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Paula Kahumbu: A global alliance to end wildlife crime is within reach. Let’s start talking about how it can be made to work

Today the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is hosting a high level dialogue on wildlife crime at the UN Environmental Assembly (UNEA) which is taking place in Nairobi. The session will open with the launch of the UN Wild for Life campaign that is calling on citizens, governments and corporations to pledge to act on this issue. Participants at the event are expected to announce initiatives to take forward the implementation of resolutions made by UNEA-1 and the UN General Assembly on illegal trade in wildlife.

These resolutions, and the incorporation of specific targets to end poaching and trafficking of wildlife in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, have helped raise this issue to the top of the international agenda.

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Indonesia’s national bird, the Javan hawk-eagle, is among 13 species threatened by illegal trade, warns a wildlife watchdog

Thirteen species of Indonesian birds, including the country’s symbolic Javan hawk-eagle, are at serious risk of extinction mainly due to the pet trade, a wildlife watchdog warned Wednesday.

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A hole is seen alongside the Arno river in Florence on Wednesday, with parked cars slipping into the chasm near the Ponte Vecchio bridge. Nearby residences are evacuated as firefighters report a broken underground pipe to be the cause of the hole

• Off-street parking: Florence road collapse sinks row of cars

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Leading seafood suppliers, including McDonald’s, Tesco and Birds Eye, say suppliers won’t expand cod fisheries into pristine Arctic region

Fishermen and seafood suppliers struck a major deal on Wednesday that will protect a key Arctic region from industrial fishing for cod.

Companies including McDonald’s, Tesco, Birds Eye, Europe’s largest frozen fish processor, Espersen, Russian group Karat, and Fiskebåt, which represents the entire Norwegian oceangoing fishing fleet, have said their suppliers will refrain from expanding their cod fisheries further into pristine Arctic waters.

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A study finds that bizarre, tentacled worms which live attached to crayfish are at risk of extinction, alongside the crayfish themselves.

A news crew has been filming tornados outside Dodge City in Kansas. At least two people were injured in severe storms.

Remain supporters point to latest water quality tests as an example of how EU membership has spurred a dramatic clean up of UK beaches

Almost 95% of British beaches have been given a clean bill of health in the latest EU survey of coastal water quality, down slightly on two years ago.

As recently as 1991, around a quarter of British bathing waters were too dirty to swim in but the threat of EU infringement cases and beach closures, has spurred a dramatic change since then.

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Thousands of bees swarm over the back of a Mitsubishi car in Haverfordwest in west Wales after their queen was thought to be stuck in the boot. Tom Moses, a ranger at the Pembrokeshire coast national park, noticed the bees on Sunday after the owner parked it to do some shopping. Beekeepers removed the swarm by luring the bees into a cardboard box

• Bee swarm clinging to car boot has Welsh town abuzz
  

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The sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse takes off from Dayton, Ohio, on a 750km flight to Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania.

Fixing water pollution on the Great Barrier Reef will take a huge effort. Reef image from www.shutterstock.com

Current measures are not enough to protect the Great Barrier Reef, according to experts in a government report released today.

After a year of careful analysis, the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce has delivered its final report to the Queensland environment minister, Steven Miles. This is part of efforts to resource the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan, which was designed to meet the challenges facing the reef.

The report is part of the response to the United Nations' concerns that the reef is in danger of irreparable damage – with declining water quality from farming and land-use change being a major driver. The reef narrowly missed being listed as “in danger” in 2015.

The Queensland government has committed A$90 million over the next four years specifically for water quality. The federal government has also committed funding, but it remains to be seen how much will be directed specifically to water quality concerns.

The report recommends the money should be directed at understanding and beginning to reverse the impact of sediment and nutrient from rivers flowing into the Great Barrier Reef.

By any degree, the taskforce has done well in terms of bringing together a wide range of opinions and perspectives on a potentially contentious issue — views that are unified around the report’s conclusions.

While the report is not about climate change, climate change is critically important to whether the plan will ultimately succeed or fail. Stronger storms, floods, droughts and underwater heatwaves will all make the task of solving the water quality issue even harder.

So there is an assumption that we will beat the climate change challenge through mechanisms such as the international commitments that Australia agreed to under the Paris Agreement in December 2015.

