Topics covered in the ETR include population growth, water stress, food insecurity, droughts, floods, cyclones, rising temperatures, and rising sea levels. The report uses IEP’s Positive Peace framework to identify areas where resilience is unlikely to be strong enough to adapt or cope with these future shocks.
The ETR places threats into two major clusters: resource scarcity and natural disasters. The resource scarcity domain includes food insecurity, water scarcity, and high population growth. At the same time, the natural disasters cluster measures threats of floods, droughts, cyclones, sea-level rise, and rising temperatures.
The ETR identifies three clusters of ecological hotspots, which are particularly susceptible to collapse:
The Sahel-Horn belt of Africa, from Mauritania to Somalia;
The Southern African belt, from Angola to Madagascar;
The Middle East and Central Asian belt, from Syria to Pakistan.
These countries compete for scarce resources, which creates conflict. The conflict, in turn, leads to further resource depletion. These countries are more likely to experience civil unrest, political instability, social fragmentation, and economic collapse.
While high resilience regions, such as Europe and North America, have superior coping capacities to mitigate the effects of these ecological threats, they will not be immune from large flows of refugees. Refugee influx, in turn, can cause considerable unrest and shift political systems.
There are 141 countries exposed to at least one ecological threat between now and 2050. The 19 countries with the highest number of risks have a population of 2.1 billion people. Approximately one billion people live in countries that do not have the resilience to deal with the ecological changes expected.
The countries with the largest number of people at risk are Pakistan, with 220 million people, and Iran with 84 million people. In such circumstances, even small events could spiral into instability and violence, leading to mass population displacement, which would negatively impact regional and global security.
The countries at the highest risk also face food insecurities and crisis-level water demands.
International freight transport — whether by air, land, or sea — still relies overwhelmingly on fossil fuels, accounting for 30 percent of transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions and more than 7 percent of all global emissions. Experts agree that freight, and international trade more broadly, must be decarbonized if we expect to hit the Paris Agreement’s climate goals. With the world’s freight carriers deeply shaken and supply chains upturned by the Covid-19 pandemic, now is exactly the right time to begin reshaping it.
Until recently, global trade has been largely ignored in the discourse about the transition to a low-carbon economy. One reason is that it is a cross-border business, and thus largely falls outside of the emissions reduction plans of individual nations. As a result, it has escaped much of the scrutiny that other industries have faced over their carbon footprints.
In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, with so many planes grounded, ports restricted, and borders sealed, the world has a rare opportunity to make sweeping changes in the freight sector. It should jump on the chance.
Many of the world’s largest freight transporters are flailingduring the pandemic and will be reliant on government money to survive. Major European airlines are cutting massive bailout deals with their governments right now. (Over one fifth of aviation’s carbon footprint stems from freight transport.) Cargo shipping and road freight are also at crossroads. As a result, governments have leverage to prod these industries to go greener and contribute their fair share to hitting international climate targets.
This might, at first, sound like a Sisyphean task. Global trade is the source of millions of jobs and diverse, inexpensive goods for consumers around the world. But there is growing recognition of freight’s centrality in the climate crisis, and there have already been tentative moves to decarbonize it — by requiring sustainable biofuel blending and better energy efficiency, as well as by shifting emissions-heavy road freight to railroads and ships. For example, in 2018 the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. agency responsible for establishing environmental standards for the shipping industry, for the first time pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping to half of 2008 levels by 2050. The EU’s $1.7 billion Connecting Europe Facility will, among many other projects, bolster the continent’s rail networks and facilitate the adoption of greener fuels for all modes of transportation in the E.U., including freight carriers.
There are several ways the trade sector can continue building on this foundation.
First, governments should attach environmental conditions to any pandemic-related bailouts and loans. “The case for reconsidering the current incentive structure of transport-related policies has never been stronger,” says Olaf Merk of the International Transport Forum at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Austria and France are already doing this with their national airlines. In Austria, government-secured loans and grants totaling more than $500 million to Austrian Airlines come with stipulations that the airline limit short-haul flights and cut its carbon emissions to 50 percent of 2018 levels by 2030. Likewise, the French government has insisted that Air France, which will collect $8.3 billion in government aid and loans, slash emissions from domestic flights by 50 percent by 2024 and buy more fuel-efficient planes. In stark contrast, Germany required nothing of the sort from Lufthansa — which owns Austrian Airlines — in exchange for its $9.9 billion rescue package.
Strings should also be attached to rescue money and loans to cargo shippers, should more require them. International shipping carries close to 80 percent of global trade and accounts for 2.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. French shipping company CMA CGM has already had to take a $1.1 billion loan, backed largely by the French government but with no conditions attached. Any future loans or bailouts should hinge on the condition that shipping companies reduce the carbon intensity of their transport by at least 40 percent by 2030 compared to 2018— a hard-nosed target that goes beyond the shipping sector’s current, non-binding pledge to reduce emissions to 50 percent of 2008 levels over the same time span. Though ambitious, the target is feasible: Ever more alternative fuels and electric and hybrid engine designs are emerging to replace the dirty maritime fuels used by most heavy-duty shippers.
