Category Archives: Resource Based Economy

The importance of the health of the worlds oceans is finally starting to be taken seriously by key players in the supply chain according to panellists at Lloyds Registers COP26 event last week A Spotlight on the Blue Economy: Supporting Sustainable Supply Chains.

Speakingduringthe panel discussion,Richard Hixson,NHS Oceanfounder, outlinedhow newthinking on ocean health correlates directly with human healthcare and how the operation of the worlds supply chains, including ocean transport, has a direct impact onall ofour lives. He explained howNHS Oceanis supporting the UKs National Health Service, one of the UKs largest customers of shipping services, in assessing the sustainability of its supply chains, particularly those provided by container lines. He praised the UKs largest employer for adopting an imposing green strategy and singled out Greener NHS for its achievements so far.

QuentinHenneaux, Lead, Global Freight Compliance at multinational pharmaceuticals firm, Baxter Healthcare, explained howBaxter haveimplementedsustainability strategiesat an operational level. Thelogistics of supplying treatments for acute and chronic medical conditions to users all around the world presents specific challenges.

The company is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2040,Henneauxrevealed, but emphasised that moves have already begun. Ocean shipping is by far the largest mode of distribution used by the company, he said, and he outlined three clear initiatives on strategy.

One, the company has adopted a reliable standard based on Clean Cargo methodology for reporting from its offices around the world. Two, reporting is based on both carrier and trade lane. And three, manufacturing sites across Europe now dispatch cargo consignments to a platform outside Antwerp. They are then coordinated and consolidated to minimise the number of shipped boxes. Central to all of these initiatives, Henneaux stressed, was collaboration. We are only one actor in the chain, he noted, and we need to collaborate with our carriers and our customers.

RuthBoumphrey, Director of Strategic Programmes at Lloyds Register Foundation,who areworking, amongst other projects, to promote ocean visibility among the general public, said: Ocean industries fulfil a vital role in everyones livesand are expected to double in size by 2030. These industriesneed to expand safely and with sustainable criteria in design, finance,engineeringoperation and decommissioning.

She revealed the Foundations plans for a new Ocean Safety Index to track safe industrial development andappropriate safeguarding. She also highlighted anew drive on ocean citizenship,through whichfuture sustainabledevelopment will take account not only of the oceans themselves,butalsoall people whose lives areinextricablylinked with ocean welfare.

Describing the worlds oceans asthe planetsunsung hero, a resource not simply to be taken from, but to be protected and nurtured, LRsKatharine Palmer, Global Sustainability Managerand UN High-Level Climate Champion Shipping Lead,warned that meeting targets in the future will not be possible without tackling shipping emissions today.

She highlighted theinspiring work of the UNs Race to Zero campaign, involving 5000 non-state members representing 15% of the world economy. There were, however, only two shipping companies in the membership so far, she noted.

Martha Selwyn of UN Global Compact emphasised the importance of ensuring we use terminology with the same definitions.We all talk about net zero, she said, but are we talking about the same thing?. She cited tunnel carbon vision as another example it wasallvery well talking aboutreducingcarbon emissions, she said, but what about everything else?

Introducing the session, Ambassador Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-Generals Special Envoy for the Ocean, stressed that the entire economy of the planet ultimately depends on healthy oceans and that they are currently in great danger. In the drive to reduce emissions and prevent the catastrophic outcomes of rising temperatures, ocean welfare must be at the top of the agenda.

Rising temperatures pose a massive threat to many coastal and island communities, and Thomson cited his native Fuji where a large proportion of people depend on the sea for food and jobs. He went on to cite the work of the World Meteorological Association in Geneva and its Secretary-General, Petteri Taalas, who has predicted that we are heading for a world that will be 3C warmer by the end of the century, without drastic action now.

Thats a world on fire, said Thomson. Ive got skin in that game. Ive got four granddaughters. Here is Rosie, he said pointing to a photograph on his lanyard. Shell be 80 by then.

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Suppliers recognising their role in ocean health. - Lloyd's Register

By state Rep. Zack Fields

World leaders are meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, half a world away. Many of the issues debated in that conference emissions from developing countries, deforestation in the Amazon, are equally distant from our state. Yet Alaska more than any other state needs this climate conference to be successful, and for world leaders to adopt aggressive and binding goals to mitigate the worst of the climate crisis.

Make no mistake: We cannot avoid climate change. I remember talking with subsistence hunters on St. Lawrence Island more than five years ago, who said they first noticed the retreat of sea ice and impacts on walrus hunts in 1957. Southeast Alaska fisheries have already been decimated by warming seas and depleted oxygen levels. This years heat dome, in which temperatures well above 100 degrees literally cooked shellfish in Pacific Northwest waters, was a grave warning of things to come for our state and our nascent shellfish industries, if the world doesnt get its act together and dramatically reduce emissions.

For too many years, the media treated climate change as a phenomenon that primarily affects glaciers and polar bears. Nope. Our resource-based economy is intimately connected to temperatures and carbon concentration in our waters. Our tourism-based economy depends on stable and functioning ecosystems. Yet the climate is changing so fast that its setting loose landslides that are closing the park road in Denali, and threaten unprecedented landslides and tsunamis in Prince William Sound. The ice road season for oil development is shrinking fast, and widespread permafrost melt is adding to costs for state agencies, homeowners, and private business owners from Bethel to Glennallen.

In the national media, climate issues are sometimes treated as a resources vs. conservation question. As Alaskans, we know this simply isnt accurate. We need work maintaining the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, exploring for and developing oil in the Arctic, subsistence and commercial fishing from Norton Sound to Southeast, and operating the myriad private businesses that depend on Alaskas large and diverse tourism industry.

Alaskas conventional oil fields have far lower carbon intensity than the oil sands of Canada or Texas shale fields. We can and will continue to produce oilprofitablywhile our transportation sector integrates electric vehicles at an unprecedented scale.

It would be a false choice to suggest we must abandon certain jobs or industries in Alaska to reach the greenhouse gas reduction targets world leaders are negotiating now. For Alaskas diverse economy to grow sustainably, we need a stable climate, which in turn requires sharp reductions in global emissions.

Are such reductions possible? Absolutely, and many of the innovations that prove change is possible have been pioneered in our state. Kodiak began transitioning to nearly 100% renewable energy twenty years ago.

State Rep. Zack Fields is a Democratic representative for District 20 in Anchorage. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Heres how to submit a My Turn or letter.

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Alaska, more than any other state, needs COP26 to be successful - Juneau Empire

With climate change no longer theoretical but abundantly evident, clarity about the way forward and who needs to do what is urgently needed. Building societal resilience to the perilous impacts of the entwined climate and biodiversity crisis requires a division of labor that involves us all.

Governments, national and local, must mark red lines, redirect investments, and prioritize resources to ensure mitigation, which entails limiting and ultimately eliminating the drivers of climate. These must include curtailing fossil fuel use, ecosystem loss and the degradation of natural resources.

But due to the damage already incurred and because emissions continue to break records, communities everywhere will have to adapt to rising heat, volatile weather, rising sea level and resource scarcity, which are now inevitable, though their intensity will depend on what we do in the near run.

Adaptation necessitates a new type of economy, one that can sustain our generation and future ones. The new economic order must prudently conserve our natural wealth and respect the delicate ecological balances that support life. It will emphasize values that stress meeting basic needs, food, water, shelter, for all while forgoing rapacious consumption.

Roads leading forward do exist if we act in time. The contours of a new sustainable order are taking shape. Efforts by researchers, entrepreneurs and decision-makers bring much-needed hope at a time when storms, fires, heatwaves, floods, food and water shortages and other threats spawned by global warming loom ever larger.

Small will be beautiful

Large business concerns committed to safeguarding the global commons will have a place in a sustainable economy. But the dominant players in the new economy will likely be small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMSEs).

The World Bank estimates that SMSEs from kiosks to municipal utilities to farms represent about 90% of business and 40% of employment worldwide. They generate up to 70% of jobs in emerging countries. The numbers are even higher when the informal sector (the shadow economy) is taken into account.

An OECD report notes that SMSEs are markedly innovative and do more with less resources and are less risk-averse than big businesses. They are are often locally-based, making use of human and natural resources within proximity, and tend to operate with a low carbon footprint.

Not all small- and medium-sized enterprises are committed to sustainability, but those that are, are helping to pave the way to create a new economy, one that would replace the fossil-fuel powered, take-make-waste linear system that has resulted in the crisis we face today.

Startups and small concerns are showing themselves to be groundbreaking They are also richly diverse, employing technologies ranging from enhanced traditional methods to state-of-the-art approaches. Some are rooted in distant rural communities while others are situated on city roofs where urban farms and energy collectors have been installed. Still others are found in abandoned warehouses where start-ups that began in university labs and experimental plots are upscaling solutions that provide a cleaner, healthier or more efficient product.

Circularity: Natures Way

The key to sustainability is circularity. The future sustainable economy must focus on conserving resources through use and reuse in order to extend their value for all stakeholders, including future generations.

Market economics preferred to mine new fonts of resources rather than reuse those already extracted and thereby felled countless forests, befouled coastal zones, drained wetlands and degraded essential ecosystems in the process practices that preordained todays planetary crisis. The circular economy promotes a more rational approach to resource use.

