Por que o Brasil ainda aposta em termelétricas. Entre a justificativa de segurança energética e o lobby do gás e do carvão, país mantém usinas que emitem mais gases do efeito estufa que a cidade de São Paulo.

 

Para pesquisador, interesses econômicos estão por trás de grande parte das termelétricas

 Maurício Frighetto

 

Uma audiência pública sobre a instalação de uma termelétrica a gás natural em Samambaia (DF), a cerca de 35 quilômetros da praça dos Três Poderes, foi suspensa pela Justiça em março porque a população não teve tempo hábil para ser informada. Um mês antes, duas empresas desistiram de construir uma usina a carvão em Candiota e Hulha Negra, no Rio Grande do Sul, após o empreendimento ser questionado judicialmente.

Os dois casos geram intensos debates sobre os impactos ambientais locais desses empreendimentos e sobre a emissão de gases de efeito estufa, responsáveis pelo aquecimento global. E reforçam o questionamento: por que o Brasil ainda investe em termelétricas movidas a combustíveis fósseis, como gás natural e carvão, em plena crise climática?

O principal argumento a favor das termelétricas é a segurança energética. Ou seja, elas poderiam ser acionadas a qualquer momento, independentemente das condições climáticas, como possível falta de água, vento ou sol. Essa foi a justificativa usada pelo Ministério de Minas e Energia (MME) durante o lançamento do Plano Decenal de Expansão de Energia 2034 na defesa do "fortalecimento da geração termelétrica".

Um estudo publicado em dezembro pela ONG Instituto de Energia e Meio Ambiente (IEMA) mostrou que as 67 termelétricas fósseis conectadas ao Sistema Interligado Nacional (SIN) emitiram, em 2023, 17,9 milhões de toneladas de gás carbônico (CO₂), o principal responsável pelo aquecimento global.

Para se ter uma ideia da magnitude dessas emissões, alertou a pesquisadora do IEMA, Raíssa Gomes, as termelétricas fósseis lançaram na atmosfera mais gás carbônico do que o município de São Paulo. Segundo dados do Sistema de Estimativas de Emissões e Remoções de Gases de Efeito Estufa (SEEG), os paulistanos foram responsáveis por emitir 14,5 milhões de toneladas do gás em 2023.

"Ou seja, apenas as térmicas fósseis do SIN emitiram mais gases de efeito estufa do que a maior cidade do país, com seus mais de 11 milhões de habitantes e intensa atividade econômica", comparou a pesquisadora.

Entre lobbies e jabutis

Para o físico especializado em mudanças climáticas e pesquisador do Instituto ClimaInfo, Shigueo Watanabe Jr, outras alternativas poderiam reduzir a necessidade das termelétricas, como a "repotencialização das hidrelétricas". "A maior parte das hidrelétricas do Sudeste foram construídas na década de 1970, 1980. Mas hoje a situação é diferente. Se você trocar as turbinas, tem um ganho potencial de energia e de potência sem mexer na altura do reservatório, sem mexer em nada da parte física", disse.

Além disso, segundo o especialista, também há previsibilidade em relação ao vento e ao sol. "Se eu fosse um planejador energético, estaria muito mais preocupado com o preço do gás. A Rússia invade a Ucrânia, e o preço do gás dispara. Aí o Catar fala assim: 'Não, tá muito alto, eu vou bombar mais gás, o preço do gás cai.' É totalmente imprevisível", avaliou.

Para o pesquisador, os interesses econômicos estão por trás de grande parte das termelétricas. "Existe um lobby muito forte para alavancar mais ainda o gás natural. Toda vez que você tem alguma obra de uma termelétrica, há vários interesses políticos e econômicos e um lobby muito forte dentro do Congresso e dentro dos ministérios para poder ter mais gás, mais termelétrica."

 

Esse lobby pode ser visto em dois jabutis colocados em leis na área de energia – o termo é usado para designar um apêndice incluído em um projeto que trata de tema diferente do assunto principal. Em 2021, o Congresso Nacional aprovou uma lei que viabilizou a privatização da Eletrobras. Mas os congressistas colocaram no texto a obrigação da contratação de 8 gigawatt (GW) de eletricidade das termelétricas a gás natural sem infraestrutura de distribuição.

Já no projeto de lei que discutiu o marco legal para a geração de energia eólica offshore (em alto mar), os parlamentares acrescentaram a obrigação de contratar 4,25 GW de usinas termelétricas a gás natural. Eles também prorrogaram os contratos das usinas a carvão de 2040 para 2050. Em janeiro, o presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva sancionou o projeto, mas vetou os jabutis, alegando que iam na contramão da lei sancionada, por serem matrizes mais poluidoras, caras e ineficientes. O Congresso ainda pode derrubar os vetos presidenciais.

 

Crise de 2001

A história das termelétricas atuais está relacionada com a crise de 2001, quando houve forte escassez de chuva, comprometendo os reservatórios de água das usinas hidrelétricas e o fornecimento de energia. "A maior parte das termelétricas que estão em operação hoje vieram do apagão que teve no governo Fernando Henrique. Eles criaram um programa prioritário de térmicas, que era basicamente térmicas a gás. Naquela época já se falava em aquecimento global, mas nada parecido com o que se fala hoje", lembrou Watanabe Jr.

De acordo com Raíssa Gomes, com a expansão das fontes renováveis como a solar e a eólica, há uma transição em curso para que as térmicas fósseis operem cada vez mais de forma pontual, apenas em períodos de maior demanda ou baixa geração renovável. "Essa transição é fundamental, pois as termelétricas fósseis, ao contrário das fontes renováveis, são altamente emissoras de gases de efeito estufa e de emissões atmosféricas locais como óxidos de nitrogênio, enxofre, monóxido de carbono e material particulado."

