Wales has become one of the focal points of the debate playing out all over the world about how farms and rewilding can work together. Supporters of rewilding say the two can co-exist, but that farming has to change given it is the biggest contributor to nature loss in the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/28/agriculture-recycling-carbon-farmers-reframe-rewilding-debate

Why gender justice matters in the transition away from coal?

Science should be able to examine different starting conditions, needs and interests and help to create a basis for equitable policy measures, but so far this scientific basis hardly exists for energy transitions.
Scholars often only analyse the broader economic impacts of such structural changes, such as net-employment effects for entire regions.
Meanwhile, the impact on distinct groups and their differing opportunities to participate in decision-making processes remains under-researched. If there is a focus on one group, it is on the largely male employees in the coal industry.
This focus on mitigating the negative effects on men, while ignoring the negative effects on women, can lead to the reproduction of existing inequalities between men and women.
With policy measures adapted to people’s differentiated needs, energy transitions could instead be an opportunity to overcome existing unjust power relations.

It is of great importance for government to design effective incentive mechanisms in environmental governance. 

China has established Supervision Centres for Environmental Protection (SCEPs), which scientifically incentivized firms to reduce pollution. SCEPs also help coordinate adjacent provinces’ incentives on reducing firms’ emissions around provincial boundaries. Besides, when fiscal decentralization carries the risk of aggravating environmental pollution, vertical management structures in environmental governance could effectively strengthen incentives and coordination(Gao Chen et al, 2022).

Gao Chen, Jian Xu, Yu Qi. (2022). Environmental (de)centralization and local environmental governance: Evidence from a natural experiment in China, China Economic Review.

It’s been a week since the challenge, and I’ve been reading daily about climate change and thinking about the corresponding solutions for mitigation. Focusing on climate and justice issues on a daily basis has made me think subconsciously about my own behaviour, and the new knowledge I gain each day is gradually becoming a new behavioural norm. For example, when shopping, I check subconsciously if the products are locally produced. 

Since reading that a plant-based diet will reduce carbon emissions by such a significant amount，I have kelp a plant-based diet 4 days. Besides, I have started to reduce the waste deliberately.

Nearly half of the global population – between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people – lives in areas highly vulnerable to climate change. The brief window in which to limit how intense and frequent climate impacts such as stronger storms, droughts, flooding and sea-level rise become and to secure “a liveable and sustainable future for all” is rapidly narrowing.

The report authors also acknowledged the significant gap in funding to help poorer countries adapt to the impacts that are already unavoidable. Despite committing to raise US$100 billion a year by 2020, wealthier countries have failed to meet their commitments by a margin of around 87%, if loans and other non-grant forms of finance are excluded. What funding has arrived in the poorest parts of the world has prioritised mitigating greenhouse gas emissions over adapting to climate change.

Scaling up adaptation finance is essential to help communities build homes and infrastructure that can withstand stronger storms, for instance, and enable safe and dignified migration routes with the active participation of those being displaced, plant trees that can cool cities and head off lethal heatwaves, and help countries extend access to healthcare, social protection, nourishing and sustainably produced food, clean water, transport, education and renewable energy.

(Vegetarian Challenge:day 3)

As the climate crisis deepens, the discourse aimed at finding solutions continues to intensify. Increasingly, government agencies and world leaders are recognizing the critical importance of including Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in the development of sustainable responses. 

Indigenous-led solutions, fostered in community and informed through relations with lands, waters and plant and animal relatives are already happening and offer best practices. They can be scaled up and out in ways that transform systems. But these are massively underfunded while enormous sums are poured into non-Indigenous research and policy initiatives. Instead of the focus on how to bring Indigenous people and their knowledge into research and policy spaces, the focus needs to be on how non-Indigenous researchers and policy makers can actually learn to listen and direct their resources, time and efforts to supporting the vast wealth of Indigenous-led research, policy and best practices already happening across Mother Earth.

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, Rebecca Sinclair, Beze Gray, Deborah McGregor, Jen Gobby, Decolonizing Climate Research and Policy: making space to tell our own stories, in our own ways, Community Development Journal, Volume 57, Issue 1, January 2022, Pages 52–73, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsab050

Today, I read about why we should have a plant-based eating diet. The data that shocked me most showed that livestock industry is one of the leading causes of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. It is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all cars, buses, planes and trains combined. By reducing our consumption of animal products by one month, we would reduce our personal carbon footprint by a considerable amount.

The assumption that a new car emits an average of about 122.4 grams of CO2 per km
Vegan for 30 days: 62.5 kg CO2 (or driving about 510 km)
Vegetarian for 30 days: 44.4 kg CO2 (or driving about 360 km)
Reducetarian for 30 days: 22.2 kg CO2 (or driving about 180 km)

Thus, a plant-based diet can help reduce greenhouse gases greatly, as well as preserve water and land, save lives. From today I will start a transition from a vegetarian diet of at least 4 days a week to a vegetarian diet of 6 days a week.  Vegetarian day 1: get！

Reference：

E. Hallstrom, A. Carlsson-Kanyama, P. Borjesson. (2015). Environmental impact of dietary change: a systematic review. Journal of Cleaner Production 91 1-11.
Scarborough, P., P. N. Appleby, A. Mizdrak, et al. (2014): Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK. Climatic Change 125(2), 179–192. doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1169-1
Abejón, R., L. Batlle-Bayer, J. Laso, et al. (2020): Multi-Objective Optimization of Nutritional, Environmental and Economic Aspects of Diets Applied to the Spanish Context. Foods 9(11), Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 1677. doi:10.3390/foods9111677
Springmann, M., L. Spajic, M. A. Clark, et al. (2020): The healthiness and sustainability of national and global food based dietary guidelines: modelling study. BMJ m2322. doi:10.1136/bmj.m2322 doi:10.1136/bmj.m2322

Today I read about greenwashing. Rather than actually becoming environmentally friendly, some companies simply make it look as if they are. Through selective advertising, slick PR, and sometimes outright lying, the same companies which brought us to the brink of climate disaster are selling themselves as part of the solution to the climate crisis. This practice is known as greenwashing.

Fossil fuel companies market fossil gas as ‘natural gas’, and make it out to be the clean, green fuel of the future. I admit I read this and realised I may have been under the misconception before that there is no difference between fossil gas and natural gas. My family uses Hydraulic natural gas in their vehicles. Now I need to be more careful and avoid fossil gas. Advocate for my family to travel more by public transport and travel low carbon.

When the seriousness of environmental issues are mentioned by textbooks and some environmental initiatives, to be honest, I didn’t know what I could do to make a difference. It wasn’t until I was given the opportunity to get away from the city and get close to the endless grasslands, feel the surge of the ocean and quietly enjoy the brilliant starry sky for the first time. I was so amazed by nature that I wanted to read more research on the causes and solutions to environmental issues, and to start doing something about it to avoid acting in an environmentally unfriendly way.

From today’s reading, I learned that, the solutions to the climate crisis are not just a scientific matter, but a political one too; that our discussions about the climate have to include more than just data and statistics on degrees of warming and atmospheric carbon concentration, but also concepts such as power, access to resources, and justice.

The egregious injustice of the climate crisis has important implications for our efforts to agree on international solutions. As “The equivalent of rich countries eating every slice of pizza but one and then arguing everyone pick up an equal share of the cheque because they ate part of one slice.” in the words of War on Want’s Asad Rehman.

To achieve climate justice, rich nations are exepected to acknowledge their historical culpability for creating this crisis and take steps to make amends – for example by supporting developing countries to transition to clean energy and adapt to our changing climate (Global Witness, 2021).