Nature is inherently circular, based on feedback loops, food chains and trophic cascades that optimize energy and recycles inputs. The circular economy will emulate the natural model. It will entail using less virgin resources while maximizing the utility of those already mined or harvested, recovering basic inputs from the waste stream, reusing and repairing products, recycling materials, reconditioning equipment, and using byproducts in downstream processes and for renewable energy.

Glass, for instance, termed a hidden gem in a carbon neutral future, does not degrade over time, yet is a major component of landfills in our throw-away economy. New technologies enable it to be recycled using relatively low energy inputs and its reuse would result both in job creation while reducing the heavy costs of sand extraction and plastics use.

Lowering consumption is a corollary of circularity. It entails limiting our collective carbon footprint by focusing on needs and not wants, limiting single-use products, and eschewing fads such as fast fashion and made-to-break commodities.

A circular economy would reduce landfills and lessen the need for controlled incineration, ocean dumping and open-air burning, these being the strategies that we use today to terminate our discards. Instead, what has long been thought of as trash is now being viewed as a valuable and bountiful resource that can be utilized without further extracting more of the planets limited resources and incurring the environmental disruption these processes entail.

Circularity will also engender enormous employment and economic opportunities. They will require extensive human resources, trained and retooled.

Waste not today, want not tomorrow

Another key to sustainability is adopting an outlook based on the greater good. One notable example of collective ethos and mutual aid is OLIO, an app that has spread internationally to reduce food waste through food sharing. Started by two women who met while attending Stanford Universitys MBA program, OLIOs founders aim to upend the situation where some 30% to 40% of the global food supply is thrown out, while hundreds of millions of people in poor and rich countries alike suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition.

These The OLIO innovators looked at the environmental as well as social impacts of food waste (forest and habitat loss, massive water use, methane and other GHG emissions produced by crop cultivation, meat production food and decomposition in landfills) and decided to do something about it.

Their app has had an outsized impact. Five million users in nearly sixty countries have shared 31 million portions of food which, when translated into ecological economy terms, offsets the emissions of 150 million car-kilometers. Listings offering or requesting donations are posted using the app and can be retrieved from neighboring households and food service providers like restaurants, caterers and institutions with surplus food.

OLIO reports that its app and support system are carbon-negative, offsetting the emissions generated by the cellular technology they deploy.

The collaborative mindset advocated by OLIO represents a worldview that is essential for the transition to a sustainable order. They are anchored in respect for our natural environment, our communities, ourselves and our descendants in economic relationships. This values set is based in building connections and finding happiness not in how much we have, but in our personal and mutual welfare.

Existing scholarship and new research show that the ties between sustainable mindset and lifestyle, on the one hand, and health and well-being on the other are significant.

Out with the slash-and-burn

Restoring the centrality of nature to economic considerations is often decried by defenders of the old order as utopian or retrogressive. However, Tthe innovators that are leading the way to a sustainable economy based on circularity are definitely not, however, quite the opposite of Luddites. Rather, they often create cutting-edge technologies that are the product of state-of-the-art science and are at the vanguard of a new modernity one that will be more wisely conceivedthat will be more judicious than the slash-and-burn attack economics that preceded it.

All of this will require new knowledge, processes and technologies including designing out waste from our economic systems by extending the utility of materials well beyond their initial use, and creating products from biomaterials and other sustainable sources. This will necessitate creation of new jobs needed for a smart economy and the careful stewardship of natural resources.

The Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy has articulated action plans for circularity in electronics, food, capital equipment as well as textiles. Other groups are doing the same concerning textiles, building, infrastructure, forestry, agriculture and other economic branches.

Building blocks in creating sustainable communities include food banks, vehicle sharing, community gardens, bikeways, green infrastructure, buyers groups for renewable energy, equipment exchange centers, repair hubs, credit unions and more. A sustainable order will require a new entrepreneurship, but not in the mold of those that characterized the last century which decimated family farms, shops and independent businesses and replaced them with chain stores, fast-food franchises and real estate tracts developed by tycoons engaged in empire-building. Sustainable enterprises will seek to generate and conserve value for all stakeholders innovators, employees, suppliers, communities and future generations.

Such entities, paving stones to a sustainable modernity are already being put in place, as will be described in a forthcoming article.

This article is part of a series by Dr. Yosef Gotlieb describing the origins of climate change and the planetary crisis, its economic roots, new approaches for dealing with these threats, and initiatives to build a sustainable new order.

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The new order: Who needs to do what to save Earth - Haaretz

We have a government that has set a lot of targets and we have not come close to reaching those targets. I want to see an actual plan." ~ Rachel Blaney

With the COP26 United Nations climate change conference in Scotland underway, national governments are meeting to try and mitigate the effects on climate change on the planet.

For North Island-Powell River MP Rachel Blaney, whats important is that Canada needs to study and meet targets.

We have a government that has set a lot of targets and we have not come close to reaching those targets, said Blaney. I want to see an actual plan. We also have to look at the transition and make sure industries that are going to be impacted are part of the process, where we hold accountability, but we also make sure that where we can, we are making sure theres good jobs for people.

Blaney said this is going to be a very difficult time and her party will be watching the federal ministry of environment and ministry of natural resources to see some solid action.

Ive always said that based on my conversations with a lot of workers in numerous industries who use natural resources, there are a lot of people who see what is happening to the climate and they want to see significant change within their industries, but they need to see support from all levels of government to get to that place. Were serious about meeting those targets.

Blaney said the government has to stop sending so much subsidy to the oil and gas industries.

This is something we need to start working on and changing because we need to keep that money and invest it in our communities to see what we can do as we move forward toward a new environment and a new world and a new economy that is based on more sustainability, said Blaney. For our riding, looking at how rural and remote we are, we need to see those resources flowing into our communities. We need to see those new industries or new developments in industries actually happen. It needs to be focused on local communities because we know what we need to do, and we know our environment best, and a lot of the solutions are right there.

Blaney said she believes within the riding there is a great deal of innovative capability and capacity to find solutions to a dire problem. She said thats part of the reason why she had Motion 53 in front of the House of Commons last parliament where she talked about acknowledging that resource-based economies in small, rural and remote communities, such as those in her riding, have built the country based on those resources. She said when things get tough, the federal government steps away and watches as challenges are faced.

I wanted to let the government know that this is not okay, and we need to see investments now in these communities and we need to see that innovation grow, said Blaney. If you look at the environmental crisis and how each region of Canada, which is such a huge country, is going to respond, its going to be vastly different. What can we do to see investments in those areas to create solutions that make sense?

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MP representing qathet region comments on climate targets - Powell River Peak

Transitioning from oil and gas to more renewable energy sources is expected in Canada but how we approach it will have a significant impact on the industry's workers, says an environmental researcher.

"So we can either manage that transition and do it in a way that is just for the workers in that industry, and the communities that are impacted," said Emily Eaton, an associate professor at University of Regina.

"Or we can do it in a completely chaotic and unmanaged way, in which case the fallout is going to be severe, especially for the jurisdictions that are digging in their heels in and trying to deny the reality."

Advocates have been calling for Canada to move away fromoil and gas production for years, andare pushing for a just transition that would support affected workers. They argue that while transitioning away from a fossil fuel-based economy, subsidies should be made available to oil and gas workers to help them transition to jobs in other industries.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, announced his government would put caps on carbon emissions from the oil and gas industry, with an aim to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

"That's no small task for a major oil and gas producing country. It's a big step that's absolutely necessary," he said on Monday.

WATCH | Justin Trudeau pitches a global carbon tax at COP26:

Some workers in the industry, which is heavily concentrated in Western Canada, have heavily criticized the move and they say it highlights a lack of preparation for a just transition.

"Just picking a date and saying that, 'OK, well, we're just going to do this we're going to transition,' well, that's not a plan," said Tim Cameron, an Albertan oil worker who has relocated to North Dakota for work.

"That's what's unbelievably frustrating and hypocritical to so many of us in the energy industry. You keep saying that we're going to transition, but what does that mean?"

Cameron says that the calls for a just transition have taken him and his colleagues off guard.

"The whole conversation about the just transition that's a stunning thing to me, considering the fact that I don't know anybody in my community that's had the opportunity to have their input on what a just transition would even look like," he told Checkup.

While Cameron acknowledges there is a need to work toward reducing emissions, he argues that government announcements short on details only serve to scare away development in the sector.

Oilfields jobs are desirable for many workers because of the relatively high wages they offer and policies that work toward moving the industry away from fossil fuels must acknowledge that, according to Eaton who researches natural resource economies.

"There's a suite of policies that we can look at to deal with fossil fuel workers, but ultimately we need to have a pretty hands-on approach that connects fossil fuel workers ... to work that is equally as good," she said.

Key to paving the way forward, Eaton notes, is an announcement by government that fossil fuels will be phased out.

"There's no way to get to zero, no matter how many offsets or credits or carbon sequestration we do, if we're not also phasing out fossil fuels."

It's not only those on the rigs that will be affected, however.

Eaton says that while focus is often on those working for oil and gas companies, workers in the communities around oil fields many of whom are women, racialized or temporary foreign workers in the hospitality and hotel industry should also be part of the equation.

"The feds have for a long time promised that they're going to be introducing a just transition act," she said.