Além disso, segundo a pesquisadora, dependendo do sistema de resfriamento adotado, as usinas podem ter um elevado consumo de água, o que agrava a pressão sobre os recursos hídricos. "Soma-se a isso o fato de que a geração térmica, especialmente com combustíveis fósseis, tende a ser mais cara, contribuindo para o aumento nas tarifas de energia elétrica."

A questão climática no licenciamento

A Usina Nova Seival, projetada para ser instalada em Candiota e Hulha Negra, no Rio Grande do Sul, consumiria cerca de 12,6 mil toneladas de carvão por dia. Além disso, usaria água equivalente ao consumo diário de um município de 230 mil habitantes.

Repotencialização das atuais hidrelétricas é uma alternativa às termelétricas

Organizações como o Instituto Gaúcho de Estudos Ambientais (InGá) e a Associação Gaúcha de Proteção ao Ambiente Natural (Agapan) entraram com uma ação na Justiça fazendo uma série de questionamentos: solicitaram audiências públicas, mostraram inconsistências nos estudos e pediram a suspensão do licenciamento ambiental.

Em fevereiro, a Energia da Campanha Ltda e a Copelmi Mineração Ltda desistiram do empreendimento. Mesmo assim, o Tribunal Regional Federal da 4ª Região (TRF-4) confirmou um pedido das entidades: que o Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renováveis (Ibama) considere os impactos climáticos nos próximos licenciamentos ambientais.

"A decisão inclui o componente climático no licenciamento ambiental de termelétricas no Rio Grande do Sul. Ela determina e obriga que, a partir de agora, isso seja sempre observado pelo Ibama. Isso significa a inclusão das diretrizes da Política Nacional da Mudança do Clima e da Política Gaúcha da Mudança do Clima", explicou o advogado da InGá e Agapan, Marcelo Mossmann.

Para a pesquisadora do IEMA, Raíssa Gomes, é fundamental a avaliação das emissões de gases de efeito estufa das usinas termelétricas. "No entanto, esta análise não pode ocorrer isoladamente e tão somente no licenciamento ambiental. É essencial que se realize uma avaliação ambiental estratégica (AAE), que incorpore também aspectos locacionais – como a qualidade do ar, a capacidade de monitoramento ambiental e a disponibilidade hídrica – além de critérios socioambientais."

A pesquisadora também chamou a atenção para o número crescente de projetos de termelétricas em processo de licenciamento ambiental no país. "Estima-se que existam cerca de cem empreendimentos em diferentes fases de tramitação, sinalizando o interesse dos investidores em disputar futuros leilões. No entanto, os leilões anteriores já demonstraram falhas importantes na seleção de projetos, como a habilitação de usinas sem a licença ambiental prévia, que é um requisito mínimo para participação.

Glacier collapse buries most of Swiss village.

 

Watch: Glacier collapse swallows part of Blatten

Imogen Foulkes

BBC News in Bern

 

 

The Swiss village of Blatten has been partially destroyed after a huge chunk of glacier crashed down into the valley.

Although the village had been evacuated some days ago because of fears the Birch glacier was disintegrating, one person has been reported missing, and many homes have been completely flattened.

Blatten's mayor, Matthias Bellwald, said "the unimaginable has happened" but promised the village still had a future.

Local authorities have requested support from the Swiss army's disaster relief unit and members of the Swiss government are on their way to the scene.

 

The disaster that has befallen Blatten is the worst nightmare for communities across the Alps.

The village's 300 inhabitants had to leave their homes on 19 May after geologists monitoring the area warned that the glacier appeared unstable. Now many of them may never be able to return.

Appearing to fight back tears, Bellwald said: "We have lost our village, but not our heart. We will support each other and console each other. After a long night, it will be morning again."

The Swiss government has already promised funding to make sure residents can stay, if not in the village itself, at least in the locality.

However, Raphaël Mayoraz, head of the regional office for Natural Hazards, warned that further evacuations in the areas close to Blatten might be necessary.

Climate change is causing the glaciers - frozen rivers of ice - to melt faster and faster, and the permafrost, often described as the glue that holds the high mountains together, is also thawing.

Drone footage showed a large section of the Birch glacier collapsing at about 15:30 (14:30 BST) on Wednesday. The avalanche of mud that swept over Blatten sounded like a deafening roar, as it swept down into the valley leaving an enormous cloud of dust.

Glaciologists monitoring the thaw have warned for years that some alpine towns and villages could be at risk, and Blatten is not even the first to be evacuated.

In eastern Switzerland, residents of the village of Brienz were evacuated two years ago because the mountainside above them was crumbling.

Since then, they have only been permitted to return for short periods.

In 2017, eight hikers were killed, and many homes destroyed, when the biggest landslide in over a century came down close to the village of Bondo.

The most recent report into the condition of Switzerland's glaciers suggested they could all be gone within a century, if global temperatures could not be kept within a rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, agreed ten years ago by almost 200 countries under the Paris climate accord.

Many climate scientists suggest that target has already been missed, meaning the glacier thaw will continue to accelerate, increasing the risk of flooding and landslides, and threatening more communities like Blatten.

Reflection

Planet’s darkening oceans pose threat to marine life, scientists say. Band of water where marine life can survive has reduced in more than a fifth of global ocean between 2003 and 2022

Changes in global photic zones between 2003 and 2022 are shown with red areas to indicate ocean darkening and blue lightening. Illustration: Thomas Davies/University of Plymouth

Ian Sample Science editor

 

 

Great swathes of the planet’s oceans have become darker in the past two decades, according to researchers who fear the trend will have a severe impact on marine life around the world.

Satellite data and numerical modelling revealed that more than a fifth of the global ocean darkened between 2003 and 2022, reducing the band of water that life reliant on sunlight and moonlight can thrive in.

