parallel, also act as the last line of defense when it comes to protecting the environment.

The regional response for protecting environmental defenders: The Escazú Agreement

Even though environmental regulations in Latin American countries have progressed in recent years, activists are still being murdered and attacked, and regional cooperation is required to ensure their protection. In 2012, a collective of LAC nations decided to draft an agreement implementing Principle 10 of the UN’s Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, with the goal of creating the LAC version of the Aarhus Convention. The agreement was adopted on March 4, 2018, in Escazú, Costa Rica—giving the treaty its name: the Escazú Agreement, or Acuerdo de Escazú. On April 22, 2021, nearly a decade after discussions first began, the Escazú Agreement went into effect, becoming the first environmental treaty in LAC.

The primary purpose of the treaty is to improve and guarantee the procedural human rights of access to information, public participation, and justice. Latin America is a region with severe economic inequalities that directly affect the political participation of the most vulnerable populations, excluding them from most decision-making processes. The Escazú Agreement, acknowledging this exclusionary situation and the numerous socio-environmental conflicts across the continents, sets new human rights standards, guaranteeing the most vulnerable communities are involved in environmental decision-making.

Concerning environmental defenders, the Escazú Agreement also seeks to change the dangerous circumstances they suffer across Latin America. First, the treaty states in Article 9 that “each [signing] party shall guarantee a safe and enabling environment for persons, groups and organizations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters ” In practice, this allows environmental defenders to act freely and safely, without fear of threat or harm.

The treaty also indicates that signing countries “shall take adequate and effective measures to recognize, protect and promote” the human rights of environmental defenders. This clause focuses on civil and political rights, reinforcing their right to life, freedom of opinion, freedom of movement, personal integrity, and peaceful assembly, among others. In addition, due to the historical impunity of the criminals who have perpetrated crimes against environmental defenders, the treaty reinforces due process for preventing and punishing attacks or threats made against them.

To further effectively protect environmental defenders, in April, the first Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Escazú Agreement established an ad hoc working group to create an action plan to be presented at the next COP. According to the initial COP, this working group would allow for significant public participation, “endeavouring to include persons or groups in vulnerable situations,” especially Indigenous people and local communities. This could mean that environmental defenders who have experienced attacks or threats themselves can now be a part of creating the action plan to prevent more attacks from happening in the future.

The purpose of all these rules is to protect the legitimate political work of environmental activists across Latin America. This progress is essential for making LAC more democratic and ecological; and indeed, defending those who risk their lives to protect the environment is vital for continually improving our democracies.

The problem, however, has been getting signatories to ratify it.

The vital need to adopt the treaty

Twenty-five countries have signed the Escazú Agreement so far, but only 13 have ratified it. Some have resisted signing it based on reasons of sovereignty or the vagueness of the treaty’s obligations. For instance, before Chilean president Gabriel Boric ratified the treaty, the former government of Sebastian Piñera decided to not sign it because he believed specifically protecting environmental activists would affect equality before the law.

Colombia, however, might be the most notable country to have not yet ratified the treaty, despite having the world's highest number of murdered environmental defenders (65) in 2020. Hopefully, the newly elected President, Gustavo Petro, will ratify Escazú, complying with his campaign promise to do so; because as long as countries continue not to honor it, the murders will continue to happen. Months ago in Brazil—another country that has not ratified the treaty—two environmental defenders were murdered in the Javari Valley: Dom Phillips, a British journalist, and Bruno Pereira, a Brazilian Indigenous rights defender. Since Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2019, environmental regulations have diminished in the country, as the Brazilian president continuously opens Indigenous reserves for commercial purposes, triggering environmental conflicts and putting defenders at risk. In addition, Bolsonaro's government legitimized armed land grabbers dedicated to attacking Indigenous and local communities and deforesting the Amazon by weakening all the environmental institutions focused on protecting the environment and Indigenous rights. As a result, the biggest country of LAC has aligned itself with extractive interests over human ones.

Although the situation with environmental defenders in LAC is critical, right-wing political parties and economic groups see Escazú as an obstacle to economic development. For decades, they have rejected increasing protective measures for those who oppose extractivist expansion. Political negotiations and effective treaty implementation by state parties are crucial elements for incorporating more nations into Escazú. One way to help do this is by increasing awareness of the treaty’s existence, and the goals it hopes to accomplish.

Courtesy of Camilo Freedman / APHOTOGRAFIA / Getty Images.