"And what I'd like to see is also some attention to the workers in those more precarious industries that are attached to fossil fuels."

WATCH | Climate group calls for phase out of fossil fuels

For his part, Cameron says he's mulling a permanent move to the United States over worries that policy shifts will limit his opportunities.

"If the country doesn't really want you and it doesn't want the industry, why would I bring my money home and pay taxes and things there?" he said.

"There's way more work [in North Dakota] than there is people. It feels much like it did in Alberta 10, 15, 20 years ago."

Written by Jason Vermes with files from Matt Meuse.

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Transitioning oil and gas workers into new industries will require a 'hands-on approach': researcher - CBC.ca

WELLINGTON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - When a New Zealand central bank official spoke in September about the ktuku, a white heron that features prominently in folklore of the indigenous Mori, the world's hard-nosed foreign exchange traders took it as a cue to dump the local currency.

Assistant Governor Christian Hawkesby was challenging the financial market's hackneyed use of terms like "hawks" and "doves" to describe monetary policy and introduced a third bird for them to consider, one that takes small and considered steps and constantly assesses its environment before making bold moves.

The nuanced illustration was meant to show how the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) would deftly navigate economic uncertainties such as the pandemic. Instead, it gave traders itching to know how fast interest rates would rise a reason to sell the currency to a one-month low.

"When we are using Mori and the cultural stories we need to explain those and translate those into English to bring everyone along with us," Hawkesby told Reuters, acknowledging the challenges of employing indigenous cultural references.

Over the past few years, the RBNZ has undergone an overhaul that puts the country's Mori heritage and language at the centre of its operations.

The makeover, driven by RBNZ Governor Adrian Orr, has resulted in some bold changes not only to its corporate branding but also its approach to policy and communication.

The RBNZ's new stylised logo is inspired by the legend of Tne Mahuta, the Mori god of the forest, and builds on the narrative of RBNZ as a giant tree that serves as "kaitiaki", or guardian, of the financial system.

Policy documents are now dotted with visual and linguistic references to Mori folklore, which have perplexed some investors in the New Zealand dollar, the world's 10th-most traded currency.

"It took me a while to figure what was being said here," a Sydney-based foreign exchange trader said of the ktuku example.

BROADER PERSPECTIVES

The changes are part of a drive to elevate Mori culture, language and society in policymaking and promote indigenous perspectives on issues including climate change and sustainability, which has gathered pace under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

For the central bank, that means a greater focus on financial inclusion for Mori, who make up 17% of the 5.1 million population but are under-represented in the economy.

Inequality has contributed to an income gap between Mori and non-Mori and led to poorer education and health outcomes for Mori, who have also been more affected by the economic and health impacts of the pandemic.

"Monetary policy is very much a macro perspective but it does have different distributional impacts, and it's critical that we recognise them when we take these policy decisions," said Ganesh Nana, Chair of the New Zealand Productivity Commission.

The change also calls for a better modelling and understanding of the $50 billion "Mori economy", which includes Mori-owned businesses, customary gift exchanges, assets in Mori entities and in natural resource-based sectors, much of it tied to traditional communities and land ownership.

"What you find is it's growing rapidly and it's much bigger and far more diverse than people realise," Hawkesby said of the Mori economy.

BEYOND OPTICS

The RBNZ has a reputation for innovation, pioneering the inflation targeting approach to monetary policy more than three decades ago, a tool now commonly used by other central banks.

Its increased Mori focus comes as more attention is being paid to how indigenous wisdom might help tackle issues including environmental protection.

Global leaders gathering at the UN COP26 climate summit in Scotland this week are being asked to include indigenous communities in climate debates.

"If you think of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, or development of green bonds and green investing, and socially responsible investment...all these things are becoming more mainstream than niche," Hawkesby said.

"Mori culture has hundreds of years of experience and pre-existing language underpinning all of that."

But the improved institutional profile of Mori culture has faced criticisms from some that the shift is mostly optics.

New art installations in the RBNZ's Wellington headquarters, including a piece depicting forest god Tne Mahuta, are designed to connect the bank and the financial markets with the Mori community. However, its almost NZ$300,000 ($214,000) price tag has raised eyebrows.

Mori still find it harder to get employed compared to a New Zealander of European descent. Even in the RBNZ only 4.8% of its staff are Mori.

Hawkesby said the RBNZ was now doing internships with Mori and Pacific Islander students but acknowledged the bank still had "a long way to go" in terms of representation.

Morgan Godfrey, senior lecturer at the Otago Business School and a Mori political commentator, said Mori communities' and businesses' struggles to access private capital impeded growth and participation in the wider economy.

"The government is harvesting the low hanging fruit incorporating te reo Mori (language) into marketing, implementing Mori leadership positions in government organisations. But none of this addresses the structural issues impeding the growth of Mori businesses."

($1 = 1.3935 New Zealand dollars)

Reporting by Praveen Menon; Editing by Sam Holmes and Lincoln Feast

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Excerpt from:

Hawks, doves and ktuku: how Mori culture is changing New Zealand's central bank - Reuters

Since the nineteenth century, human society has experienced extraordinary but uneven economic growth thanks to the energy unleashed from fossil fuels. That growth, and the greenhouse gasses released from fossil-fuel use, has also created the current climate crisis. The conventional solution put forward to this crisis, a putative compromise between economic and environmental imperatives, has been to maintain economic growth but on the basis of sustainable energy sources.

"Globalization is built around capital mobility as the owners of capital seek better returns on their capital. It is allowed by policy, but there is also an opportunity to reduce capital mobility just as it was increased."

Not all ecologists or economists are enthusiastic about this "green growth" alternative. According to these critical views, which have now begun to move into the mainstream, the planet simply can't sustain the current pace of growth and even renewable energy sources like solar hit up against significant resource limits. The only effective way to control carbon emissions, as well as related problems of pollution and biodiversity loss, is to address "overshoot," the unconstrained use of energy and material resources well beyond planetary limits, particularly in the richer parts of the world. These arguments pick up from some of the earliest computer modeling of resource limits highlighted in the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth report in 1972, but now with a climate crisis twist.

With the fiftieth anniversary of the Club of Rome report approaching, a number of scientists and economists gathered in early October to assess the current state of play of the zero-growth argument, its traction in the mainstream, and how best to call attention to the data supporting these positions. They looked at this question from various anglesphysics, geology, biology, economy, ecologyand discussed the major obstacles to greater acceptance of more critical approaches to economic growth as well as ways of overcoming these obstacles.

The main challenge remains how deeply wedded politicians, economists, and even the average person are to economic growth. "It's often said that it's easier for most people to imagine the end of civilization than the end of capitalism, and to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of growth," quips Joshua Farley, ecological economist at the University of Vermont.

The growth narrative has indeed created certain blind spots, geologist Simon Micheaux of the Geological Survey of Finland points out. "Certain things just haven't occurred to us to look at, let alone do the math. One is, understanding what energy does for us. The other is understanding where the raw materials come from." Much work over the years, including modeling around economic, environmental, and resource limits, has been designed in part to eliminate these blind spots.

Still, blind spots persist. They can be found, for instance, in the discourse around the Green New Deal. "Most Green New Deal material I've seen is just another formula for growth," York University economist Peter Victor notes. "With sustainable development, we used to say that we have the adjective but they have the noun. I feel the same with green growth."

The modelers themselves are not immune from the growth imperative.

"We need projects to survive as a research group," explains economist Jaime Nieto Vega of the University of Valladolid, adding that those projects require bigger and better modeling. "I'm increasingly convinced that we should keep the modeling simple, but the internal dynamics of academe are against that." Universidad del Rosario ecological economist Katharine Farrell similarly highlights the need to take into account the modelling implications of "industrialization of scientific knowledge production" with its "fetishization of innovation" that reproduces within academia the same growth dynamic in society as a whole.

In recent years, critiques of growth have been emerging from a number of different disciplines. Such an intellectual convergence is producing what might well become a paradigm shift. "It's almost as if human consciousness is ready to see certain ideas," Simon Micheaux concludes hopefully. "Our ideas might be received a little bit differently over the next couple of years."

Economics

Economics, on paper, is a discipline devoted to scarcity and trade-offs: budget constraints, resource limitations, the iron law of wages. As economists like to say, "there is no such thing as a free lunch." Everything, in the end, must be paid for.

Economic growth at first glance seems to promise a shortcut out of this dismal world of scarcity by offering the promise of just such a free lunch, if not for everyone then at least for some. As economies grow, more goods and services become available, and the bounty seems to be conjured as if from thin air.

Economic growth, however, is not a conjuring trick. It has been powered by planetary resources, mostly fossil fuels. As University of British Columbia bio-ecologist William Rees points out, for most of human existence economic growth was "barely detectable until the early nineteenth century when we got into the fossil fuel era. Fossil fuel for the first time gave humans access to other resources needed to grow the rest of infrastructure and human and manufactured capital that we find ourselves 'blessed with.' In order to maintain that capital, we need to have a continuous supply of cheap energy."

The bill for a "free lunch" produced by fossil fuels is now coming due in the form of global warming, biodiversity decline, and various forms of pollution.