The effect is evident across 75m sq km (30m sq miles) of ocean, equivalent to the land area of Europe, Africa, China and North America combined, and disturbs the upper layer of water where 90% of marine species live.

Dr Thomas Davies, a marine conservationist at the University of Plymouth, said the findings were a “genuine cause for concern”, with potentially severe implications for marine ecosystems, global fisheries and the critical turnover of carbon and nutrients in the oceans.

 

Most marine life thrives in the photic zones of the world’s oceans, the surface layers that allow sufficient light through for organisms to exploit. While sunlight can reach a kilometre beneath the waves, in practice there is little below 200 metres.

This upper band of water is where microscopic plant-like organisms called phytoplankton photosynthesise. The organisms underpin virtually all marine food webs and generate nearly half the planet’s oxygen. Many fish, marine mammals and other creatures hunt, feed and reproduce in the warmer waters of the photic zones where food is most abundant.

Davies and his colleagues drew on satellite data and an algorithm used to measure light in sea water to calculate the depths of photic zones around the world. Darkening affected 21% of the global ocean in the 20 years to 2022. In 9% of the ocean, this led to photic zones being 50 metres shallower, while in 2.6% of the ocean, the zones were 100 metres shallower. Details of this study appear in Global Change Biology.

The oceans darken when light finds it harder to penetrate the water. It is often seen along coastlines where upwellings of cold, nutrient rich water rise to the surface, and where rainfall sweeps nutrients and sediments from the land into the water.

The drivers for darkening far offshore are less clear, but global heating and changes in ocean currents are thought to be involved. “The areas where there are major changes in ocean circulation, or ocean warming driven by climate change, seem to be darkening, such as the Southern Ocean and up through the Gulf Stream past Greenland,” Davies said.

 

Despite an overall darkening, about 10% of the ocean, or 37 million sq km, became lighter over the past 20 years, the study found. Off the west coast of Ireland, for example, a very large area of ocean has brightened, but further out it has darkened.

“Marine organisms use light for a whole variety of purposes. They use it for hunting, for mating, for timing reproductive events. They use it for basically every single part of their biology,” said Davies. “With ocean darkening, they have to move up the water column, and there is less space, they’re all being squished up towards the surface.”

Prof Oliver Zielinski, the director of the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Germany, said the darkening of vast ocean areas was a “worrying trend”.

“Such changes can disrupt marine food webs, alter species distributions, and weaken the ocean’s capacity to support biodiversity and regulate climate,” he said. “Coastal seas, being closest to human activity, are particularly vulnerable, and their resilience is crucial for both ecological health and human wellbeing.”

 

Where are the carbon credit projects in Brazil? See the map

 Click here  Where ?

 

 

Global Forest Loss Hit a Record Last Year as Fires Raged Forests around the world disappeared at a rate of 18 soccer fields every minute, a global survey found. Fires accounted for nearly half of the losses.

 

Fires spread through the Brasília National Park during the dry season last September in Brazil.Credit...Eraldo Peres/Associated Press

 

By Hiroko Tabuchi and Harry Stevens

 

The planet lost a record amount of forests last year, driven by fires that raged around the world, data shows.

Loss of pristine rainforests alone reached 6.7 million hectares in 2024, nearly twice as much as in 2023, researchers at the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute said in an annual update of the state of the world’s forests.

The world lost the equivalent of 18 soccer fields of forested land every minute, the researchers estimated.

For the first time since record-keeping began, fires, not agriculture, were the leading cause of rainforest loss, accounting for nearly half of all destruction. Those fires emitted 4.1 gigatons of planet-warming greenhouse gasses, which is more than four times the emissions from air travel in 2023, the researchers said.

Still, land clearing for agriculture, cattle farming and other causes rose by 14 percent, the sharpest increase in almost a decade.

“If this trend continues, it could permanently transform critical natural areas and unleash large amounts of carbon, intensifying climate change and fueling even more extreme fires,” Peter Potapov, the co-director of the Global Land Analysis and Discovery Lab at the University of Maryland, said in a statement.

 Forests do a lot of work to store carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas that is driving climate change. Globally, forests are thought to absorb from the atmosphere more than a quarter of the carbon emissions from human activities every year. Intact tropical forests are especially effective at storing carbon.

 

Brazil, which has the largest area of tropical forest, accounted for 42 percent of all tropical primary forest loss in 2024, the data showed. Fires fueled by the worst drought on record caused 66 percent of that loss, a more than sixfold increase from 2023. In neighboring Bolivia, forest loss nearly tripled, as fires initially set to clear land for agriculture turned into huge wildfires because of the heavy drought.

The Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo also saw their highest levels of forest loss on record, driven by unusually hot and dry conditions. Like the Amazon rainforest, the Congo Basin plays a crucial role in trapping the world’s carbon.

Land clearing in the D.R.C. has been driven by poverty and a deep reliance on forests for food and energy, as well as ongoing conflict and instability, said Teodyl Nkuintchua of the World Resources Institute Africa.

Researchers at the University of Maryland’s lab use satellite imagery to track changes in forest cover. The data is publicly available on the World Resources Institute’s Global Forest Watch platform.

In 2021, more than 140 countries agreed to halt and reverse global forest loss by 2030. But of the 20 countries with the largest area of primary forests, 17 have higher losses today than when the agreement was signed, researchers said.

Dominick Spracklen, a professor at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University who did not work on the report, said the data showed “an incredibly worrying situation.”

Tropical forests used to be too wet to burn, he said. But as the climate warmed, and as forests degraded from human activity, they were becoming increasingly at risk of fire, he said.

“Last year showed how dangerous the situation has become,” Dr. Spracklen said. It also showed how, despite pockets of progress, governments have made little progress toward their pledges to fight deforestation.