Starting to reverse the damage

The Great Barrier Reef and its river catchment are bigger than Italy. With problems going back over 100 years, A$90 million is not going to fix all of the problems, but it can start to significantly reverse the damage.

The Queensland government has committed to ambitious water quality targets adopted in the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan — for instance, reducing nitrogen runoff by 80% and sediment by 50% across the key catchments of the Wet Tropics and the Burdekin by 2025. As many have noted, these targets will not be achieved under current practice — even if farmers fully adopt best management practices — and the taskforce report agrees.

Angry voices on soapboxes won’t solve this monumental challenge. That will only come about through inclusive and considered processes — it needs a long-term, sustained and coordinated reef-wide strategy.

We must redefine how we manage — and therefore resource — the Great Barrier Reef system, from the ecosystems that thrive in it to the industries and communities that depend on it for the long term. That strategy should coordinate all existing but separate approaches.

We’ve been here before

Fortunately — or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it — Australia has been here before with a complex environmental problem that crosses multiple borders. Particularly in the past 15 years, state and federal governments have attempted to undo a century of mismanagement in the Murray-Darling Basin.

Although water quantity is the issue in the basin, as opposed to water quality in the Great Barrier Reef, there are similarities.

The two systems are a similar size — the Murray-Darling Basin covers a million square kilometres, and the Great Barrier Reef half-a-million sq km. In both cases, productive industries such as farming cotton or cane closely interact with valuable ecological systems. Overall, they produce billions of dollars of annual revenue from food production, tourism and other industries.

In each case, international pressure (the RAMSAR convention on wetlands in the Murray-Darling, UNESCO for the reef) have played very significant roles in encouraging responsible actions from Australia.

Billions of dollars have been spent on the Murray-Darling — and similar investment is probably required for the Great Barrier Reef catchments. While action within the Murray-Darling system hasn’t been (and still isn’t) perfect, we can learn much from the experience.

Where to from here?

In our opinion, and drawing on the experiences in the Murray-Darling, the following principles should be core to any strategy for the reef.

First, recognise that a significant shift is required in how we manage and develop land next to the Great Barrier Reef. While this is politically, economically and socially difficult, the fallout will be greater if we don’t get this right.

Farmers must be enabled and supported to care for the land to deliver both economic outcomes and ecosystem services. They are the stewards of our natural capital as well as key contributors to our economy.

We’ll also need to take a small proportion of land out of production to form riparian strips, and incentives will need to be established to ensure the careful use of fertiliser, better use of cover crops, and the like. Again, these initiatives are occurring now, but we need to adopt a whole-of-system approach that corrals these actions into a coherent strategy.

The efficiencies introduced through the National Water Initiative and later the Murray-Darling Basin Plan did achieve such a shift there.

Second, acknowledge that nothing we do to address water quality issues makes sense if we don’t also address climate change as a major source of the problem. Any strategy to protect the reef has to include meaningful action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and vice versa. Solving the climate issue only to let the reef down on the water quality issue doesn’t make any sense either.

Third, full and enduring cooperation and coordination between the Commonwealth and Queensland governments are essential. Anything else risks duplication, redundancy, confusion and, more than likely, a monumental waste of money.

The political heat in the lead-up to the National Water Initiative, the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the 2007 Water Act served only to diminish the opportunities for a lasting and meaningful solution to excessive water allocation in the basin.

Fourth, in support of the cooperative federalist approach, a statutory authority that oversees the implementation of the strategy — with appropriate financial incentives and regulatory powers — will be necessary. This authority would operate across Queensland river catchment and estuarine regions. We would argue that this should be a separate entity to GBRMPA, which already has its hands full managing the reef.

One of the successes from efforts in water reform was the National Water Commission, which played a crucial role in the implementation of the National Water Initiative. Its subsequent demise was regrettable.

Fifth, well-designed, market-based mechanisms work. Just as some efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are cheaper than others, we need to know which measures that reduce water quality are most cost-effective. If designed correctly, these mechanisms have the potential to drive innovation and game-changing ideas.

A water quality “trading scheme” should be explored. If done properly, such a market could prove to be enormously beneficial to farmers as well as the reef.

Finally, make sure the strategy has the resources to get the job done. While throwing money at the problem won’t solve it on its own (the billions spent in the Murray-Darling Basin proved that), the challenge will demand significant resources over the coming decade.

Such finance need not come from governments alone. If the principles above are implemented in a way that provides transparency and certainty to the market, then the private sector may be able to contribute.

These are the first steps of a journey that is critical for the long-term survival of the Great Barrier Reef. As the taskforce stresses, this is a journey that will require clever policy that adapts to a dynamic world.

The reforms to address the problems of the Murray-Darling Basin were triggered by the Millennium Drought. The recent coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef should inspire the same urgency.

And, if so, let’s hope that we are now truly on a pathway to a future for the Great Barrier Reef where its people, industries and ecosystems thrive into the future.

This article was co-authored by Robin Smale, director of Vivid Economics.

Karen Hussey receives funding from the Commonwealth Government and the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with WWF Australia and the TJ Ryan Foundation.

Professor Hoegh-Guldberg undertakes research on coral reef ecosystems and their response to rapid environmental change, which is supported primarily by the Australian Research Council (Canberra), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Washington, D.C.), Catlin Group (London), and Great Barrier Reef Foundation (Brisbane). He is a member of the Great Barrier Reef Water Science Taskforce. He did not receive salary for writing this article.

Robin Smale is director of Vivid Economics. Vivid Economics is contracted to the Commonwealth Department of the Environment examining financing of conservation projects on the Great Barrier Reef, and has had previous contracts with Commonwealth Government and Government of New South Wales.

Student and staff campaigners and activist group 350.org welcome university’s plan to completely divest from fossil fuels over the next five years

La Trobe has become the first university in Australia to commit to a complete divestment from fossil fuels, the university council endorsing a plan to do so over the next five years.

It is a significant win for staff and students who have campaigned for the outcome on campuses around the country.

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Parasite fron China attacks eggs and larvae of Asian insect pest that has wiped out tens of millions of trees and is on march to Europe and Britain

Millions of tiny wasps that are natural parasites for the emerald ash borer have been released into wooded areas in 24 states of the US to try and peg back the tree-killing insect’s advances.

The US Department of Agriculture has researched and approved for release four species of parasitic wasps that naturally target the larval and egg stages of the ash borer, which has killed an estimated 38m ash trees in urban and residential areas. The estimated cost of treating, removing and replacing the lost trees is $25bn, according to a report written by USDA and US Forest Service entomologists.

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New research by WWF as part of the Wear it Wild campaign has revealed that millions of Britons are unaware of how many of the world’s animals are vulnerable, endangered or even critically endangered

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Australia is now pretty much the only major advanced economy where pollution levels are going up, not coming down. – Labor shadow minister for the environment, climate change and water, Mark Butler, speech to the National Press Club, May 18, 2016.

During a debate with environment minister Greg Hunt, Labor’s shadow environment minister Mark Butler said that Australia is “pretty much” the only major advanced economy where pollution levels are rising.

Is he right?

Checking the sources

When asked for data to support his assertion, a spokesperson for Butler referred The Conversation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN agency that oversees international climate negotiations. The spokesperson also referred us to the website of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which suggests that by pollution he meant “greenhouse gas emissions”. However, the spokesperson did not specify what data set the statement was based upon, nor what Butler defined as a “major advanced economy”.

The IMF defines a “major advanced economy” as the G7 nations (and Australia is not among its members). In this FactCheck, we aim to compare Australia’s emissions with a range of advanced economies including the G7 member countries, the EU bloc and a selection of others such as Iceland, Korea and New Zealand.

The Conversation also asked over what time period pollution levels were “going up” according to Butler, but didn’t hear back before deadline.

Nevertheless, there are some obvious data sets against which Butler’s statement can be tested.

How are Australia’s emissions trending?

Greenhouse gas emissions inventory data released in May by the Department of Environment show that Australia’s emissions (excluding land use, land use change and forestry or LULUCF) rose by 0.4% between December 2014 and December 2015. Emissions rose 1.1% if land-use and forestry emissions are included.

The report included the following graph:

National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (excluding Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry), annual, ‘unadjusted’ emissions, 2005 to 2015. Department of Environment

The graph shows that Australian emissions have essentially stagnated over the past decade. The data shows a slight decrease from 2012 to 2014 and then an increase from 2014 to 2015.

So Butler was right to suggest that Australia’s emissions are on the rise, based on the latest 12-month snapshot. But is Australia the only advanced economy where that’s happening?

How are other countries' emissions trending?

It turns out it’s not so easy to see if other advanced economies had an emissions rise between 2014 and 2015. There simply isn’t enough accurate global data available to do that comparison for such a recent and short time period.

To compare the most recent greenhouse gas emissions data (excluding land-use and forestry for which accounting rules vary) between countries, we used the PRIMAPHIST data set produced by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

This composite data set uses widely recognised data sources, including data from the UNFCCC and other UN agencies. It contains greenhouse gas data (aggregated in a standardised way) for all countries.

For developed countries, the data is extracted from national reports to the United Nations. For other countries, sources of data vary and more details are available here.

As we said, there’s not enough recent data available to see if Australia is the only country where emissions rose between 2014 and 2015. However, we can compare Australia’s emissions trends with other countries' emissions trends over a longer time interval – between 2000 and 2014 (the latest credible data available).

When we check what the PRIMAPHIST data shows about how Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions compare over that time frame with some of the other advanced economies (with the 28 European Union member states included as a bloc), here’s how it looks:

Don’t be deceived by what may appear to be a low level of Australian emissions (the blue line). It’s an illusion. In fact, Australia is among highest per capita emitters.

A more telling way to determine how greenhouse gas trends have changed over time is to look at emissions as a percentage of 2000 levels. Crunched this way, here’s how Australian emissions between 2000 and 2014 look when compared with a selection of advanced economies.

Australian emissions in 2014 were at 110.1% of the level they were in 2000. EU emissions in 2014 were at 82.43% of the level they were at in 2000. Calculations exclude emissions resulting from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) because there is no sufficiently reliable standardised accounting of LULUCF.

Our analysis of the PRIMAPHIST data shows that:

• Australia’s emissions rose fairly steadily until 2008 and have more or less stagnated since then.
• Overall emissions for the G7 economies (with the EU member states grouped together) have been decreasing, mostly since 2007, and in 2014 were 8.9% below 2000 levels.
• EU emissions show a strong decreasing trend.
• Emissions from Canada, Japan and the United States show large fluctuations since 2008.
• Australia’s emissions in 2014 were above those in 2000 – and this is unusual among advanced economies, but not unique.
• Emissions from Korea, Iceland and New Zealand were also higher in 2014 than they were in 2000.

What is most relevant, however, is what Australia’s emissions will do between now and 2030 and whether each nation is doing its fair share to limit global warming.

Verdict

Whether or not Butler was right really depends on what time frame you’re looking at.

Government data shows that from 2014 to 2015, Australia’s emissions increased but we can’t say for sure if Australia was “pretty much” the only major advanced economy that experienced a rise that year. There’s not sufficient reliable comparative data available for that year.

Zooming out to check longer-term trends, we know that Australia’s emissions in 2014 were above those in 2000. This is unusual among advanced economies – but Australia was not alone in this regard.

Comparing Australia’s emissions trend with the major advanced economies (the G7 countries with the EU bloc) between 2000 and 2014, Australia is the only one that had growing emissions over that time period. – Yann Robiou du Pont and Anita Talberg.

Review

The authors of this FactCheck are correct. Mark Butler’s statement is suitably vague, such that depending on the definition of “major economy” and the time frame that is examined, the claim is probably true. Plus, the caveat of “pretty much” gives the statement a bit of leeway. The lack of solid, comparable data from all developed countries as well as major developing countries for the most recent time period also makes the claim difficult to confirm with absolute certainty.

The fact that Australia’s emissions are increasing is worthy of mention in itself, especially in the light of the pledges made at the Paris CoP21 meeting. – Roger Dargaville

Have you ever seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.

Yann Robiou du Pont receives funding from the Melbourne International Engagement Award (MIEA) scholarship.

Anita Talberg receives an Australian Postgraduate Award PhD scholarship.

Roger Dargaville receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)

Taskforce head reportedly tells Queensland government ‘we’re stuffed with a capital S’ if water quality isn’t improved

A cap on pollution from farms close to the Great Barrier Reef has been proposed by advisers to the Queensland government.

The Great Barrier Reef water science taskforce, which advises the Queensland government on how to meet pollution targets on the reef, said sugar cane, grazing and other sectors should be given pollution load limits for their industries in each catchment. It also called for incentives such as auctions for pollution reduction, greater monitoring and regulation, along with “significantly more investment” in the problem.

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In the Eastern states the brush tail possum is the most widely abundant marsupial in the landscape, but the same can't be said for the WA subspecies with the local name of the Koomal.

ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR: Besides their owners finding them cute, short-nosed dogs are more affectionate and make better guard dogs than long-nosed dogs, a new study suggests.

Airlines have saved energy by changing flight routes and modifying wings for better fuel use. Plane image from www.shutterstock.com

Companies could improve their profits by 2-10% each year by saving energy. That’s just one of the findings of ClimateWorks Australia’s Energy Productivity Index, a world-first attempt to assess companies' energy performance and help investors make better decisions.

Investors are increasingly engaging with companies to address the risks associated with climate change. Extreme weather events, carbon-intensive assets and greenhouse gas emissions are becoming part of a routine risk assessment on the impact of a company’s profitability.

While a company’s energy use can have a significant impact on its bottom line and environmental credentials, energy productivity and efficiency have traditionally been difficult for investors to assess. This is mainly due to a lack of tools to measure and assess energy use and poor levels of disclosure by companies.

My colleagues and I have developed a guide to help investors figure out how potential investments are performing. We assessed 70 companies across six industrial sectors: airlines, automobiles, paper, steel, chemicals and construction.

Saving energy …

Many industrial companies spend a huge part of their operating expenditure on energy – typically more than 15%.

Energy productivity generally refers to the amount of revenue per unit of energy, so improving energy productivity can greatly improve a business’s investment value.

We found that more than 70% of the companies analysed have significant room for improvement in their energy use. Even more startling is the wide variation between companies in the same sector.

In some sectors, the leaders are achieving energy productivity levels up to five times the levels of poorer performers.

For example, in the automobile sector, Toyota produces eight times more vehicles per gigajoule of energy used than the least productive company, Daimler.

… making money

We also found that improving energy efficiency (by using less energy) could significantly boost a company’s profit. Of all the sectors analysed, airline companies reported the largest savings.

United Continental reported annual savings of US$343 million in 2014. This was achieved through initiatives that reduce fuel use, such as improved flight planning, replacing old planes, washing engines and installing winglets.

And despite operating in an energy-intensive sector, steel company Arcelor Mittal achieved almost US$200 million in energy savings in 2014.

The analysis also shows that one-third of the companies analysed could boost their profit margins by more than 5% a year if they matched the performance of leaders in their sector.

Even accounting for upfront capital costs needed to achieve best practice, energy efficiency can still increase profits by 2-10% each year. Most energy initiatives could be paid off in less than three years.

Even a 2% improvement in profits for companies in the automobile sector would be equal to about US$100 million. To achieve an equivalent increase in profits from revenue growth, a company would need to sell an extra 90,000 cars each year.

Ranking companies

Several factors affect a company’s energy performance. We looked at three:

• Resilience to energy costs measured through how much a company spends on energy and its profitability. A company that spends less on energy and has greater profitability is more resilient to changes in energy prices.

• Energy productivity measured by a company’s current ability to generate revenue or increase its production per unit of energy used.

• Energy efficiency measured by a company’s efforts in identifying and implementing energy savings. We included the extra financial gain of a company matching the energy efficiency of leading performers.

While we were able to rank many companies, we found that many others are not disclosing sufficient data on energy use to be assessed. Of 181 companies that reported in the six sectors analysed, 73 had incomplete or insufficient data for benchmarking. Much improvement is needed on data availability and data quality.

The global goal

While improving energy performance may be great for the bottom line, there’s another big reason energy use is so important. According to the International Energy Agency, energy-efficiency gains could achieve about 40% of the emissions reductions required by 2050 to limit global warming to less than 2℃.

Engaging with companies in their portfolios to improve their energy productivity is a measurable and profitable way to reduce emissions and avoid dangerous climate change.

Improving energy productivity has benefits not just for those investors and companies directly involved, but for all of us.

Wei Sue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Giant animals will light up Sydney’s Taronga zoo as part of the Vivid festival. The festival centerpiece features 10 animal lanterns representing the endangered species the zoo is committing to helping, as part of its centenary celebrations. The animal sculptures will include a Sumatran tiger, Asian elephant, sun bear and a platypus, which will go on display as part of the annual lights festival, starting Friday

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Dosing farm animals with antibiotics increases greenhouse gas emissions from cow dung, research suggests.