The strange thing is that economic growth, though it exerts such a powerful influence across societies of very different political economies, is often illusory. "For much of the past 50 years, most Americans have experienced no economic growth, noincrease in consumption or level of wealth," Joshua Farley points out, because the benefits of economic growth "have all flowed to the elite."

Yet most people don't want to give up on even this illusory sense of growth. Farley cites the 2006 review of the economics of climate change by the British economist Nicholas Stern, who noted at the time that it would require an outlay of one percent of global GDP to stabilize emissions at a level of 550 parts per million, which would substantially reduce the risk of climate catastrophe. At a time when GDP was growing 3 percent a year, such an expenditure would mean accepting a living standard of a mere five months in the past. But Stern believed that even such a modest cut would be a tough pill for the public to swallow, and he acknowledged that more ambitious efforts to reduce the risk of catastrophe, by for instance spending 2 percent of global GDP and accepting the living standards of the previous year, would meet with even greater public resistance.

Growth is not simply embedded in national discourses. It lies at the heart of the process known as globalization, namely the elimination of barriers to the transnational flow of trade and capital and the intensification of global supply chains. But globalization, as Peter Victor notes, is not inevitable: "Globalization is built around capital mobility as the owners of capital seek better returns on their capital. It is allowed by policy, but there is also an opportunity to reduce capital mobility just as it was increased."

Such pushback against the assumptions of globalizationthat deregulation is essential, that growth is inevitablehas grown among economists.

This pushback, for Peter Victor, began with the idea that "the economy is fully embedded in the biosphere and is fully dependent on it for all materials and energy and for all waste disposal." From this insight, he developed models for exploring the impact in Canada of a no-growth economy and a reduction of energy and material throughput. "If GDP is stable, and you're getting efficiency gains, then you're reducing material and energy use," he explains. When he published his first modeling in 2007, "you could put out scenarios that showed that the cessation of growth in Canada would meet many other important social and economic objectives: less work time, more leisure time, a reduction of income inequality and environmental impacts."

A second model, developed with ecological economist Tim Jackson, also incorporated the financial system. "We could still get scenarios where growth would end and material and energy throughput would decline, but it was harder," Victor adds. "I don't think that's a surprise. The window is definitely closing in terms of any reasonably smooth adjustment to the circumstances we're facing."

Another hallmark of the current age of economic globalization is increased income inequality, both within countries and between countries. This polarization has been driven by the greater role played by finance in the global economy. The rate of return for financial capital is often greater than the economy as a whole, which effectively transfers even more wealth to those who possess capital in the first place. People are making money from money rather than from the production of goods. Some individuals and some countries are better positioned to prosper under such a system, which reinforces inequality.

"I see the fundamental conflict of our age as the rich versus everyone else," Simon Micheaux argues. "People with lots of money don't have empathy. The same ways of logic and problem-solving and appealing to a sense of right and wrong doesn't work with them."

Katharine Farrell calls attention to the social psychology work of biologist Mary E. Clark that the sociopathology of the profit-driven private corporation is well documented in psychological research. "A corporation has to survive by showing profit and growing," Micheaux agrees. "If a corporation can't grow, it loses investment, takes on debt, and goes down. They call this a free market like it's a good thing. What do psychopaths do when they are fighting for their own survival? Do we expect them to play nice?"

Economic Transition

The global economy is under a number of pressures: stagnation, the costs of climate change and other environmental impacts, the volatility that has accompanied income inequality. "Crises have a way of bringing about unanticipated or unwanted changes," Peter Victor notes. "But they happen. Think of the crisis European feudalism faced with the rise of the merchant class and later the industrial class. Feudalism gave way to capitalism not because Adam Smith wrote a great book but because the pressures were too great for feudalism to survive. There was a shift in the power balance. Now we have to recognize that capitalism is under stress."

One of those stresses is the availability of raw materials. Modern capitalism is based on relatively inexpensive fossil fuels and mineral wealth. That entire system is now under threat. "This is an historic moment," Katharine Farrell points out. "We are looking at the collapse of the physiological structures of the planet, such as we've been able to document them, during the small amount of time that we've been around to do so."

Another energy-related challenge for any transition away from fossil fuels is the relationship between energy efficiency and the reduction of energy demand that's imperative if humanity is to meet national and international carbon emission goals. "We are finding that energy efficiency is not able to grow at the same scope as energy reduction when economic growth is a given," reports Jaime Nieto Vega, alluding to Jevons paradox according to which increased efficiency in resource use goes hand in hand with increased consumption of that resource. "This is one of the main challenges of the energy transition plans in the EU and concretely in Spain."

There is more willingness among politicians to acknowledge the ongoing collapse of the existing system. Simon Micheaux describes a meeting he had with civil servants in Brussels. "They were in an echo chamber," he remembers. "It had not occurred to them to ask certain questions. I put together some information to demonstrate that our dependency on fossil fuels is a problem, fossil fuels are about to become unreliable, and the transition plan to move away from fossil fuel has not been thought out in a practical context. At a basic level, the planned rollout of electric cars and hydrogen fuel cell powered by solar and wind and hydro won't work. We've run out of time, and we don't have the minerals in the ground. Even if we did find those minerals somehow by mining the sea floor, those systems are not strong enough to replace fossil fuels. I was met with shock. No one able to refute my work."

Such a meeting stood in contrast to his involvement in a civil society consultation at the G20 meeting in Melbourne in 2014. "The finance ministers told us up front that if we couldn't help them achieve 2 percent growth annum indefinitely, we shouldn't bother coming," he recalls. "When it became clear that we couldn't do that, that we would be tabling some very difficult challenges, they cut out the civil society documentation to go to the G20."

Joshua Farley agrees that the world is on the verge of transition. "The heyday of neoliberalism is fading fast," he notes. "My students are more open to alternatives to capitalism. We're reaching a point where the next stage is inevitable. People all around the world are coming up with the same ideas at the same time, just like Newton and Leibniz with calculus and Darwin and Wallace with evolution."

He continues, "We are moving from a world in which individual choice and competition made sense to one in which collective choice and cooperation are necessary, not because ideologies have changed but because both the problems we face and the nature of the resources required to solve them have changed. When the costs of economic activity are collective, capitalism (i.e. private property rights and individual choice) is suicidal; when the benefits are collective (e.g. new vaccines for COVID, new forms of alternative energy), capitalism is inefficient."

William Rees remains cautious about this transitional period. "If you believe the results of our eco-footprint and overshoot work, it's not possible to support the present population indefinitely at average material standards," he points out. "There are already resource shortages. To maintain the current structure requires the depletion of natural assets in the biosphere. According to our material flow analysis, half of the countries on earth are incapable of becoming even remotely self-reliant. Even China, which boasts of its huge pork production, relies on fodder grown in the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere. So, China's eco-footprint is all over planet. They're aware of it, at least implicitly. The Belt-and-Road Initiative is a strategy to ensure that China has access to resources all over earth. China has instructed its industrial sector and military to look for every drop of fossil fuel so that they can get in there first to maintain hegemony. Sustainability beyond mid-century will require a massive contraction of economic throughput by as much as 50 percent globally, which means 80 percent in rich countries on a per capita basis. Although modest by some estimation, are those figures realistic geopolitically?"

"Is capitalism, and the countries dedicated to it so firmly, going to fade away quietly?" he asks. "A dying dinosaur has a very dangerous tail that thrashes around." He points out that the world is "not controlled by us thinking about ideas. It's controlled by big money and the politics that goes with it. The military-industrial complex is alive and thriving."

Part of any transition, then, is to minimize the influence of the beneficiaries of the dying system. "None of us know what the new economy will look like or how to implement it," Joshua Farley says. "But I advocate removing important parts, like essential resources, from the capitalist economy. That might be perceived as less of a threat to the global market. I still want to go into a store and choose the apple I want. Markets work okay for tastes but not for needs."

One such segment of the economy might be research. "Ideas, information, knowledge, none of this should be rationed, yet capitalism tries to push knowledge production into a market framework," Peter Victor points out. "If I can get free information from the Internet, I will do so. I don't consider it stealing. It's not like bread from the baker since if I take it, there's no less for anyone else."

Biology

Mainstream economists view humans as "rational actors" who maximize their gains according to self-interest. Billions of such "rational actors" have over the years made decisions to increase the overall pie as well as their portion of it. The biological counterpart of this economistic view is the "selfish gene," by which humans will do everything within their power to maximize their advantages in order to improve their chances of reproducing themselves. Growing the economy and growing the species have thus been cast as going hand in hand.

Not everyone agrees. Since Richard Dawkins introduced his "selfish gene" argument, others have marshaled evidence for the biological basis of altruism. "Love, compassion: these are characteristics of primates," Katharine Farrell notes, adding with a dash of understatement that "even some humans have been seen to exhibit these characteristics."

Biology is not destiny, William Rees argues, but it certainly strongly influences human actions. "The human species responds just as other species do when it finds itself in a resource trove," he explains. "We go through rapid exponential growth until we either pollute ourselves into slowing down or deplete the assets that produced that growth. We are in the plague phase of a one-off population outbreak that will result in either slow implosion or rapid crash. That's the choice ahead of us."