The rich nations of the world, in particular, had not yet made good on promises to provide financial support for measures to support tropical forests, he said. “The survival of everyone in the world depends on it.”

Brazil activists decry green rollbacks as senate passes ‘devastation bill’. Legislation would dismantle regulations in farming, mining and energy, increasing risk of widespread destruction

 

A sawmill in Paragominas, Brazil. The bill is expected to pass without resistance in the conservative chamber packed with agribusiness lobby supporters. Photograph: Pulsar Imagens/Alamy

Constance Malleret in Rio de Janeiro

 

 

Environmental activists in Brazil have decried a dramatic rollback of environmental safeguards after the senate approved a bill that would dismantle licensing processes and increase the risk of widespread destruction.

The upper house passed the so-called “devastation bill” with 54 votes to 13 late on Wednesday, paving the way for projects ranging from mining and infrastructure to energy and farming to receive regulatory approval with little to no environmental oversight.

The bill now returns to the lower house for final approval. No date has been set for a vote there, but it is expected to pass without resistance in the conservative chamber packed with agribusiness lobby supporters.

The initiative proposes overhauling Brazil’s rigorous environmental licensing procedures to make the system simpler and more efficient. But it has been condemned by climate activists and policymakers as a historical setback that ignores the reality of the climate crisis and flies in the face of Brazil’s commitments to combatting climate change.

 

“It’s like getting rid of the brakes in a moving vehicle,” said Natalie Unterstell, the president of the Instituto Talanoa climate policy thinktank. She said the bill jeopardises Brazil’s commitments of eradicating deforestation by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.

The proposed legislation would allow some projects to renew permits through a self-declaration process and loosen requirements for high-impact ventures such as mining, allowing potentially harmful developments to move forward without serious considerations of their impacts on things like water reservoirs, deforestation or local communities.

 

“Most licensing procedures will become a push of a button without an environmental study or environmental impact assessment,” said Suely Araújo, the public policy coordinator at the Climate Observatory network of NGOs.

The Socio-Environmental Institute (ISA), a civil society organisation, said the proposal would dismantle a system of environmental protections that was built over decades, and do away with conditions that require companies to adopt prevention, mitigation and compensation measures, thus increasing the risk of destruction and conflict in rural areas.

The ISA calculated that the approval of the law would directly threaten more than 3,000 protected areas, including land occupied by Indigenous people and Afro-descendant quilombola communities, and put 18m hectares (44.5m acres) of forest at risk. “The bill represents a collapse foretold,” the ISA said.

The bill’s progress through congress has attracted particular dismay as Brazil is preparing to host the Cop30 climate conference in the Amazon in November. The government has said that it wants this year’s summit to be one of action, but this attempt to dismantle environmental protections undermines the country’s credibility, said Unterstell.

“It sends the wrong signal at the wrong time,” she said.

Environment minister Marina Silva described the approval of the bill as a “death blow” to Brazil’s climate efforts, but other members of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government had previously expressed support for the measure, saying it would help attract investment.

Although Lula has been successful in reducing deforestation, which fell by 32% across the country last year according to MapBiomas, he has disappointed the climate movement in other areas, particularly with his stance on oil exploration.

One of the amendments introduced by the senate would notably speed up permits for projects deemed a government priority. Pro-oil senators hope this could benefit controversial exploration projects near the mouth of the Amazon river, a new oil frontier where the state-controlled oil company Petrobras has so far been unsuccessful in its endeavour to obtain drilling permits from the environmental watchdog Ibama.

Climate change could bring insect-borne tropical diseases to UK, scientists warn. Mosquito experts say cuts in aid will lead to collapse of crucial surveillance and control in endemic countries.

A female Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito feeding on human blood. Photograph: Jim Gathany/Centers for Disease Control/EPA

 

Anna Bawden Health and social affairs correspondent

 

 

Climate change could make the UK vulnerable to insect-transmitted tropical diseases that were previously only found in hot countries, scientists have warned, urging ministers to redouble efforts to contain their spread abroad.

Leading mosquito experts said the government’s cuts to international aid would lead to a collapse in crucial surveillance, control and treatment programmes in endemic countries, leading to more deaths.

This week, the UK Health Security Agency announced the discovery of West Nile virus in UK mosquitoes for the first time. The agency said it had found no evidence of transmission to humans and the risk to the British public was low.

West Nile virus is transmitted by mosquitoes and, like dengue fever, chikungunya and zika, used to be confined to hotter regions of the world. But global heating has expanded the geographical spread of West Nile virus and other tropical diseases into cooler areas, including parts of northern and western Europe. In 2024, there were more than 1,400 cases of locally acquired West Nile virus and several hundred cases of dengue, mostly in France and Italy.

 

According to Dr Robert Jones, assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in the most extreme scenarios – with temperatures rising by 4 to 5 degrees above pre-industrial levels – there is expected to be a fivefold increase in dengue and chikungunya outbreaks by the 2060s in Europe.

“We are unlikely to see a dramatic surge in tropical diseases,” said Jones. “However, climate change is making the UK more hospitable to the insects that that transmit some pathogens that cause tropical diseases.”

“Projected increases to UK temperatures in the coming years will increase the risks of West Nile virus outbreaks, potentially with epidemics appearing by the second half of the century.”

 

For tropical diseases to become established in the UK, those infected with the virus would have to be bitten by the appropriate mosquitoes, which then pass it on to other people.

For now, the UK does not yet have the right mosquitoes in sufficient numbers, said Prof Tom Solomon, the director of the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s health protection research unit on emerging infections and of the Pandemic Institute.

“At the moment, Aedes mosquitoes such as the Asian tiger mosquito are the main vectors of dengue fever and zika, whilst for West Nile, Culex species are important. These mosquitoes have been detected in the UK, but are not yet fully established in sufficient numbers to cause large outbreaks.