The Escazú Agreement: An example of defending the defenders

Following the Escazú Agreement's example, the interest in strengthening protections for environmental defenders is expanding to other continents. For example, Asia and Africa do not have any regional treaties to protect environmental defenders, but have organized cooperative networks to defend the defenders on the ground. In Africa, Natural Justice is supporting a powerful initiative, African Environmental Defenders, which aims to protect environmental defenders though an “emergency fund” to support their work. In Europe, environmental defenders are also taking priority. In 2021, the EU Parliament called its member states to take action to protect environmental defenders' human rights, showing that the threats and attacks on these activists are not only happening in the Global South.

As we face the ever-growing climate crisis, protecting the environment and our delicate ecosystems is crucial. Globally, the role of environmental defenders has been vital to stopping the ecological degradation of the planet. However, their silent and voluntary work is not recognized, despite risking their own lives to preserve the environment for the benefit of present and future generations. Therefore, it is fair and necessary to protect them and stop the impunity of those who abuse and attack activists for exploiting the environment to make a profit. By establishing the Escazú Agreement, Latin America contributed to showing an institutionalized path for protecting environmental defenders, a priority that every government should have—not only to protect the environment, but also democracy itself.

Additional fact checking by Sophia Cleary.

You Should Give a Sh*t About is an ongoing column highlighting local stories with a global impact.

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September 22, 2022August 28, 2024

You Should Give a Sh*t About: The Escazú Agreement

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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Meet Cole Bush, the shepherdess battling fire season with goats and sheep.

One morning last summer, Cole Bush was high up on a ridge in North Los Angeles County, shepherding her “flerd”—a mixed flock of sheep and herd of goat—from one paddock to another. Normally, this maneuver was routine; but something was wrong. When she turned around, in the distance far below, she spotted a hundred of her goats and sheep: They had slipped off into a high school parking lot and were eating the median. People were already gathering around them. Bush and her team ran down the steep hillside as quickly as they could and found a football coach surveying the scene. She began to explain what was going on: Her animals, now munching away on tufts of grass, weren’t just a prank gone awry. They were there to protect them from fire.

This answer likely surprised him, but Bush—who goes by BCB—explained that the animals were on the clock. Based out of Ojai Valley, in Ventura County, California, Bush’s business, Shepherdess Land and Livestock Co., is a for-hire grazing outfit that focuses on fire prevention and vegetation management. The work they do is tantamount to creating protective force fields; shepherding the flerd to eat brush, weeds, invasive plants—would-be fuel—so that fires won’t move as quickly or get as hot. The grazing is not to eradicate fires, but to ensure they’ll be smaller, more manageable, and to create defensible space.

Of course, the animals have no idea they’re rushing against time to prevent the destruction of property, livelihoods, and a potential great extinction. They’re just animals doing animal things; curious, hungry, and content to roam. They have good days and bad depending on the elements; on a hot day they might move more slowly. If there are interesting landscaped yards—or football fields—nearby, they might wander over to get a taste.

Still, they’re highly effective. As they roam, their hooves aerate the soil, making it healthier. They digest plants and turn them into food for the soil when they shit. “Their bodies know so much,” says Bush. From the womb, their gut biomes are prepared as their mothers introduce them to the local weeds and brush. From birth, they begin learning what they need and how to exist with the land; and when they stray, their shepherdess guides them home.

If it seems like an underreaction to employ goats and sheep to combat an ever-expanding fire season, that’s part of the point of Bush’s project. “We have a culture of fear around fire,” she says, when we need to feel empowered against it. And to feel powerful against an element that turns us into shut-ins, that paints the sky otherworldly colors and sends residents fleeing from their homes every year, Bush says, requires us to first re-examine our relationship to the land it ravages.

“A lot of our work is this idea of bridging, of the translation piece,” she says. “We’re at war with the earth when in fact we need to see that we’re a part of it.”

Bush grew up in San Diego, the chaparral region of California, a fire-prone ecosystem. In middle school, her family moved to a house in Elfin Forest, just north of the city, which they could afford because the forest itself had burned down.

In the barn, a young Bush could see the smoke stains on the stucco walls. “We lived in the shadows of the aftermath of fire,” she remembers. Even then she understood on some level, despite the ash and the charred remnants of trees, that fire was not a combative element. “How [the ecosystem] has evolved with fire is so important. But the way that we have not actively stewarded or tended to our landscapes has created the devastation of mega wildfires.”

