🗞️ In Climate News

• 🌡️ Three years left to limit warming to 1.5C, leading scientists warn

  • The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

    That's the stark warning from more than 60 of the world's leading climate scientists in the most up-to-date assessment of the state of global warming.

• 🪫 Race to mine metals for EV batteries threatens marine paradise

  • Stark images, captured from a drone by environmental campaigners and shared with the BBC, appear to show how nickel mining has stripped forests and polluted waters in one of the most biodiverse marine habitats on Earth.

• 🪸 An explosion of sea urchins threatens to push coral reefs in Hawaii ‘past the point of recovery’

  • The turquoise water of Hōnaunau Bay in Hawaii, an area popular with snorkelers and divers, is teeming with spiny creatures that threaten to push the coral reef “past the point of recovery,” new research has found.

• 🇳🇿 New Zealand government sued over ‘inadequate’ plan to reduce emissions

  • Climate lawyers are taking the New Zealand government to court, alleging its plan to reduce planet-heating pollution contains “glaring holes,” which will have “huge consequences for our country.”

    Two groups, Lawyers for Climate Action NZ and the Environmental Law Initiative, argue that the government’s plan to reach net zero before 2050 is “neither credible nor capable” of reducing emissions.

• 🇧🇷 Brazil's soy farmers raze Amazon rainforest despite deforestation pact

  • Brazilian soy farmers are pushing further into the Amazon rainforest to plant more of their crops, putting pressure on a landmark deal signed two decades ago aimed at slowing deforestation.

    Many are taking advantage of a loophole in the Amazon Soy Moratorium, a voluntary agreement signed by the world's top grain traders in 2006 that they would not buy soy grown on land deforested after 2008.

• 🇨🇱 Chile's vital underwater forests face threats from mining, warming seas

  • In the cold seas off Chile's arid northern coast an underwater forest teems with life. Towers of red and green seaweed float upwards from the sea floor, providing food for wildlife, income for locals - and oxygen and carbon capture for the planet.

    For scientists, these forests hold even more potential as sustainable protein, food and other materials, though they are threatened by warming oceans and human pollution.

• 🇧🇷 Brazil & China megarailway raises deforestation warnings in the Amazon

  • Brazil is a country shaped by highways. The transportation model adopted by President Juscelino Kubitschek in the 1950s has been expanded by successive administrations across the political spectrum since then, involving substantial investments in road construction, maintenance and incentives for the automotive industry. This long-standing preference for cars, buses and trucks contributed to the decline and eventual scrapping of Brazil’s railway system.

• 🇵🇬 Papuan women’s mangrove forest in Indonesia is increasingly threatened by development and pollution

  • On the southeastern coast of the city of Jayapura, Petronela Merauje walked from house to house in her floating village inviting women to join her the next morning in the surrounding mangrove forests.

    Merauje and the women of her village, Enggros, practice the tradition of Tonotwiyat, which literally means “working in the forest.” For six generations, women from the 700-strong Papuan population there have worked among the mangroves collecting clams, fishing and gathering firewood.

• ⛏️ Global demand spurring Indonesia’s mining boom comes at a cost for many communities

  • The people of Kabaena — including Indigenous Bajau, a group that has traditionally lived near and relied on the sea — are among what experts estimate are thousands of communities around Indonesia where traditional ways of life have been devastated by the impacts of a rapidly expanding mining industry. Most of the materials mined in Indonesia fuel the international supply chain for stainless steel, electric vehicle batteries and more.

📈 Cool Trends

• 🇮🇩 Natural bridges to reconnect the last Javan gibbons

• 🪸 Creating reefs from pets’ and humans’ ashes

♾️ eco-story

Climate change is rapidly altering the way of life of the Indigenous Wayuu people, a semi-nomadic Indigenous group living in the arid La Guajira region, which spans northern Colombia and Venezuela.

Prolonged droughts, intensified by climate change, have worsened water scarcity, straining the Wayuu’s already limited access to drinking water and resources for livestock and agriculture. As rainfall becomes more erratic, food insecurity rises, with crops failing and livestock struggling to survive.

Health risks also escalate, with heat waves increasing dehydration and extreme weather events leading to flooding and waterborne diseases.

Their way of life is also being threatened as companies and the government — who want to capitalize on the region’s wind potential — seek to build wind farms.

A lot of the Wayuu population preserve traditional, semi-nomadic ways of living on “rancherias,” which are thatched-like roofed huts, made from dried cacti and mud and herd cattle and goats. They also have a traditional governance system and laws based on their cultural and spiritual practices.

The worsening conditions have forced many Wayuu to migrate, either to urban centers or across borders, further intensifying their socio-economic struggles. This displacement threatens their traditional livelihoods of farming, fishing and herding. The impacts extend beyond economics, as the Wayuu’s cultural identity, rooted in their spiritual connection to the land, is also at risk.

🌏 The Culture Column

📺 What we’re watching: The Territory

📸 Profile of the week: @culturalsurvival
📖 What we’re reading: Wayuu: People of the Columbian Desert by Benjamin Villegas
🤯 Shocking fact we learnt this week: La Guajira is one of the driest regions in South America. Coal giant Cerrejón has privatized the Ranchería River, fueling severe droughts that force Wayuu women to trek hours daily for water.