“But as the UK gets hotter, local mosquito populations are changing, which, long-term, could result in local transmission of tropical diseases, especially in southern England.”

For now, there is no need for the NHS to embark on mass vaccinations for yellow fever or to prescribe anti-malarial drugs. And the public does not yet need to routinely use insect repellent in Britain during summer.

 

A better defence against mosquito-borne disease would be to tackle it internationally, scientists say. Heather Ferguson, professor of infectious disease ecology at the University of Glasgow, who leads the Mosquito Scotland project, says the “absolute number one priority” for the UK government if it wants to protect UK citizens long-term is to invest in measures to control these diseases in the tropical countries where they cause the overwhelming burden of illness and death.

She added: “We should never lose sight of the fact that one child under five dies of malaria approximately every minute, with approximately 600,000 deaths and over 100 million cases in 2023 alone.

“As we learned from the pandemic, infectious diseases have no borders and can spread quickly when the conditions are right. The government’s cuts to foreign aid will lead to a collapse in crucial surveillance, control and treatment programmes in endemic countries, causing more deaths from tropical disease.

“The best way to defend ourselves is to not only maintain, but strengthen investment into the global elimination efforts that will ultimately keep all of us safe from tropical disease.”

Solomon said: “Controlling mosquito-borne diseases overseas is also an important element of protecting the UK. If they are controlled overseas, there is less chance of them spreading to the UK.”

“Long-term policies that address net zero challenges globally are arguably the best protection against such diseases,” said Prof James Wood, the infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge and the co-director of Cambridge Infectious Diseases.

A FCDO spokesperson said: “Global health security is essential for our national security and the UK is a leading donor in the fight against mosquito-borne tropical diseases. We play a major role in the global malaria response, and we are the third largest donor to the global fund.

“This week we adopted a new pandemic agreement, which will improve the way countries around the world work together to detect and combat global health threats. As the minister for international development, Baroness Chapman, has said, global health will be a priority for the UK’s international development. Diseases cross borders so our diplomacy must too.”

 

EU’s ‘chocolate crisis’ worsened by climate breakdown, researchers warn. Cocoa one of six commodities vulnerable to environmental threats in ‘extremely worrying picture’ for food resilience

Most of the EU’s cocoa imports come from west African countries facing overlapping climate and biodiversity risks. Photograph: Sodiq Adelakun/Reuters

 

Ajit Niranjan Europe environment correspondent

 

 

Climate breakdown and wildlife loss are deepening the EU’s “chocolate crisis”, a report has argued, with cocoa one of six key commodities to come mostly from countries vulnerable to environmental threats.

More than two-thirds of the cocoa, coffee, soy, rice, wheat and maize brought into the EU in 2023 came from countries that are not well prepared for climate change, according to the UK consultants Foresight Transitions.

For three of the commodities – cocoa, wheat and maize – two-thirds of imports came from countries whose biodiversity was deemed not to be intact, the analysis found.

The researchers said the damage to food production by climate breakdown was made worse by a decline in biodiversity that has left farms less resilient.

 

“These aren’t just abstract threats,” said the lead author of the report, Camilla Hyslop. “They are already playing out in ways that negatively affect businesses and jobs, as well as the availability and price of food for consumers, and they are only getting worse.”

The researchers mapped trade data from Eurostat on to two rankings of environmental security to assess the level of exposure for three staple foods and three critical inputs into the EU’s food system.

They used a ranking of climate readiness from the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which combines a country’s vulnerability to climate damages with its access to financial and institutional support, and a ranking of biodiversity intactness from the UK Natural History Museum, which compares the current abundance of wild species to pre-modern levels.

They found the majority of imports came from countries they ranked “low-medium” on the climate scale and “low-medium” or “medium” on the biodiversity scale.

 

Some food products were particularly exposed. The EU imported 90% of its maize from countries with low-medium climate readiness and 67% from countries with medium or lower biodiversity intactness, the report found.

For cocoa, a key ingredient in the chocolate industry that Europe does not grow itself, the import exposure was 96.5% for climate preparedness and 77% on the biodiversity scale, the report found.

The industry is already struggling with rises in the price of sugar, driven in part by extreme weather events, and supply shortages of cocoa. Most of its cocoa comes from west African countries facing overlapping climate and biodiversity risks.

The report, which was commissioned by the European Climate Foundation, argued that large chocolate manufacturers should invest in climate adaptation and biodiversity protection in cocoa-growing countries.

“This is not an act of altruism or ESG [sustainable finance], but rather a vital derisking exercise for supply chains,” the authors wrote. “Ensuring farmers are in their supply chains paid a fair price for their produce would allow them to invest in the resilience of their own farms.”

 

Paul Behrens, an environmental researcher at the University of Oxford and author of a textbook on food and sustainability, who was not involved in the research, said the findings painted an “extremely worrying picture” for food resilience.

“Policymakers like to think of the EU as food-secure because it produces quite a lot of its own food,” he said. “But what this report shows is that the EU is vulnerable to climate and biodiversity risks in some vital food supply chains.”

The report found coffee, rice and soy had fewer risks overall but noted hotspots of concern. Uganda, which provided 10% of the EU’s coffee in 2023, had low climate preparedness and low-medium biodiversity intactness, the report found.

Joseph Nkandu, founder of the National Union of Coffee Agribusinesses and Farm Enterprises in Uganda, called for more access to international climate finance to help farmers become more resilient in the face of worsening weather.

“The weather in Uganda is no longer predictable,” he said. “Heatwaves, prolonged dry spells and erratic rains are withering our coffee bushes and damaging production.”

Marco Springmann, a food researcher at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, said a shift to healthier and more sustainable diets would be needed for food systems to withstand climate shocks.

“About a third of grains and basically all imported soy is used to feed animals,” he said. “Aiming to make those supply chains more resilient therefore misses the point that this supports the very products that are to a large degree responsible for what is being tried to protect from.”

 

'Shrinking Nemo': Smaller clownfish sound alarm on ocean heat

Clownfish are one of the most recognisable reef fish, known for their orange and white stripes

 Helen Briggs

 

Fish similar to those made famous by the movie Finding Nemo are shrinking to cope with marine heatwaves, a study has found.

The research recorded clownfish living on coral reefs slimmed down drastically when ocean temperatures rocketed in 2023.

Scientists say the discovery was a big surprise and could help explain the rapidly declining size of other fish in the world's oceans.

A growing body of evidence suggests animals are shape shifting to cope with climate change, including birds, lizards and insects.

The research took place in Kimbe Bay, a key area of marine biodiversity

"Nemos can shrink, and they do it to survive these heat stress events," said Dr Theresa Rueger, senior lecturer in Tropical Marine Sciences at Newcastle University.

The researchers studied pairs of clownfish living in reefs off Kimbe Bay in Papua New Guinea, a hot spot of marine biodiversity

The wild clownfish are almost identical to the ones depicted in the movie Finding Nemo, in which a timid clownfish living off the Great Barrier Reef goes in search of his son.

The scientific study took place in the summer of 2023, when temperatures shot up in the oceans, leading to large swathes of coral turning white.

The scientists took multiple measurements of individual clownfish coping with the heat.

They found the tiny fish didn't just lose weight but got shorter by several millimetres. And it wasn't a one-off - 75% of fish shrunk at least once during the heatwave.

Clownfish swimming on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia

Dr Rueger explained: "It's not just them going on a diet and losing lots of weight, but they're actively changing their size and making themselves into a smaller individual that needs less food and is more efficient with oxygen."

The fish may be absorbing fat and bone, as has been seen in other animals, such as marine iguanas, although this needs to be confirmed through laboratory studies.

Dr Rueger joked that a little bit of movie rewriting might be necessary, with a new chapter ahead for Nemo.

"The movie told a really good story, but the next chapter of the story surely is, how does Nemo deal with ongoing environmental change?" she told BBC News.

Mushroom soft coral on a reef in Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean

Global warming is a big challenge for warm-blooded animals, which must maintain a constant body temperature to prevent their bodies from overheating.

Animals are responding in various ways: moving to cooler areas or higher ground, changing the timing of key life events such as breeding and migration, or switching their body size.

The research is published in the journal, Science Advances.

Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration’, scientists warn. Rising oceans will force millions away from coasts even if global temperature rise remains below 1.5C, analysis finds

 

The loss of ice from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s. Photograph: Bernhard Staehli/Shutterstock

Damian Carrington 

Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to “catastrophic inland migration”, the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future.

The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea level rise.

The international target to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C is already almost out of reach. But the new analysis found that even if fossil fuel emissions were rapidly slashed to meet it, sea levels would be rising by 1cm a year by the end of the century, faster than the speed at which nations could build coastal defences.

The world is on track for 2.5C-2.9C of global heating, which would almost certainly be beyond tipping points for the collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets. The melting of those ice sheets would lead to a “really dire” 12 metres of sea level rise.

Today, about 230 million people live within 1 metre above current sea level, and 1 billion live within 10 metres above sea level. Even just 20cm of sea level rise by 2050 would lead to global flood damages of at least $1tn a year for the world’s 136 largest coastal cities and huge impacts on people’s lives and livelihoods.

However, the scientists emphasised that every fraction of a degree of global heating avoided by climate action still matters, because it slows sea level rise and gives more time to prepare, reducing human suffering.

 

Sea level rise is the biggest long-term impact of the climate crisis, and research in recent years has shown it is occurring far faster than previously estimated. The 1.5C limit was seen as a way to avoid the worst consequences of global heating, but the new research shows this is not the case for sea level rise.

The researchers said the “safe limit” temperature for ice sheets was hard to estimate but was likely to be 1C or lower. Sea level rise of at least 1-2 metres was now inevitable, the scientists said. In the UK, just 1 metre of sea level rise would see large parts of the Fens and Humberside below sea level.

“What we mean by safe limit is one which allows some level of adaptation, rather than catastrophic inland migration and forced migration, and the safe limit is roughly 1cm a year of sea level rise,” said Prof Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in the UK. “If you get to that, then it becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation, and you’re going to see massive land migration on scales that we’ve never witnessed in modern civilisation.” Developing countries such as Bangladesh would fare far worse than rich ones with experience of holding back the waves, such as the Netherlands, he said.

Durham University’s Prof Chris Stokes, lead author of the study, said: “We’re starting to see some of the worst-case scenarios play out almost in front of us. At current warming of 1.2C, sea level rise is accelerating at rates that, if they continue, would become almost unmanageable before the end of this century, [which is] within the lifetime of our young people.”

The average global temperature hit 1.5C for the first time in 2024. But the international target is measured as the average over 20 years, so is not considered to have been broken yet.

 

The new study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, combined data from studies of warm periods up to 3m years ago; observations of ice melting and sea level rise in recent decades; and climate models. It concluded: “Continued mass loss from ice sheets poses an existential threat to the world’s coastal populations.”

Prof Andrea Dutton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was part of the study team, said: “Evidence recovered from past warm periods suggests that several metres of sea level rise – or more – can be expected when global mean temperature reaches 1.5C or higher.”

At the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago, sea level was rising at 10 times the rate today, driven by self-reinforcing feedbacks that may have been triggered by only a small increase in temperature. The last time CO₂ levels in the atmosphere were as high as today, about 3m years ago, sea level rise was 10-20 metres higher.

Even if humanity can bring the planet back to its preindustrial temperature by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, it will still take hundreds to thousands of years for the ice sheets to recover, the researchers said. That means land lost to sea level rise will remain lost for a long time, perhaps until the Earth enters the next ice age.

