The Land & Climate Podcast

Latest Episodes:

What is commercial forestry getting wrong? May 31, 2024

Show notes

Alasdair speaks to Peter Wohlleben about his new book How Trees Can Save the World.
Peter Wohlleben is a forester and author who has written over 30 books on ecology and forest management.
Peter and Alasdair discuss the problems with plantation forests, the power of trees to influence their local ecosystems and what modern forestry gets wrong.
How Trees Can Save the World was published in March and is available to buy from Harper Collins here.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:

'Climate crisis is exposing hard truths about commercial forestry', Land and Climate Review, 2024
'What should we do if the spruce dies out as our supertree?' [German language], Der Standard, 2024
'After the spruce dieback: Can the forest heal itself?' [German language], National Geographic, 2024
'German forest under severe stress' [German language], Forest Condition Report 2022
'The spruce tree is dying of thirst' [German language], Spektrum.de, 2022

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Why is the EU backtracking on green agriculture? May 17, 2024

Show notes

Alasdair speaks to Faustine Bas-Defossez about the relationship between sustainable farming policy and the European farmers' protests.

Faustine Bas-Defossez is Director for Nature, Health and Environment at the European Environmental Bureau, a Europe-wide network of environmental citizens' organisations.

Alasdair and Faustine discuss the Nature Restoration Law, reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy and what the upcoming European elections might mean for the future of EU agriculture.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:

NGOs unite against EU’s rollback of green policies for the agrifood sector, Euractiv
Europe is not prepared for rapidly growing climate risks, European Environment Agency
Open letter from the ECVC and IFOAM to Ursula Von der Leyen on CAP simplification, European Coordination Via Campesina
European Pact for the Future, European Environmental Bureau
Orbán-backed Think Tank Courts Farmers Linked to Far Right Ahead of EU Poll, Desmog

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How does US agriculture affect climate change? May 03, 2024

Show notes

Alasdair speaks to environmental attorney Peter Lehner about US agriculture's contribution to global emissions.

Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food and Farming Programme and former executive director of the National Resources Defence Council.

Alasdair and Peter discuss the future of the US farm bill, the adverse climate effects of crop insurance and the influence agrochemical lobbies have on agriculture across America.

Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:
Peter’s recent articles for the American College of Environmental Lawyers:

Peter’s book:

Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture

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Can nuclear waste teach us about long-term thinking? Apr 19, 2024

Show notes

Does our society have an addiction to short term thinking and planning? Is our failure to mitigate climate change a result of this?
Vincent Ialenti spent three years doing fieldwork in Finland, interviewing experts working on Posiva's Safety Case for the world's first long term nuclear repository, Onkalo.
His book about that fieldwork, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, explores the idea of "shallow" and "deep" time thinking. Dr. Ialenti uses Onkalo as a case study for how policy can involve ongoing work over decades, and look ahead towards potential impacts hundreds of thousands of years into the future - if expertise is as trusted and depoliticised as it is in Finland.
Bertie spoke to Vincent about the book, and how policymakers and the climate sector can think beyond the next generation or electoral cycle.
Dr. Vincent Ialenti is a Research Associate at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt’s Department of Environmental Studies. Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:

Buy Deep Time Reckoning from MIT Press here.
'The Art of Pondering Earth’s Distant Future', Scientific American, 2021
'The benefits of 'deep time thinking'', BBC Future, 2023
'Temporality, fiction and climate – reading Mark Bould’s Anthropocene Unconscious', Land and Climate Review, 2022

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Are monopolies breaking our food system? Apr 05, 2024

Show notes

Bertie speaks to Austin Frerick about his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.
Austin Frerick is an agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale University, and has advised on policy for senior US politicians including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden during his presidential campaign.
Bertie and Austin discuss lobbying and state capture in the US, the history of farming deregulation, and the environmental impact of food monopolies.
Barons was published last week and is available to buy from Island Press here.
Further reading:

Book excerpt: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’, Minnesota Reformer
‘Hidden costs, public burden: The real toll of Walmart's "always low prices"’, Salon
‘Do You Know Where Your Strawberries Come From?’, The New Republic
‘Why Austin Frerick Is Taking On The Grocery Barons’, Forbes

