🗞️ In Climate News

• 🇰🇭 Indigenous community calls out Cambodian REDD+ project as tensions simmer in the Cardamoms

  • Human Rights Watch published a 118-page report detailing allegations of physical abuse, threats, violence and a failure to meet best practice standards by Wildlife Alliance and the Ministry of Environment in February 2024.

• 🇸🇻 Mangroves at risk as El Salvador begins work on new airport

  • Officials broke ground February 25 on the Airport of the Pacific near the coastal town of La Unión, in eastern El Salvador, an area rich in mangrove ecosystems that support wildlife and prevent coastal erosion. Many communities in the area worry that the airport will spark a wave of unregulated development that could result in even more environmental damage.

• 🇺🇸 US exits fund that compensates poorer countries for global heating

  • The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.

• ❄️ Global sea ice hit record low in February, scientists say

  • The combined area of ice around the north and south poles hit a new daily minimum in early February and stayed below the previous record for the rest of the month, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on Thursday.

• 🦋 America’s butterflies are disappearing at a catastrophic rate

  • The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.

• 🇦🇷 Argentina declares three-day mourning as flood death toll rises to at least 16

  • The deadly floods struck Friday when a year's worth of rain fell in a matter of hours in and around Bahia Blanca, a major port city located in the south of Buenos Aires province, with entire neighborhoods inundated by the fast-rising waters.

• 🇯🇵 Japan battles largest wildfire in decades

  • More than a thousand people have been evacuated as Japan battles its largest wildfire in more than three decades.

    The flames are estimated to have spread over about 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) in the forest of Ofunato in the northern region of Iwate since a fire broke out on Wednesday, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

• 🇸🇸 South Sudanese women disproportionally affected by climate change-fuelled heat

  • Researchers have found that women and girls in the conflict-torn nation of South Sudan are facing greater health risks and worsened inequality due to the negative impacts of climate change as the country battles record-breaking heat.

• 🌏 Over 100 daily child deaths linked to air pollution in East Asia

  • The agency found that all 500 million children living in the region are exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution. Of them, 235 million live in countries where average annual particulate matter (PM2.5) levels exceed levels deemed safe by the World Health Organization (WHO) by more than five times.

• 🇮🇳 Climate change intensifies India's heatwave crisis as El Nino looms

  • As India grapples with unusually high temperatures, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted an early and intense summer this year, with prolonged heatwaves. The country recently saw its warmest February since 1901, along with one of the driest winters in recent history, which has raised concerns about the ongoing climate crisis.

📈 Cool Trends

• 🌫️ Fog harvesting to provide water for arid cities

• 🎨 Creating underwater museums against trawling

♾️ eco-story

Isaac Romero’s transformation, from a high-pressure role at Inditex to becoming a passionate advocate for regenerative agriculture, is a tale of rediscovery, purpose and hope for a more sustainable future.

“I used to work at Inditex, in their footwear division in Alicante.”

Inditex, the Spanish multinational known for brands like Zara and Bershka, is one of the largest fashion retailers in the world. The company — now worth over $170 billion (USD) — epitomises fast fashion, a business model that encourages rapid turnover of styles to meet high consumer demand.

“It was an ultra-consumerist world, and it was draining me. My job was to boost sales, to constantly push for more and more, but in my personal life, I had stopped buying almost anything; I no longer believed in the system I was a part of.”

🌏 The Culture Column

📺 What we’re watching: To which we belong

📸 Profile of the week: @richardperkins.co
📖 What we’re reading: For the Love of Soil: Strategies to Regenerate Our Food Production Systems, by Nicole Masters
🤯 Shocking fact we learnt this week: Indigenous peoples around the world have been practicing regenerative agriculture for more than a thousand years