Belize moved its capital inland in 1970 after a devastating hurricane, but its largest city is still on the coast and will be inundated with only 1 metre of sea level rise, Carlos Fuller, Belize’s longtime climate negotiator, said: “Findings such as these only sharpen the need to remain within the 1.5C Paris agreement limit, or as close as possible, so we can return to lower temperatures and protect our coastal cities.”

 

Texas swelters as record-breaking heatwave sweeps across state. Record-high heat so early in the season means state has been hotter than Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth

 

A jogger runs along a trail in McAllister park as temperatures hit record highs on Tuesday, in San Antonio. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

 

Texas swelters as record-breaking heatwave sweeps across state

Record-high heat so early in the season means state has been hotter than Death Valley, the hottest place on Earth

Marina Dunbar

Texas is in the grip of an extraordinary heatwave this week, with record-breaking temperatures sweeping across the central and southern regions of the state.

While 100F days are common in Texas summers, such early-season heat is unusual. The record-high heat means that Texas has been recently hotter than Death Valley, California, which is often cited as the hottest place on Earth.

Temperatures across the central and southern region of the state ranged from 100F to 111F, levels that experts warn can pose serious health risks for anyone without access to air conditioning or enough water.

The extreme temperatures are expected to continue well into next week.

 

On Wednesday, Austin recorded a sweltering 101F by 5pm, breaking its previous same-day record of 97F set in 2022. Forecasts earlier in the day said the city could reach as high as 105F, far above the average May high of 87F.

The National Weather Service described the temperatures as “unseasonably hot weather” and advised residents to “stay hydrated and take frequent breaks in the shade or A/C!”

The heatwave began earlier in the week, with numerous cities hitting temperatures that exceeded 100F, stressing both public health systems and infrastructure.

The brutal heat is also testing Texas’s power grid. As residents sought relief by blasting air conditioners, energy demand surged. Electricity use peaked at over 78,000 megawatts by Wednesday afternoon, a new May record, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

The rising demand is exacerbated by the growing number of industrial facilities and cryptocurrency operations in the state, which have placed even more strain on the power grid.

The scientific community is in agreement that the global climate crisis is making heatwaves more intense, frequent and long-lasting. Last year was officially the hottest on record for Earth, and each of the last 10 years ranks among the 10 warmest since record-keeping began more than 175 years ago.

 

Despite the scientific consensus, the Trump administration has quickly rolled back efforts to address the climate crisis. Donald Trump has publicly downplayed the threat of global warming, withdrew the US from the Paris climate agreement for the second time, and removed climate change from many federal policy discussions.

The administration also loosened environmental regulations, even as climate scientists warned of increasingly dangerous and costly impacts, including more frequent extreme heat events like the one currently gripping Texas.

How the humble chestnut traced the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The chestnut trees of Europe tell a hidden story charting the fortunes of ancient Rome and the legacy it left in the continent's forests.

(Credit: Getty Images)

Sophie Hardach

 

The ancient Romans left an indelible imprint on the world they enveloped into their empire. The straight, long-distance roads they built can still be followed beneath the asphalt of some modern highways. They spread aqueducts, sewers, public baths and the Latin language across much of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. But what's perhaps less well known is the surprising way they transformed Europe's forests.

According to researchers in Switzerland, the Romans had something of a penchant for sweet chestnut trees, spreading them across Europe. But it wasn't so much the delicate, earthy chestnuts they craved – instead, it was the fast-regrowing timber they prized most, as raw material for their empire's expansion. And this led to them exporting tree cultivation techniques such as coppicing too, which have helped the chestnut flourish across the continent.

"The Romans' imprint on Europe was making it into a connected, economical space," says Patrik Krebs, a geographer at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL). "They built a single system of governance all over Europe, they improved the road system, the trade system, the military system, the connection between all the different people all over Europe."

As a result of that connection, "specific skills in arboriculture [the cultivation of trees] were shared by all the different civilisations", he says.

 The arboreal legacy of the Romans can still be found today in many parts of Europe – more than 2.5 million hectares (6 million acres) of land are covered by sweet chestnut trees, an area equivalent in size to the island of Sardinia. The trees have become an important part of the landscape in many parts of the continent and remain part of the traditional cuisine of many countries including France and Portugal.

Chestnuts have become a popular part of the cuisine in many parts of Europe – an indirect legacy of the Romans, who planted chestnut trees for timber (Credit: Getty Images)

Krebs works at a branch of the WSL in Switzerland's Ticino canton on the southern slope of the Alps, an area that is home to giant chestnut trees, where many specimens have girths greater than seven metres (23ft). By the time of the Middle Ages, sweet chestnuts were a staple food in the area. But it was the Romans who brought the trees there – before their arrival in Ticino, sweet chestnuts did not exist there, having been locally wiped out in the last ice age, which ended more than 10,000 years ago. 

Using a wide range of evidence, including paleoecological pollen records and ancient Roman texts, Krebs' research team analysed the distribution of both sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa) and walnut (Juglans regia) trees in Europe before, during and after the Roman empire. Sweet chestnut and walnut trees are considered useful indicators of the human impact on a landscape, as they generally benefit from human management – such as pruning and supressing competing trees. Their fruits and timber are also highly desirable. 

In countries such as Switzerland, France and parts of Germany, sweet chestnut pollen was near-absent from the wider pollen record – such as, for example, fossil pollen found in sediment and soil samples – before the Romans arrived, according to the study and previous research. But as the Roman Empire expanded, the presence of sweet chestnut pollen grew. Specifically, the percentage of sweet chestnut pollen relative to other pollen across Europe "shows a pattern of a sudden increase around year zero [0AD], when the power of the Roman empire was at its maximum" in Europe, Krebs says.

The ancient chestnut trees in Ticino, Switzerland, have grown to be true giants over the centuries (Credit: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape)
 

After the Barbarian sacks of Rome around 400-500 AD, which signalled the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire amid widespread upheaval, the chestnut pollen percentage then drops temporarily. This decrease suggests that many of the Roman-era orchards were abandoned, Krebs says, probably not only due to the fall of the Roman Empire, but also, because a wider population decline in many areas at the time. 

"Juglans [walnut] has a different pattern," says Krebs. The spread of pollen from these trees is less clearly associated with the rise and fall of the Roman empire, he and his colleagues found. Its distribution around Europe had already increased before the arrival of the Romans, perhaps pointing to the ancient Greeks and other pre-Roman communities as playing a role.

But while the Romans can perhaps take credit for spreading the sweet chestnut around mainland Europe, some separate research suggests they were not behind the arrival of these trees in Britain. Although the Romans have previously been credited with bringing sweet chestnuts to the British isles – where they are still a key part of modern woodlands – research by scientists at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK found the trees were probably introduced to the island later.

This speedy regrowth came in handy given the Romans' constant need for raw materials for their military expansion

 

 

Sweet chestnut trees can be striking features of the landscape. They can grow up to 35m (115ft) tall and can live for up to 1,000 years in some locations. Most of those alive today will not have been planted by the Romans, but many will be descendants or even cuttings taken from those that ancient Roman legionnaires and foresters brought with them to the far-flung corners of the empire. The oldest known sweet chestnut tree in the world is found in Sicily, Italy, and is thought to be up to 4,000 years old.

Wood for fortresses

Why did the Romans so favour the sweet chestnut tree? According to Krebs, they did not tend to value the fruit much – in Roman culture, it was portrayed as a rustic food of poor, rural people in Roman society, such as shepherds. But the Roman elites did appreciate sweet chestnut's ability to quickly sprout new poles when cut back, a practice known as coppicing. This speedy regrowth came in handy given the Romans' constant need for raw materials for their military expansion.

"Ancient texts show that the Romans were very interested in Castanea, especially for its resprouting capacity," he says. "When you cut it, it resprouts very fast and produces a lot of poles that are naturally very high in tannins, which makes the wood resistant and long-lasting. You can cut this wood and use it for building fortresses, for any kind of construction, and it quickly sprouts again."

Coppicing can also have a rejuvenating effect on the chestnut tree, even after decades of neglect.

As the Roman Empire rapidly expanded, they needed fast growing timber so they could build fortifications (Credit: Getty Images)

In Ticino, chestnut trees became more and more dominant under the Romans, according to the pollen record. They remained popular even after the Roman Empire fell, Krebs says.

One explanation for this is that locals had learned to plant and care for the tree from the Romans, and then came to appreciate chestnuts as a nourishing, easy-to-grow food – by the Middle Ages, they had become a staple food in many parts of Europe. The chestnuts, for example, could be dried and ground into flour. Mountain communities would also have welcomed the fact that the trees thrived even on rocky slopes, where many other fruit trees and crops struggled, Krebs adds.

"The Romans' achievement was to bring these skills from far away, to enable communication between people and spread knowledge," he says. "But the real work of planting the chestnut tree orchards was probably done by local populations."

When they are cultivated in an orchard for their fruit, sweet chestnut trees benefits from management such as pruning dead or diseased wood, as well as the lack of competition, all of which prolong their life, Krebs says: "In an orchard, there's just the chestnut tree and the meadow below, it's like a luxury residence for the tree. Whereas when the orchard is abandoned, competitor trees arrive and take over."

 Research on abandoned chestnut orchards has shown that when left alone, chestnut trees are crowded out by other species. In wild forests, "Castanea reaches a maximum age of about 200 years, then it dies," Krebs says. "But here in Ticino, where chestnuts have been cultivated, they can reach up to almost 1,000 years, because of their symbiosis with humans."

Europe's landscape was altered by the Romans' forestry approach, reintroducing the sweet Italian chestnut to areas it hadn't existed since the last ice age (Credit: Getty Images)

By the end of the Roman era, the sweet chestnut had become the dominant tree species in Ticino, displacing a previous forest-scape of alders and other trees, the pollen record shows: "This was done by humans. It was a complete reorganisation of the vegetal landscape," Krebs explains.

In fact, pollen evidence from a site in Ticino at some 800m (2,625ft) above sea level shows that during the Roman period there was a huge increase in Castanea pollen, as well as cereal and walnut-tree pollen, suggesting an orchard was kept there, Krebs says. (Read more about the traces left by passing Romans and other ancient civilisations in the Alps.)

By the Middle Ages, long after the Romans were gone, many historical texts document the dominance of sweet chestnut production and the importance of foods such as chestnut flour in Ticino, says Krebs. "In our valleys, chestnuts were the most important pillar of subsistence during the Middle Ages."

 

People in Ticino continued to look after the trees, planting them, coppicing them, pruning them and keeping out the competition, over centuries, Krebs says: "That's the nature of this symbiosis: humans get the fruit [and wood] of the chestnut tree – and the chestnut gets longevity", as well as the opportunity to hugely extend its natural area of distribution, he explains. 

A similar transfer of chestnut-related knowledge to locals may have happened elsewhere in the Roman Empire, he suggests – and possibly left linguistic traces. As a separate study shows, across Europe, the word for "chestnut" is similar to the Latin "castanea" in many languages. 

Today, Europe's sweet chestnut trees are facing threats including disease, climate change and the abandonment of traditional orchards as part of the decline in rural life. But chestnut trails and chestnut festivals in Ticino and other parts of the southern Alps still celebrate the history of sweet chestnuts as a past staple food – reminding us of the long legacy of both Roman and local ideas and skills in tree-care.