It would be a long road before Bush would realize her place was among the “flerd.” Raised in the Church of Latter-Day Saints, she knew two things by the time she was 20: that she was queer, and that she had to leave the church. Still, she remembers an idyllic childhood. Her family would cross the border to Rosarito almost every Sunday, driving workers from her dad’s LED business home. In Mexico, they’d join them for community dinners, where Bush remembers not wanting to go back to the suburbs, back to the States, where neighbors lived close, but seemed to be strangers to one another.

As Bush began breaking away from the church, she became increasingly hungry for understanding what made groups—and cultures—cohere and thrive. She thought that built environments were the answer. She’d dropped out of college, but returned to school to take classes on the history of civilizations. “All of them c[a]me down to the same demise,” she learned, “which is lack of resources or depletion of resources.” Pivoting her focus, Bush began to gravitate towards agroecology and environmental studies. It was there that she learned about what would later be called regenerative agriculture. Now it’s a buzzword—a shell for many things, often conflated with sustainability—but for Bush, regeneration was tied to the idea of “ancient futures,” of taking lessons and traditions from the past and adapting them to a future sorely in need of change.

And then she met Becky, a border collie who worked at Star Creek Ranch in Santa Cruz County, California. When Becky’s owner had to leave town, Bush adopted her and started working at the ranch alongside her, taking photos of the goats and sheep Becky herded. She began to see the animals’ personalities emerge. The goats were the “bad kids on the block,” and the sheep did, indeed, prefer to stick together. They were also surprisingly sweet with their young. Bush was hooked. The ranch opened a grazing business, called Star Creek Land Stewards, and when it landed its first big contract in 2012, Bush became the project manager. She was 27, in charge of organizing thousands of acres of prescribed grazing.

When the owner wanted to retire and sell the ranch in 2014, Bush helped track down a family that traced its lineage back to European Basque shepherds to buy and run the business. Through them, Bush was helping to reinvigorate a shepherding tradition that had waned after WWII, when demand for wool and mutton fell, followed by another decline in the '60s, as synthetic fibers continued to gain in popularity. In addition to grazing, she started selling high-end hides—repurposing waste from the lamb industry—and began calling herself “a modern-day urban shepherdess.” She had found her calling.

Soon, she took off for Spain and France, where she studied not just shepherding but also the systems that allow young people to become shepherds. She was following in the footsteps of a tradition that had existed long before her; exploring what makes a shepherd a shepherd, and what might attract more people to the work—questions posed by respected researchers like Fred Provenza and Michel Meuret in books she’d studied. She was now certain that she had “sheep and goat in her blood,” and dreamed of a grazing school in California. She created a curriculum and developed a project called The Grazing School of the West despite having no students yet. Someday, she thought, it would be a place where people could work the land with each other, with a community supporting them as they experimented with a vocation that might end up being a life calling, like it was for her. “This ancient vocation somehow persists in contemporary times and will always be a part of humanity,” explains Bush. “Domesticating animals and agriculture is what allowed us to grow as a species on Earth.”

Now, she hoped those same tools might be used to help the species survive.

In 2017, the Thomas Fire raged through Southern California, burning nearly two-hundred and ninety-thousand acres of land over the course of a month. The city of Ojai was surrounded by flames, and though they never fully breached its perimeter, they destroyed more than seven-hundred and fifty homes in nearby Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. At the time, it was the largest fire in California’s history—and for Bush, it served as a wake up call.

Ojai Valley was a place Bush felt close to; she’d visited often and found herself more connected to nature there. She saw, too, that Southern California was in need of a new approach to fire, one that would not perpetuate the tropes of fear and flight, losing and winning, burning and rebuilding. It needed something different, something radical but not experimental, something reliable and time-tested. It needed goats, sheep, and shepherds. So, when she opened up her own prescribed grazing outfit in 2020—Shepherdess Land and Livestock Co.—she did it in Ojai.

At the time, she knew she was choosing to “be a part of this crazy capitalist system, go out and make money and create jobs for people so that I can pay them.” It was a risky path, but the goal was always to use the grazing company not only for fire prevention but also to subsidize training for a new generation of shepherds. Bush thinks that there is a boom coming in the U.S.; a wave of people who will be eager to dedicate themselves to the land. But they won’t have the same social safety nets, like shepherds in Europe, to help them as they learn. They’ll need to get paid. Last year, The Grazing School of the West welcomed its first cohort of eight trainees. This year Bush is training six, paying them a livable wage. She hopes to continue to expand the program to include twelve shepherds each year.