Biological limitations also shape the efficacy of human responses to the current crisis. "We have a brain that evolved in simple circumstances: a small habitat and few people," Rees continues. "We are not capable of dealing with complexity. We are natural reductionists. Echo chambers, disciplinary silosthat reflects our capacity to focus on one thing at a time and not much else. With every biological phenomenon there is diversity, but in the main, we're not capable of understanding the complexity of the situation that we have created."

The heart of the problem, he adds, is not climate change per se. "With the explosion of human numbers, we've put ourselves in a situation where simply maintaining the current population and infrastructure requires the depletion of natural capital assetssoils, forests, fisheries," he says. "We are literally consuming the biophysical basis of our own existence. Climate change is a symptom of overshoot. It's a waste management issue, caused by carbon dioxide, the largest single waste product by weight of industrial economies. Biodiversity loss is a symptom of overshoot because human expansion necessarily displaces other species and their habitats. Gross pollution is the entropic result of growing the human enterprise."

Ordinarily, such species growth hits a wall. "Species are usually held in check by negative feedback from the ecosystem in the form of disease or competition," he notes. "Fossil fuel relieved us from that feedback, and we could express our full biological potential to expand. The cultural meme set of neoliberal economics has reinforced the biological disposition to expand."

Katharine Farrell, while largely in agreement with Rees, resists the notion that human nature is predetermined, by a "selfish gene" way or otherwise. She argues that "it's very difficult to get out of one's own orientation" and disagrees with treating the culture of capitalism as an inherent feature of being human: "industrialized capitalism, which has certainly achieved a memetic imposition on the culture of the planet, is not the natural or only option for the human being. We have to get out of the trap of the gendered state of evolution reflected in the Euro-descendent, post-medieval culture of capital accumulation that presently dominates globalized economic activity. It's not the only option we have."

Increasingly, humans have been behaving much like parasites, which Joshua Farley points out, constitute "the overwhelming share of species on the planet." William Rees picks up on the theme. "Humans have broken free of any ethical obligation to non-human species or even the future," he says. "We have become effectively parasites on the planet. The growth of the human enterprisethe production of all our toys and goodies acquired at the expense of depleting the planet of other species, soil, waterhas had the entropic consequence of the parasitic destruction of our host species, which is the ecosystem."

It all comes down, Katharine Farrell agrees, to entropy, to the inevitable marriage between the production of order and disorder. "We don't have an energy supply problem so much as an obsessive focus on finding energy sources. We have an overproduction of entropy, of waste heat and residuals that are inevitably produced whenever we do useful work, and this entropy production problem is reflected in biodiversity loss, habitat appropriation, and an explosion of invasive species, including agriculture."

Organization

What distinguishes humans from other creatures, Katharine Farrell points out, is not so much social interaction or organization, for ants and bees are highly organized creatures, but the creation of institutions. Ants are differentiated by their shapes: the queen versus the workers. Humans look more or less the same even as they take on different roles in social institutions.

These institutions, Peter Victor points out, mitigate to a certain degree the biological deficiencies inherent in any average individual.

"We tend to be short-sighted," he admits. "We are good at the local, not at the global. But part of the solution to that are the institutions we construct. When they work well, they can give us a longer time horizon, because they outlast the life of an individual. Unfortunately, a lot of the organizations that get set up with that spirit in mind can get overwhelmed and become short-term and concerned with the local. But if we 're looking not only at how bad things are but how to get out of it, we have to look at changes at the organizational level to complement any discussion of our biological limitations."

Social segmentation and differentiation, mediated by these organizations, also counteract the individualism of the "selfish gene" and the rational self-interest of homo economicus. "None of us has the ability to fully produce from scratch any item we're in contact with right now," Joshua Farley points out. "We are inherently a collective species. The individual can't survive away from the collective any more than a cell can survive apart from the body. Even the most trained survivalist, without a knowledge of local ecosystems developed through culture, is helpless."

One useful organizational innovation, Katharine Farrell notes, has been federalism, a method of handling complex hierarchical structures. The principle of subsidiarity is especially useful where "differentiated systems don't try to do everything at one level" but authority is taken at the most immediate or local possible level. Peter Victor also acknowledges the virtues of federalism: "In Canada, where we have 10 provinces and three territories, we can learn from each other and be closer to politicians than in highly centralized Britain."

Human organization nevertheless has its downsides, depending on the nature of the organization. "I wouldn't have forced someone to produce my shirt in an exploitative manner," Joshua Farley points out, "but buying it through the capitalist system, I don't think twice about it." Organizations, through their complexity, thus offer individuals a kind of plausible deniability when it comes to unjust or unsustainable practices.

The structures of globalization, William Rees adds, have had a destructive effect on more sustainable forms of organization. Globalization has destroyed "the capacity for community-level self-reliance or self-sufficiency. Now with global supply lines, everyone is utterly dependent on everyone else to survive let alone thrive. Unfortunately, that whole organizational structure presupposes abundant cheap energy to enable the global transport of goods around planet. If that system is coming to an end, we are going to be in a situation of forced reorganization, which won't be pleasant because it will result in increasing strife over the remaining pockets of assets around the world. Globalization has been the means by which the relatively well-to-do can access these remaining pockets. This huge organizational pump has sucked the planet dry and, in the process, impoverished much of the world."

But self-sufficiency can return, even under adverse conditions. Peter Victor enumerates a number of the survival tactics of countries under U.S. sanctions that have been forced, by their relative isolation from the global economy, to strengthen their food self-sufficiency or develop their own vaccines. Another example of this resistance is "south-south cooperation where the Global South is trying to learn from itself and wean itself to some degree of dependence on the North," he points out. "What can we learn from these examples?"

Is versus Ought

Science attempts to describe the world as it is not as it should be.

"Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are important," Peter Victor argues. "A lot can be learned from number-crunching and from people playing with your models. But it's not enough. It convinces those who are already convinced, and it raises questions with those who have open minds. Quantitative analysis gives us some insight into the choices we can make. But it doesn't tell us which one to take."

"I believe in genetic evolution where the mechanism is genes as well as cultural evolution where the mechanism is our moral values," adds Joshua Farley. "We need these values to live together as a group. These values are the units of inheritance upon which natural selection acts and they are every bit as scientific as genes. We're still obsessed in science with providing better numbers. No, we need to develop better ethical values that are compatible with society and its current scale. When I ask my students to distinguish between a good person and an evil person, they usually reply that an evil person puts the individual ahead of the group and a good person puts the group ahead of the individual. If we want to be a good species, we have to put the overall planet ahead of humans."

Katharine Farrell describes a meeting she attended where an indigenous woman from Canada and an indigenous man from Brazil discussed their perspectives on capitalism. "The man talked mainly about brutality and violence and a lack of regard for the other, the lack of reciprocity in terms of economic framing. The woman talked more about cultural complexity, that sense of responsibility, how do we raise and teach our children. I was left with a metaphor: capitalism is an adolescent male who didn't spend enough time with his mother. It's a vulgar oversimplification of the problem, but there's a lot in it. We need a more neurocognitively complex approach to knowledge production that includes and exploits both the masculine and feminine aspects of the human brain."

"I'm not suggesting that the memetic theme we're now embedded in is the only one," William Rees counters. "But the one we have happens to reinforce the biological theme. The whole of civilization is a set of rules and regulations established to override what would naturally happen. We are in the game of recreating the paradigmatic framework with which we move forward and much of that will have to counteract our natural predispositions."

Impact

Given the centrality of economic growth in the mainstream, degrowth has largely hovered on the margins of debate. That seems to be changing.

"I noticed a shift in mood two or three years ago," reports Simon Micheaux. "Instead of hitting my head against the wall, all of a sudden I started to get results. I'm not sure how this happened, but now I'm getting my work in front of senior policy decisionmakers. I'm presenting to ministers and parliaments in multiple countries."

But, he cautions, that hasn't yet translated into altered policies, either at a political level or even in terms of technological research. "The best and brightest are working on things that, I won't say they won't work, they do work, but they are not the ultimate solution. We are forced to work on lithium-ion battery chemistry when there are other chemistries. I've shown that there are not enough minerals in the ground to make those batteries. I've used their data. They have no choice but to see it."

When a financial crisis happens or a sympathetic political party takes power, the terms of reception can change dramatically. Peter Victor remembers when a social democratic government took over in Ontario after a surprise election result in 1991. "I was given a job there, and just being able to work with a government that was interested in social change was incredible," he says. "You couldn't give them enough ideas! They didn't accept them all, but they listened."

Fifteen years later it was a crisis that gave his ideas more prominence. "My book Managing Without Growth came out in 2008 at the time of the financial crisis," he recalls. "What otherwise would have been a marginal document published by an academic publisher and sold at a high price became more well-known. The media was looking for an economist who could say something positive about no-growth. I was invited all over the world. I got a sense that I was being listened to. But 99 percent of the time, the audience already agreed with me."

Victor adds, "It takes a chorus. If lots of us do these things, it will make an impact."

Degrowth is often associated with doom-and-gloom scenarios. "No one wants to hear that everything is going to go poorly," Simon Micheaux notes. "They want a solution. If you can't promote a solution, they are not prepared to hear the problem." As the economist Herman Daly used to say, "If you're falling out an airplane, it's not an altimeter you need but a parachute."

Finland, Micheaux continues, sits on a lot of minerals integral to battery production such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, and graphite. "If I'm right, in a few years' time, the global production of minerals will not be sufficient to meet demand. The captains of industry will then turn to the geological surveys in Europe and say, 'why didn't you tell us?' The Geological Survey of Finland (GDK) manages a battery portfolio and they will be first in the firing line. I can have a frank discussion with their executive board members about hyperinflation, peak oil, currency default. They are enlightened, but they don't understand the implications." Still, GDK is giving him the opportunity to develop his ideas about the circular economy and cooperate with other Finnish research groups in the industrial sectors.

"It's pretty clear that we don't have enough resources to go around," Micheaux concludes. "If we do the conventional, each nation for itself, it will give war a chance until the population reduces. If we actually have a transparency of information and we all agree to share those resources, we'll have a form of socialism to distribute those resources and a form of capitalism to exploit those resources."

To help generate and test new ideas, Joshua Farley recommends creating a knowledge commons. "Any university can unilaterally declare that all the knowledge we create to address social ecological problems is freely available to all on the condition that any improvements to it are also freely available to all," he suggests. Even geopolitical rivals like the United States, Iran, and North Korea could be part of this commons. Small-scale knowledge commons, like this working group, can provide help in developing certain ideas and marshalling the defense of such ideas in the public sphere.

This effort could include the creation of a social platform to rival Facebook based not on pushing people to buy more thingsand offering polarizing content to keep people tuned inbut on algorithms that "reduce political polarization and focus people on common problems," Farley adds.

Another idea Farley suggests is "secure sufficiency." Meeting people's basic needs is "the ultimate form of freedom." If they are not worried about becoming unemployed or suffering a health emergency that they can't afford to cover, they might not strive so hard to accumulate wealth or be quite so wedded to a growth economy.

The working group agreed to pool its experience of "what works" in terms of injecting no-growth arguments and modeling into the mainstream. And the group is considering efforts to work with organizations devoted to qualitatively expressed no-growth visions like "well-being" and "buen vivir," and to challenge competing modeling based on overly optimistic assumptions about technological advances.

More here:

Opinion | The Limits of Economic Growth and the Climate Crisis - Common Dreams

This launch marks an exciting and important step for South Australia recognising the states position internationally as a leader in green industry development, the circular economy, recycling and resource recovery and, as the pre eminent location for training in these areas.

Minister for Environment and Water David Speirs made the announcement of the Centre of Excellence during a virtual presentation at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).

This centre makes South Australia the number one destination for businesses and government across the Asia-Pacific region to see the policy and practice of a circular economy in action, Minster Speirs said.

The Global Centre for Excellence in the Circular Economy isnt just an idea, its a physical location to demonstrate what South Australia has to offer, and to incubate and innovate cutting edge projects to deliver a greener and more circular economy which is not only good for the environment but creates jobs as well.

Lot Fourteen is the perfect location for the Global Centre for Excellence in the Circular Economy, based in the heart of the innovation hub in Adelaides entrepreneur ecosystem.

The official centre launch will enable promotion to attract further membership and commercialisation of circular economy projects, investment and partnerships to Adelaide.

Circular360 is an internationally recognised non-for-profit organisation which already has early partnerships with the United Nations Centre for Regional Development, The World Bank and the US Green Chamber of Commerce.

The Global Centre for Excellence in the Circular Economy at Lot Fourteen will be led by, Mr Hemant Chaudhary, Executive Director, Circular Economy Alliance Australia and delivered in partnership with the Marshall Liberal Government thanks to $1 million over three years.

The centre will deliver training and education on the role of the circular economy in reducing our global carbon footprint and addressing climate change through the smarter recovery, recycling and reuse of materials, with a focus on the benefits to business in becoming more circular.

Circular360 puts South Australia light years ahead when it comes to realising the economic potential in a more circular economy, Mr Chaudhary said.

Circular360 will be a magnet for ideas and projects across the region. Lot Fourteen is now the only place in Australia delivering this kind of hands-on training and education.

South Australia is now one of the leading locations internationally for students, policy makers and business leaders to see how to build a more circular economy from the ground up.

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SA leading the world in the circular economy - Premier of South Australia

HUMBOLDT COUNTY, NevadaDeep below the tangled roots of the old-growth sagebrush of Thacker Pass, in an extinct super-volcano, lies one of the worlds largest deposits of lithiuma key element for the transition to clean energy. But above ground, a cluster of tents has risen in the Northern Nevada desert where, for eight months, environmental and tribal activists are protesting plans to mine it for green technologies.

We are not leaving until this project is canceled, said Max Wilbert, of the Protect Thacker Pass campaign. If need be, this will come down to direct action. We mean to put ourselves in between the machines and this place.

Plans to dig for the element known as white gold have encountered a surge of resistance from tribes, ranchers, residents and activists who say they believe the repercussions of the mine will outweigh the lithiums contributions to the nations transition to less-polluting energy sources than fossil fuels.

The opponents view lithium extraction as the latest gold rush, and fear that the desperation to abate the climate crisis is driving a race into avoidable environmental degradation. The flawed assumption behind the clean energy transition, they argue, is that it can maintain levels of consumption that are inherently unsustainable.

We want people to understand that clean energy is not clean, Wilbert said. Were here because our allegiance is to the land. Its not to cars. Its not to high-energy, modern lifestyle. Its to this place.

Proponents of the mine maintain its potential to address climate change and develop a rich domestic economy around a resource that is currently produced almost entirely outside the United States justify its environmental consequences and potential burden on local communities. Most mainstream environmental organizations and activists, while recognizing the significant environmental burdens from mining for elements required for the energy transition, see them as necessary to wean the world off of the fossil fuels that are driving global warming.

Lithium is essential for batteries to power electric vehicles (EVs) and to store energy produced by renewable but intermittent sources like wind and solar. But getting it can have environmental impacts that draw similar pushbacks to those associated with the extraction of fossil fuelsa conundrum that is taking center stage as the mining of minerals critical to new energy technologies comes to the U.S. in a major way for the first time.

The tension between the local environmental and social impacts of mining and the demand for critical minerals is a worldwide problem, not just a challenge in the USA, said Elizabeth Moses, Environmental Rights and Justice Associate with the Center for Equitable Development at the World Resources Institute.

Troubles around the Thacker Pass mine echo global conflicts over mineral extraction for renewable energy that are almost certain to grow with the worlds transition to clean energy and its rapid electrification of the transportation sector in particular. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a cobalt rush has brought human rights violations, child labor and dangerously tunnel-riddled neighborhoods. In Chile, lithium mining is stressing the water Indigenous peoples and native wildlife depend on in the Atacama desert. And in the once-pristine Arctic surrounding Norilsk, Russia, nickel production has turned rivers red, killed vast forests and darkened skies with the worst sulfur dioxide pollution in the world.

Some energy transition critics see these as harbingers of a new wave of green-energy driven ecocidewanton, widespread destruction of the environment. Legal scholars and environmental activists are currently campaigning for the International Criminal Court in the Hague to take up ecocide as the fifth crime it would prosecute, alongside genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression.

At the Thacker Pass camp, activists who call themselves radical environmentalists hope that addressing these challenges will press nations to choose to drastically reduce car and electricity use to meet their climate goals rather than develop mineral reserves to sustain lifestyles that require more energy.

In January 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management approved the Thacker Pass Lithium Project, granting Lithium Americas, a multinational company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, and its subsidiary, Lithium Nevada, the exclusive rights to mine there. Soon afterward, Will Falk, an environmental lawyer representing local tribes, and Max Wilbert, an organizer, set up an encampment at the site of the proposed mine.

The activists are allied with the local Paiute-Shoshone tribes, ranchers and concerned residents. Hundreds of supporters gather at the protest camp for events such as native-led prayer runs through towns and rural landscapes to finish at the pass.

Despite its name, and the fact that it is also developing a lithium mine in Argentina, Lithium Americas majority stakeholder is Chinas Ganfeng Lithium, the worlds largest producer of the element.

The proposed project spans 17,933 acres that would hold an open-pit mine and a sulfuric acid plant to process lithium from the raw ore. The mine is expected to have a lifespan of at least 46 years. The mine operations at Thacker Pass will emit 152,713 tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to the emissions of a small city, according to its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). It is expected to consume 1.7 billion gallons of water each year500,000 gallons of water for each ton of lithiumin an arid region that is experiencing worsening droughts.

According to BloombergNEF, global demand for lithium chemicals will reach nearly 700,000 tons a year by 2025. Thacker Pass is expected to produce 60,000 tons a year.

Lithium Americas claims they have established Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards to meet the worlds increasing demand for sustainability in business, but they do not specify their measures or methodologies for them. A representative for the company commented by email that Thacker Pass is designed to meet or exceed all state and federal requirements during construction, operation, and reclamation, and will meet limitations on air and water pollution, which were assessed in the FEIS required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Opponents engaged in ongoing litigation against the project claim the FEIS was rushed and failed to meet obligations specified under NEPA.

Places like Thacker Pass are what gets sacrificed to create that so-called clean energy, Wilbert said. It is easy to say the sacrifice is justifiable if you do not live here. Wilbert rejects claims that such trade-offs are necessary for the greater good.

I look at this as the paradox of green growth, said Chris Berry, an independent energy analyst who is on the Lithium Americas board. There is no free lunch. To do this, I half-jokingly say that everyone is going to be unhappy. We have to get over the NIMBY mindset.

Moses, at the World Resources Institute in Washington, sees the roots of such opposition as more complex. Historically mining communities have lacked access to information or been denied a voice in policy decisions despite having the legal right to engage in most countries, she said. Overall we need better transparency and accountability across the entire supply chain to ensure that mining communities arent asked to bear the brunt of the transition to the net-zero carbon economy. These communities need our support, including targeted tools and strategies that ensure they can protect their environment, cultural traditions and livelihoods.

Whatever processes are required, the demand for lithium is most likely immutable. Lithium mining is going to happen somewhere [in the U.S.], said Ian Lange, associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines who served as Senior Economic Advisor to the Trump Administration. If not Thacker Pass, itll be another place.

In President Bidens February 2021 Executive Order on Americas Supply Chains, the administration vowed to bring back more manufacturing and mining to the United States as part of its effort to develop lithium-ion batteries. The order said the administration would work to identify domestic sites where critical minerals could be mined and Congress to increase funding for the U.S. Geological Survey to map such resources. Currently, the majority of the worlds lithium is mined in Australia and South America, and more than 97 percent of it is refined in China.

President Bidens American Jobs Plan includes $174 billion to promote electric vehicles and EV charging stations. In March, The U.S. Department of Energy announced policy actions to scale up a domestic manufacturing supply chain for advanced battery materials and technologies including a commitment of 24.5 million toward research and development of new private-public partnerships that will focus on linking raw materials processing with supply chains and cell manufacturing, aiming to reduce battery costs, said Michael Berube, deputy assistant secretary for sustainable transportation in DOEs Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, in a recent webinar.

In August, President Biden announced plans to sign a non-binding Executive Order calling for electric vehicles to make up 40-50 percent of new auto sales in the United States by 2030, and he has called the governments investment in EVs a race for the future.

In addition to creating jobs, the investment is part of the administrations efforts to combat climate change. By 2030, the administration is committed to reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent from 2005 levels. Transportation contributes almost 30 percent of thosethe largest direct source among all U.S. sectorswith cars and light-duty trucks responsible for 59 percent of vehicle emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

But despite the reduction in emissions that the widespread adoption of EVs would bring, the Center for Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice at the University of San Diego, an organization of concerned scientists who monitor harms to communities from mining, opposes the electrification of transportation. Their analysis shows that in order to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 ppm by 2050parts of gas per million parts of airindustrialized countries greenhouse gas emissions would have to decrease by 80 percent. Electric cars, the centers researchers concluded, would achieve just 6 percent of that target, leading them to argue that driving electric vehicles is not a radical enough behavioral change to significantly slow climate change.

Exactly how much CO2 electric cars save compared to combustion cars is calculated based on the amount of CO2 emitted when electricity is produced or fuel is burned, as well as the emissions of the resource extraction for batteries. A Department of Energy-funded a life cycle analysis (LCA) by the Argonne National Laboratory looking at this scope with both types of vehicles found electric vehicles must travel approximately 13,500 miles before they become cleaner than a comparable vehicle burning fossil fuels. A similar study was done by the nonprofit European Federation for Transport and Environment and concluded that electric cars in Europe emit, on average, three times less CO2 than equivalent petrol/diesel cars. Differences in life cycle assessment for electric cars result from the varying ways electricity is generated for the power grids that the vehicles plug into in different countries, as well as where the vehicles batteries are sourced.

Globally, fewer than 1 percent of passenger cars on the road today are electric, but analysts at IHS Markit project that by 2035, they may make up a quarter of all new sales and 13 percent of vehicles on the road as gasoline cars are phased out.

There is a litany of concerns about the plans to build a lithium mine at Thacker Pass, with the various groups opposing it highlighting different issues. For many locals, the biggest concern is Lithium Americas plans to build a plant at the mine site that will convert molten sulfur into sulfuric acid, which is used to leech the lithium from the raw ore.

Every day the operation would burn hundreds of tons of sulfur trucked in from as far away as the Alberta oil sands. Residents are concerned about the possibility of accidents and spills along the narrow highway between Winnemucca and Thacker Pass, which would be traveled by an estimated 75 tractor-trailers a day. Spills of molten sulfur in places like Florida and Washington state have seeped into the ground and permeated the air, while sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide worsen asthma and contribute to particulate matter linked to heart and lung disease.

Locals voiced their fears about emissions from the sulfuric acid plant in public meetings held by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, but Jeff Kinder, chief engineer in the Bureau of Air Pollution Control at NDEP, said he believes state standards will provide adequate protection to nearby residents.

The company will be required to do continuous emission monitoring, he said.

Many locals like Jennifer Cantley, an organizer with Moms Clean Air Force, a Nevada group that works with politicians to safeguard against pollution, said she believes any contaminated air from the plant is too much. It scares me how quickly they did this, she said. This is my home. This will affect my family. I cant let up.

The enormous piles of waste that would be dumped from the use of sulfur makes the fact that they call this a green project really bizarre, rancher Edward Bartell said. The most hazardous waste from the sulfur plant would be transported to Clean Harbors, a disposal facility located in Reno, according to the FEIS. The tailings from the mining wasteabout 353 million tonswould be placed in a permanent lined storage facility on-site, according to the FEIS.

But the sulfur is just one of Bartells problems with the mine.

In early February 2021, Bartell, who owns 50,000 acres of property adjacent to Thacker Pass, sued the BLM alleging the mine violates the Endangered Species Act and NEPA. His complaint, filed in Nevadas U.S. District Court, alleges that the mine could reduce streamflow enough to endanger Lahontan cutthroat trout, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lists as a threatened speciesand the BLM failed to consult the USFWS about that possibility, the complaint says.

Theres been an enormous concern with protecting cutthroat trout, with the BLM not allowing cattle to graze near the stream, Bartell said of rules he had to follow to safeguard the fish. He said when the mine was proposed, the BLM reclassified the stream as ephemeral, meaning it doesnt flow all the time, which allowed it and its fish to receive different protections than they had previously. The baseline data recorded in the FEIS did not accurately portray how the stream flows, he said, complaining that there are no long-term gauges to monitor it.

His lawsuit claims that approval of the Thacker Pass Mine was based on a Final Environmental Impact Statement that was inaccurate, incomplete and contained misrepresented data. It cites an Environmental Protection Agency letter to the BLM from January 2021 that criticized the BLMs failure to analyze impacts on water quality and ensure that mine operations didnt violate water quality standards. According to the BLMs FEIS, Lithium Americas plans to pump 1.7 million gallons of water from the aquifer each year, which could leave less water to support the grasslands Bartells cattle graze.

The lawsuit also cites EPA predictions that toxic water with high levels of uranium, mercury, arsenic and more than a dozen other contaminants could seep into groundwater from the tailings and other mine waste.

According to the EPA letter, the plans are not developed with an adequate level of detail to assess whether or how groundwater quality downgradient from the pit would be effectively mitigated.

The sulfur compounds could degrade water quality both underground and in the air, said Dr. Alexander More, a professor of environmental health at Long Island University. As the EPA pointed out, the list of expected toxic water pollutants is clearly no ones favorite recipe, More said. These are all major components of acid rain. In a drought region, the groundwater risks being polluted by toxic metals, while whatever little rain the area may receive will be polluted by acid emissions, which will impact farming and drinking water, not to mention the wildlife and plants. And the projected greenhouse gas emissions are no joke either.

Bartells lawsuit is not the only one attempting to stop the mine. In late February 2021, four regional environmental nonprofitsthe Western Watersheds Project, Great Basin Resource Watch, Basin and Range Watch and Wildlands Defensefiled suit against the Department of the Interior, BLM and Ester McCullough, district manager for the BLMs Winnemucca office. The lawsuit claims that the project does not comply with the Resource Management Plan in Thacker Pass for greater sage grousea ground-dwelling bird on the verge of being listed as threatened whose populations have fallen into decline in areas with other types of energy development.

The greater sage grouse is just one of the species that will be impacted by the mine, said Terry Crawforth, former director for the Nevada Wildlife Department. From his porch in the Kings River Valley, he gestures toward inactive sleeper mines in the Montana Mountains that are still considered toxic after their operators failed to clean them up.

When ducks fly over and touch down, they are dead the next morning, he said. He fears more of the same from Lithium Americas. The way the mine is designed right now, it will destroy the local culture, especially if they suck up all the water and pollute it.

Crawforth helped organize residents from Orovada and Kings River Valley into the Thacker Pass Concerned Citizens. He has arranged several meetings between them and Lithium Americas, largely over safety measures for traffic and the local school, in a process facilitated by Collaborative Decision Resources Associates, a mediation firm for contentious land projects.

Of course, if we thought there was a chance to halt the mine, we would try, Crawforth said. But it is inevitable, he said, and negotiating to reduce the harms of the project is their only available recourse now.

This area is the last large sagebrush piece left for animals in Thacker Pass, he explained. According to the Great Basin Resource Watch, it is an important linkup of wildlife habitats in the Double H Mountains and the Montana Mountains. The mine would degrade nearly 5,000 acres of pronghorn antelope winter range and 427 acres of their summer range, as well as sever two critical pronghorn migration corridors, according to the FEIS. It contains essential Greater sage-grouse habitat, golden eagle nests and it is the last known place where the Kings River pyrg, a rare spring snail, endures. They will remove the habitat and with it many critters, Crawforth said.

