Tag Archives: Amazon

UN Climate Summits  Mongabay: COP26 – As fossil fuel use surges, will COP26 protect forests to slow climate change?

In preparation for covering my seventh United Nations climate summit, I spoke at length with my editors Glenn Scherer and Willie Shubert about the stories on which I should be focused — especially the first story that sets the scene for COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. Here’s the story. Here’s how we arrived at it: given the amount of reporting I’ve done on deforestation in both tropical and boreal forests, I looked into how the land sector was holding up as a natural sponge for greenhouse gases, which slow the rate of global warming.

In doing so, I was reminded of a scientist I met in Bonn, Germany, at COP23, Bronson Griscom, who had just published a landmark study in PNAS about how “nature-based solutions,” if enhanced, could significantly boost carbon sequestration, which when coupled with dramatically reduced usage of fossil fuels for energy and heat, could help nations meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to hold temperature rise to 1.5 degree C from pre-industrial times.

Four year later, it turns out (spoiler alert) we can no longer take for granted that nature will provide the natural buffer she’s been providing in a range of ecosystem services. We agreed that that should be my COP26 opener, especially as it related to Article 5 of the Paris Agreement, which in the first time in an international agreement, called for the protection and enhancements of forests as carbon sinks and reservoirs. I was fortunate to, among other scientists, interview Griscom for the story.

This would be one reason why — among many — that the earth is less capable of working on our behalf in regards to climate change mitigation. We haven’t taken very good care of the planet in recent decades, especially since the signing of the Paris Agreement.

Environment  Mongabay: French Guiana soy biofuel power plants risk massive Amazon deforestation

Cutline: French Guiana, a department of France on the northeast coast of South America, is more than 98 percent forested in Amazonia. It’s one of the last remaining large tracts of largely undisturbed Amazon jungle, rich in biodiversity. Proposed policy and energy changes proposed in Paris could dramatically impact these important ecosystems.

This story here came to me in November as a tip from a source in Scotland who is familiar with my reporting on the growth of the biomass industry for energy production. This one has a new twist in that it doesn’t focus on wood pellets for energy, but rather soy for biofuels — in a part of the world rarely discussed but critical in size and scope for biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation — French Guiana.

With lots of research reports, government documents and exceptional sources in both Paris and Cayenne, French Guiana, the story started to take shape. With a population of just 300,000 almost entirely along it’s northern coast, French Guiana is in need of expanding and upgrading its energy system from diesel-powered plants to renewables. The problem, however, is the France wants the department to grow its own soy — the most common source for biofuel — to power five new energy stations. To grow enough soy would require a staggering amount of Amazon jungle to be clearcut — by one estimate, an area three times the square miles of New York City.

My story details what’s at stake with this unusual proposed policy change for a country and president, Emmanuel Macron, recognized for their sensitivity to climate action and ecosystem protections. Activists in French Guiana are mobilizing to stop the policy proposals, preserve their densely forested department (which is the size of Indiana) and promote true renewable energy sources like expanded wind and solar installations.

The heavily forested port of Larivot in Cayenne, French Guiana, where a 120-megawatt soy liquid biofuels energy station is planned. Image courtesy of Francois Kuseni.

Environment  Mongabay: Pope makes impassioned plea to save the Amazon — will the world listen?

Pope Francis meets Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, a member of the Curripaco indigenous community, during a session of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon at the Vatican, October 8, 2019. Image courtesy of CNS photo/Vatican Media.

On February 12, 2020, with a letter to “all persons of good will,” Pope Francis sought to reclaim the mantle of global environmental leadership he established in mid-2015. That’s when he the released of the first-ever papal encyclical (Catholic teaching document of the highest order) on environmental protection and climate change — Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home.

My story for Mongay here picks up that thread with Dear Amazon, a papal letter in response to the first-ever Vatican meeting in October 2019 to focus on a specific region of the planet — Amazonia. While topics at the so-called synod focused largely on environmental protection and the rights of the indigenous peoples who live in those jungles, the mainstream coverage of Francis’ letter focused almost solely on his decision to not allow priests to marry who agree to serve in the dramatically underserved Amazon regions spread across eight countries.

This left an opening for me to write a kind of exclusive about the pope’s environmental and social justice message, which makes up the vast majority of Dear Amazon. The story idea was pitched to me by my inimitable editor Glenn Scherer. I was glad for the opportunity.

Pope Francis at the opening Mass for the Amazon synod October 6, 2019. The administration of President Jair Bolsonaro was highly critical of the synod, seeing it as  interference with Brazil’s internal affairs. Image by Daniel Ibanez / CNA.

Environment  Will Climate Change Imperil Your Cup of Starbucks?

This broad-leafed plant in the rubiaceae, or coffee, family was spotted at 8,000 feet elevation in the Amazon basin of the Peruvian Andes. Such species are not normally seen at such high elevations. Photograph by Justin Catanoso

This broad-leafed plant in the rubiaceae, or coffee, family was spotted at 8,000 feet elevation in the Amazon basin of the Peruvian Andes. Such species are not normally seen at such high elevations. Photograph by Justin Catanoso

I wrote this story for National Geographic NewsWatch following news coverage of a UN report that spelled out how global warming is endangering future food supplies.

Excerpt: “As I learned in my reporting last summer, (2013) in temperate or cold climates, trees and plants are adapted to wide temperature ranges and can migrate to latitudes for many miles north to stay in their ecological comfort zones. In the tropics, where most of the world’s biodiversity exists, trees and plants live in extremely narrow temperature ranges. To survive, they will need to reproduce in higher altitudes where space is far more limited and upslope soils might not be accommodating – hence the possible threat to coffee growing in the future.”

Radio  WUNC: How Is Climate Change Affecting Tropical Forests?

The view from 13,000 feet in Manu National Park, Andes Mountains, southeastern Peru.

This radio report (7:17 minutes) for WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio overviews my climate change reporting in summer 2013 from the Amazon basin of Peru. It discusses the implications of upslope tree migration in the Amazon jungles as a result of warming temperatures.

The second recording (12 minutes) is of Wake Forest biologist MIles Silman and me on the afternoon news program at WUNC, The State of Things, with Frank Stasio, discussing the same topic.

Wake Forest biologist Miles Silman in the Peruvian cloud forest.

Photos by Justin Catanoso

Environment  Rain forest plants race to outrun global warming

Tagged trees in the Amazon rainforest.

Tropical plants are migrating due to climate change, but can they move fast enough?

Tropical biologists are coming to understand the impact of of global warming on our warmest climates.  Given the enormous importance of tropical forests in places such as the Amazon basin of Peru, where I spent more than two weeks in July 2013, to influence weather patterns, the water cycle and carbon storage from greenhouse-gas emissions, there is much at stake. My story here on National Geographic News explains.

Photo by Justin Catanoso