When trainees see the flerd for the first time, there is a high-frequency buzz of excitement in the air. When the first goat or sheep wanders off, they panic, thinking they’ll lose the animal. And at some point, the weight of being responsible for so many lives washes over them and the true nature of the work becomes clear. In her letter preparing interested would-be shepherds for the job, Bush warns that the work “will be the HARDEST work you could possibly imagine.” It’s mostly fence-building in one-hundred-degree heat and practicing patience with people who sometimes don’t know the difference between a sheep and a goat. Since it’s rare to be grazing far from private property, Bush has to invest in liability insurance for her flerd—in case they destroy landscaping or wander into the wrong yard or, in the worst case scenario, onto a highway. Not everyone is cut out for those realities, which Bush admits don’t appear on her social media, and leads to a swath of applicants who have never done manual labor but have done a lot of Instagramming. “I made it look way too beautiful and cool,” she says. “And I'm looking at some applicants, and I'm just like, Oh, no, this is an issue.”

Still, Bush is also turning away applicants who would be good fits. “[Prescribed grazing is] a huge burgeoning industry, and the biggest bottleneck is a skilled and trained workforce,” she says. She doesn’t have the resources to expand her program, and no one else seems to either. In Bush’s experience, young folks do want to become shepherds. But she’s left wondering, “What is the barrier to getting these people trained for more businesses and more hands on the ground?” The David vs. Goliath framing, made so common by climate change, leaving smaller actors feeling impotent, weighs on her. “I would say pretty regularly I am overwhelmed with emotion because I just wish I could do more faster,” she says. Twelve new shepherds a year is not going to solve the chaos that’s already happening. And it’s frustrating when there are plenty more than twelve people who want to and could become shepherds.

Lately, with a team she can trust on the ground, Bush has been taking more time away from the day-to-day operations and focusing on education. Usually, and especially with fire, we wait for a fight to make itself plain and then send out the troops, sparing no expense. But there is another way—and Bush is trying to build bridges to decision makers who can help push structural change. In order to scale ideas, it’s all about getting funds from the state level to specific, grassroots level grazing projects, she says. One of her most radical ideas would be to bring goats into prisons, instead of sending inmates to go out and fight fires, a dangerous and grueling task. “Why don't we train inmates to learn how to manage and work with livestock?” Bush asks. “To do the same work that we're doing and also have such incredible healing components with working with animals?” These are the types of ideas she hopes to bring to the table; to prioritize prevention over fear and connection over combativeness.

The numbers don’t seem to be in Bush’s favor, nor does time, as fire season continues to expand; 2.5 million acres of land in California burned in 2021 alone. But that’s the thing about a calling: Once you answer it you have to find your way forward. If a few meetings with assembly members go well, if a few more shepherds learn quickly, then Bush might be able to shift just a few more people’s perception of fire, of animals, of the land. In turn, the path might open a bit wider for the boom of ecological doctors and modern-day shepherds that she sees coming.

With every successful connection made and bridge built, Bush stays hopeful. In the high school parking lot, as she handed the football coach her card and talked to the observers, she quickly diffused a potentially fraught situation. By the end of the day the onlookers were spreading the word that the “flerd” was in the neighborhood with a purpose, and that if anyone found animals suddenly roaming alongside them, they didn’t have to panic; they were exactly where they needed to be.

In the end, Bush considers herself a herder of humans as well as animals. And if nothing else, humans need to figure out how to give ourselves more time, so we might have more chances to adjust. As she writes in her closing line of the letter she sends to prospective shepherds, “It's a daunting world in society these days and the Earth is throwing out all kinds of loud cries for humanity to get a grip. We can do our part even if small and maybe we can herd on together for some time.”

Additional fact checking by Elizabeth Moss.

*The Footnotes

Editor’s Note: At The Conversationalist, we understand that no story exists in a vacuum, and every story is built on the work of others before us, whether in ways big or small. We are likewise dedicated to spotlighting the voices of those who have been or continue to be oppressed, disregarded, and/or otherwise silenced, in an effort to reverse centuries of often intentional erasure. Because of this, we have opted to include “footnotes” on certain stories to give readers additional context and reading material where it feels relevant and beneficial.

Additional Reading: The Art & Science of Shepherding, edited by Michel Meuret and Fred Provenza

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August 31, 2022August 28, 2024

Fighting Fire with Flerd

by Allison Keeley

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