Lithium Americas has responded to concerns about the mines impacts on wildlife with plans that include advanced revegetation technologies developed with the Greater Sagebrush Restoration Fund at the University of Nevada Reno and possible mitigations such as retrofitting utility poles to make them less likely to kill birds, and to reduce the productivity of a pair of golden eagles that nest in the area.

Rulings in both lawsuits are expected in January 2022 by U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du in Nevada. On Sept. 3, the judge denied a preliminary injunction requested by area tribes to halt archeological digging by a Lithium Nevada contractor to remove cultural artifacts that would be disturbed by the mine, following a BLM-approved plan. The tribes lawsuit alleged that the agency violated the National Historic Preservation Act in permitting the mine near a site where there is evidence of the massacre of at least three Paiutes by federal troops in 1865. Will Falk, the lead attorney in the case and a founder of Protect Thacker Pass, said the BLM did not attempt good faith consultations with those who hold the site sacred, and handpicked a few tribes that were suffering from the coronavirus pandemic knowing theyd struggle to respond.

For Native Americans, this is a government-sanctioned way to loot our artifacts, said Michon Eben, Cultural Resource Specialist for the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony. The treatment plan is based on discriminatory language and is in direct disrespect to our history. Tribal members are usually brought to the actual sites and digs to counsel on the whereabouts of artifacts and burial grounds and to help ease the overall disturbance, she said.

We did not hear about this mine until it was too late and none of our tribal members have been asked to advise at the time of digging, Eben said. What they are calling adequate consultation is the fact that the BLM sent three letters to three different tribes. Eben noted there are at least 15 tribes that attach spiritual significance to Thacker Pass.

The Protect Thacker Pass campaign and People of the Red Mountain are calling on Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the nations first Native American cabinet secretary, to intervene.

Alexi Zawadzki, president of North American operations for Lithium Americas, responded to the ruling in a statement: Respecting the interests of Native American tribes is extremely important to us, which is why we have engaged with the Fort McDermitt Tribe since 2017And, were just getting started. We are committed to working alongside anyone in the community.

With Lithium Americas promising cooperation, Kinder, at NDEPs Bureau of Air Pollution Control, said that officials are used to working with mining executives. We always have new industry coming, he said, And there are many regulations we have to get up to speed on, but this permitting process doesnt feel that different from our normal course of business.

But the environmental review process took less than a year to complete due, in part, to a Trump-era revision to the National Environmental Policy Act that put a 12-month cap on permitting reviews. According to research done by Cambridge University, the average Environmental Impact Statement is put together over the course of 3.4 years. The final leasing permit was issued in the last days of the Trump Administration.

The EIS process was also conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, which limited community meetings. Many locals said they didnt learn about the proposed mine until the public commenting period had ended.

Most supporters of the project reside in Winnemucca, a city of about 7,500 people about an hours drive from Thacker Pass. Mining has long been a dominant employer there, and locals know the new project means jobs. The company predicts it will bring approximately 1,000 construction jobs to the region for two years and employ an operational staff of about 300.

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RV parks and temporary housing units line the edges of the small city. These man camps fill up and empty out with the booms and busts of local mines.

People of the Red Mountain, a group at the Fort McDermitt Reservation opposing the mine, said in a press release: This will lead to an increase in hard drugs, violence, rape, sexual assault, and human trafficking. The connection between man camps and missing and murdered indigenous women is well-established.

County Commissioner Dave Mendiola sees lithium mining and clean-energy technology as a means to diversify the economy but sympathizes with opponents concerns.

I guess you can chain yourself to the fence like some of the protesters might do and I dont blame them for that, Mendiola said, but in the end, as a company, if theyve followed all the rules, youre probably not going to stop it. What we can do as a county is monitor it and come up with ways to address problems now.

Humboldt County Sheriff Mike Allen, a sixth-generation Nevadan, said hes seen bar fights and drug crimes rise with the opening of mines and plans to increase patrols to deal with the potential influx of hundreds of lithium miners. But, he added, there is no doubt in my mind we can call a meeting, and the company will hear what the community is saying.

At one of the community meetings held by the company in Orovada in April, Tim Crowley, the vice president of government and community relations for Lithium Americas Nevada division and the former head of the Nevada Mining Association, addressed the attendees. Our goal is to be a good neighbor, Crowley said. Were confident that there will be more development beyond the 46 years, so we will be here for a very long time. The only way to be a good neighbor is to listen to you and accommodate wherever we can.

Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation is the nearest tribal community to the proposed mine, about 26 miles away. Representatives from Lithium Nevada approached the tribal council there in 2020while the community was struggling with Covidto initiate the engagement agreement, a process typically undertaken by mining companies operating on or near tribal lands. Maxine Redstar, then the tribal chairperson, said she hoped the mine would provide well-paid work for some of the roughly 340 people on the reservation.

More than 40 members of the Fort McDermitt tribe have expressed interest in high-wage jobs that Thacker Pass will bring, wrote Lithium Americas Zawadzki at the time.

But last March, the tribal council withdrew from the community engagement agreement with Lithium Nevada after being presented with a petition opposing the mine signed by the majority of the reservation members, according to Myron Smart, a reservation member and spiritual leader for the community.

The agreement with the company was signed by the council behind closed doors, said a Fort McDermitt reservation member who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation. Everything related to the mine was hushed up. The decisions of the council do not reflect the beliefs of the community. The council did not return requests for comment.

Weve always welcomed input from our neighbors, and in return, we strive to communicate regularly and openly about our progress at Thacker Pass, Zawadzki wrote in response to the judges ruling allowing excavation of cultural sites to proceed. Its this neighborly approach to doing things right that will lead to cultural preservation, good jobs and exciting economic opportunity.

For some tribal leaders, those promises ring hollow.

Offering well-paying jobs at a lithium mine is like the coal miners in Virginia who had to breathe coal dust, said Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Chairman Arlan D. Melendez. If thats the only job to feed your family, youre going to take it even if it means sickness or a shorter lifespan. The greater situation of failing reservation economies has never been addressed other than with undesirable jobs that harm our health.

With the failure of the tribes lawsuit, and uncertainty about those that will be decided in January, the coalition of tribal members, ranchers and environmentalists gathering at the Thacker Pass encampment expect protests against the lithium mine to escalate, and the backlash against the energy transition it would feed to grow.

Electric cars simply cause a different sort of harm: instead of the Gulf Oil Spill, we have the bulldozing of an increasingly rare desert habitat, wrote Wilbert, the Protect Thacker Pass organizer and author. To save the planet, we have to stop destroying. A wound is a wound is a wound.

Excerpt from:

Plans To Dig the Biggest Lithium Mine in the US Face Mounting Opposition - InsideClimate News

Forestry experts are applauding an agreement made in a joint statement on Monday by more than 130 countries at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by the end of the decade.

The pledge, supported by $19 billion in public and private funds, covers more than 85 percent of forests worldwide, equivalent to 3.7 billion hectares. Significantly, it includes the key tropical forests of Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia.

As part of the pact, a dozen countries committed to provide $12 billion in public finance to 2025, which will be funnelled into landscape restoration activities, tackling forest fires, and supporting the rights of Indigenous communities. Additional commitments from the private sector of $7.2 billion, and pledges to eliminate investment activities linked to deforestation, also form part of the commitment.

While these pledges are inspirational and encouraging, success will require we convert pledges into actions better than in the past and also that we organize a just and equitable transition from a fossil-fuel based economy to a bio-based and renewables economy, said Robert Nasi, director general of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and managing director of World Agroforestry (ICRAF).

We must develop a framework and reporting mechanism to ensure these promises are met if we arent careful, we could still lose our forests as the impact of climate change is felt through wildfires or pathogens, without ever bringing in the axe or the chainsaw, he added.

The Declaration on Forests and Land Use is only one of several commitments made to protect forests and ecosystems, supported by public and private financing at the climate talks.

Leaders at COP26 also announced the Congo Basin Pledge, a promise of $1.5 billion in financing by 10 countries, the European Union, and the Bezos Earth Fund, to protect forests,peatlands and other critical global carbon stores.

Online retailer Amazon founder Jeff Bezos committed another $2 billion to restore landscapes and transform food systems.

The series of pledges acknowledge that resource mobilization and long-term financial support both public and private from the international community are required to support countries in conservation and restoration efforts.

Another initiative, a new $345 million, seven-year program, the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration Impact Program (FOLUR), will launch projects in 27 countries on the sidelines of COP26 at the Global Landscapes Forum this Saturday targeting forest risk commodities, including beef, cocoa, coffee, maize, palm oil, rice, soy and wheat production and value chains.

The initiative, funded by the Global Environment Facility and led by the World Bank, aims to reduce the environmental consequences of food production, and will leverage $2.7 billion of additional co-financing to improve agricultural ecosystems and policies, mobilizing public and private sector financing.

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COP26 deforestation pledges a big win, but only if they are upheld - CIFOR Forests News - Forests News, Center for International Forestry Research