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Why is Eni struggling to grow biofuels in Africa? Mar 22, 2024

Show notes

Last month an investigation by Transport and Environment (T&E) exposed a number of challenges facing Eni's African biofuel projects.
The Italian oil giant's "second generation" biofuel crops have not met production targets in Kenya and Republic of the Congo. The investigation found that key promises have not been met around intercropping, and collected testimonies of alleged expropriation driven by Eni's business partners. T&E say farmers are now giving up on the projects.
To hear more details, Alasdair welcomed Agathe Bounfour back to the podcast, Oil Investigations Lead at T&E.
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.
Further reading:

Read Agathe's op-ed about the investigation on Land and Climate Review.
Read T&E's full investigation.
Read The Continent's front page cover story about the investigation.

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Are Canada's sustainable forestry claims accurate? Mar 08, 2024

Show notes

Following new allegations from the BBC that a UK power station is "burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests" in British Columbia, Bertie speaks to Richard Robertson about Canada's forestry sector.
Richard Robertson is a Forest Campaigner at Stand.Earth, and recently contributed to a report prepared by numerous NGOs, which accused the Canadian government's own forestry report of being “akin to an industry ad, promoting questionable and misleading claims.”
Bertie and Richard discuss these findings, the biomass industry, certification and regulation, and whether Canadian forestry deserves its leading reputation.
Further reading:

Read the report by Canadian environmental organisations: The State Of The Forest In Canada: Seeing Through The Spin
Read the Canadian government's own report, which the new publication responds to: The State of Canada’s Forests
Read Stand.Earth's report about their old growth satellite monitoring tool: Forest Eye: An Eye on Old Growth Destruction
'Drax: UK power station still burning rare forest wood', BBC, 28/2/24

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Are fishing laws doing enough for human rights and climate? Feb 23, 2024

Show notes

As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fishing regulation and its importance to environmental and human rights.
They discuss past and future EU policy and its impact in South East Asia, and use Thailand as a case study to discuss the issue of durability with environmental reform. The Thai fishing sector's reliance on forced labour and overfishing reduced dramatically in the 2010s, but reforms may now be overturned.
Further reading:

'Europe already has the tools it needs to end forced labour', Land and Climate Review, 2023
'Civil society urges Thai government to stop deregulation of the fisheries industry', Environmental Justice Foundation, 2023
Thailand’s progress in combatting IUU, forced labour & human trafficking, 2023
The ever widening net: mapping the scale, nature and corporate structures of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by the Chinese distant-water fleet, 2022
A manifesto for our ocean, 2023
'Denmark and Sweden press Brussels to act against UK in fishing dispute', Financial Times, 2024

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What are the risks in storing CO2 underground? Feb 09, 2024

Show notes

This week, the EU's Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warned that "You cannot magically CCS yourself out of the problem". But the new policy he was presenting that day still called for 280 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to be permanently stored underground.
The extent to which carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology should be a part of climate planning is contentious, but advocates often point to Norway's long-running CCS plants as proof that it can work.
Are Equinor's North Sea gas field facilities the gold standard for successful CCS, or have they had issues too? Last year, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) published a report exploring that question.
Bertie spoke to the report's author and IEEFA's Strategic Energy Finance Advisor for Asia, Grant Hauber, to hear about his findings.
Further reading:

Norway’s Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS: Industry models or cautionary tales?, IEEFA, 2023
Blue hydrogen: Not clean, not low carbon, not a solution, IEEFA, 2023
'Carbon capture key to reaching net-zero, but climate chief urges caution', Euronews, 7/2/24
'What is happening with Carbon Capture and Storage?', Land and Climate Review, 2022
'Why Carbon Capture and Storage matters: overshoot, models, and money', Land and Climate Review, 2022
'Capturing and storing problems', Land and Climate Review, 2022

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Are green flights clear for takeoff? Jan 26, 2024

Show notes

What are the impacts of new flying technologies? Are policymakers and the aviation industry taking the right steps to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees?
Alasdair speaks to Dr Daniel Quiggin, senior research fellow at the Chatham House Environment and Society Centre. Dr Quiggin is an expert in the analysis of how national and global energy systems will evolve to 2050 and author of recent research on Net zero and the role of the aviation industry.
Further reading: