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NGOs in eight heavily forested tropical countries on Monday launched a mapping system aiming to crack down on illegal logging as a low-cost alternative to REDD projects, as another nation has banned all timber exports and a further country has put a block on the voluntary carbon market.

AirCarbon Exchange (ACX) has signed an MOU with the newly-launched Nairobi International Financial Centre (NIFC) to start a carbon exchange in Kenya as a basis for attracting low-carbon finance to East Africa.

Swiss President Ignazio Cassis hosted leaders at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano on Monday, aiming to pave a way towards an eventual rebuild and recovery for the war-torn country, including through low-carbon infrastructure investment and the development of a green export sector.

The colonisation of Australia coincided with a boom in European interest in exotic animals – so kangaroos, dingoes, wombats and more were shipped off, regardless of practicalities

In early 1943, the second world war raged across multiple theatres. Hitler’s army had just suffered a historic defeat at Stalingrad, but U-boats still prowled the Atlantic and Britain’s resources were stretched to the limit. So it must have come as a surprise to Australian prime minister, John Curtin, when a telegram arrived from Winston Churchill requesting six platypuses be sent to Britain forthwith, in a scheme conservationist Gerald Durrell described as “magnificently idiotic”.

Historians have tried to place this episode in a broader context of empire and international geopolitics, but it seems Churchill just really wanted a platypus. He had collected exotic animals throughout his life, including black swans, a white kangaroo, a budgie named Toby who attended ministerial meetings, and a lion named Rota, which he sensibly kept at London Zoo.

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Commodities traders Vitol and the managers of Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund have agreed to create a joint venture to invest in a series of carbon avoidance and removal projects.

The European Parliament could fall 60 votes short of rejecting EU plans to apply a green label to gas and nuclear investments, EU sources told Carbon Pulse on Monday, though this week’s ballot remains in the balance with up to 100 lawmakers yet to make up their minds.

Spanish financial services bank BBVA has joined an initiative set up by a group of international banks to create a settlement platform for voluntary carbon trading transactions.

Standardised nature credits this week extended their slump to more than a month, as offsets continue to take cues from a weak macroeconomic picture and as traders see few signs of support in the near future.

The Netherlands is to expand its mandatory energy efficiency measures to EU ETS-covered firms from 2023, the government said on Monday, deepening its efforts to cut emissions and end reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

Effects of human-caused global heating are blocking vital winter rains, with severe implications for farming and tourism

Spain and Portugal are suffering their driest climate for at least 1,200 years, according to research, with severe implications for both food production and tourism.

Most rain on the Iberian peninsula falls in winter as wet, low-pressure systems blow in from the Atlantic. But a high-pressure system off the coast, called the Azores high, can block the wet weather fronts.

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EUA prices were modestly lower in thin Monday morning trading despite significant rallies in energy markets, where record highs in German power and imminent strikes at Norwegian gas production boosted prices by as much as 10%.

The more we automate our farms, the less we understand about our food. Let’s not get too hands-off

After one of my regular 4.30am starts last week, I caught a snippet of a feature on Farming Today about fruit-picking robots. Hearing about the multi-billion-pound mechanical arms and 3D sensors of this new machine, I was filled with something like sadness. Not just because of what this says about our self-inflicted workforce shortage (sigh) due to political foot-shooting and the undervaluing of manual work. But because fruit picking could be so different.

I once spent an interesting few nights in New Zealand, sharing a motel with about 50 apple-pickers from Vanuatu, Samoa and beyond. We listened to reggae, washed our pants in the sink and smoked cigarettes as they told me about thinning out baby apples, and picking pineapples and peaches. It was a hard life, absolutely no doubt. A dawn start in a cramped rented room, sleeping under polyester floral eiderdowns with nothing but a kettle and a juddering shower, before being driven to different farms is not easy work. And, of course, these setups are rife with corruption and exploitation and modern slavery. But are robots our only alternative?

Nell Frizzell is the author of The Panic Years and Square One (published 7 July)

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Japan’s environment ministry has identified another 16 projects under the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM) that it will subsidise in a bid to earn more carbon credits that will be used towards its Paris Agreement target.

Global corporations have been found lacking in setting viable emissions reduction pathways, with only 2% of 60,000 companies surveyed having made a “climate neutrality” pledge and with only a small share of those applying science-based targets (SBT), according to a survey released on Monday.

A major South Korean industry group is pushing for the government to allow access for emitters covered by the nation’s emissions trading scheme to import Paris-aligned voluntary credits.

Australia’s carbon market is set for a shake up thanks to a combination of the government’s independent review of the market and companies getting up to speed with a soon-to-be enforced compliance market, according to analysts.

Emergency officials said another nine people have been injured, and 19 remain missing.

An in-detail look at why MLFs are important and some of the more notable trends that are driving long-term location signals for wind and solar.

The post Marginal loss factors: Why they matter, and where they bite appeared first on RenewEconomy.

Emergency services rescue more than 80 people while thousands are evacuated in NSW as parts of the east coast expected to receive up to 100mm of rain on Monday

• NSW floods: thousands evacuated from rising waters as Sydney braces for more wild weather
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