“Shipping, most of which is freight, has largely escaped serious decarbonization measures until now,” says Carlos Calvo Ambel of the Brussels-based watchdog group Transport & Environment. “It has to set tough, binding targets.”
A second step that governments can take is to cut back global trade in favor of more regional production. Here, too, there is movement in Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently underscored the importance of diversifying supply chains to reduce dependence on foreign production and reinforce Europe’s “economic and industrial resilience and sovereignty.” As Björn Finke, E.U. correspondent for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote in May, the realization that so much of Europe’s medical supplies and technology come from China has prompted politicians to rethink the continent’s trade policy: “less globalization, less division of labor between countries, more at home.”
Another policy measure that could impact imports is a recently proposed E.U. carbon border adjustment levy, which beginning by 2023 would apply a charge on goods imported into the E.U. based on the emissions emitted during their production. The tax could force trade partners to enforce emissions reduction measures not just on traded goods but on freight carriers too.
Of course, another means to decarbonize global trade would be to impose a hefty carbon tax on all international freight, as well as on aviation fuels, which currently go completely untaxed in the E.U. The E.U. is planning to apply carbon pricing to the shipping industry and reduce free carbon emission allowances currently allotted to airlines under Europe’s current policy.
These measures, though, must be implemented in a way that produces real change. Experts anticipate that trade by freight will triple by 2050, which would seriously undermine the goals of the Paris Agreement at present emissions levels. With talk of “Green Deals” in the air in Europe and the U.S., now is the time to set the freight sector on the road to comprehensive decarbonization.
Paul Hockenos is a Berlin-based journalist and author of several books on European politics.
Deceased post-hatchling loggerhead sea turtle next to plastic pieces found in its stomach and intestines. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, CC BY-ND
Plastic pollution has been found in practically every environment on the planet, with especially severe effects on ocean life. Plastic waste harms marine life in many ways – most notably, when animals become entangled in it or consume it.
However, it’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore evidence that plastic pollution poses a growing, hidden threat to the health of endangered sea turtles, particularly our youngest patients. In a newly published study, we describe how we examined 42 post-hatchling loggerhead sea turtles that stranded on beaches in Northeast Florida. We found that almost all of them had ingested plastic in large quantities.
An ocean of plastic
Ocean plastic pollution originates mostly from land-based sources, such as landfills and manufacturing plants. One recent study estimates that winds carry 200,000 tons of tiny plastic particles from degraded tires alone into the oceans every year.
Plastics are extremely durable, even in salt water. Materials that were made in the 1950s, when plastic mass production began, are still persisting and accumulating in the oceans. Eventually these objects disintegrate into smaller fragments, but they may not break down into their chemical components for centuries.
Overall, some 11 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year. This amount is projected to grow to 29 million tons by 2040.
Successfully rehabilitated hatchling loggerhead sea turtles being released back into the Atlantic Ocean. Jessica Farrell, CC BY-ND
A microplastic diet
Many forms of plastic threaten marine life. Sea turtles commonly mistake floating bags and balloons for their jellyfish prey. Social media channels are replete with videos and images of sea turtles with plastic straws stuck in their nostrils, killed in plastic-induced mass mortality events, or dying after ingesting hundreds of plastic fragments.
So far, however, scientists don’t know a lot about the prevalence and health effects of plastic ingestion in vulnerable young sea turtles. In our study, we sought to measure how much plastic was ingested by post-hatchling washback sea turtles admitted to our rehabilitation hospital.
Post-hatchling washbacks are recently hatched baby turtles that successfully travel from their nesting beaches out to the open ocean and start to feed, but are then washed back to shore due to strong winds or ill health. This is a crucial life stage: Turtles need to feed to recover from their frenzied swim to feeding grounds hundreds of miles offshore. Feeding well also helps them grow large enough to avoid most predators.
Post-hatchling sea turtle being treated at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, CC BY-ND
We examined 42 dead washbacks, and found that 39 of them, or 93%, had ingested plastic – often in startling quantities. A majority of it was hard fragments, most commonly colored white.
One turtle that weighed 48 grams or 1.6 ounces – roughly equivalent to 16 pennies – had ingested 287 plastic pieces. Another hatchling that weighed just 27 grams, or less than one ounce, had ingested 119 separate pieces of plastic that totaled 1.23% of its body weight. The smallest turtle in our study, with a shell just 4.6 centimeters (1.8 inches) long, had ingested a piece of plastic one-fourth the length of its shell.
Consuming such large quantities of plastic increases the likelihood that broken-down plastic nanoparticles or chemicals that leach from them will enter turtles’ bloodstreams, with unknown health effects. Ingested plastic can also block turtles’ stomachs or intestines. At a minimum, it limits the amount of space that’s physically available for consuming and digesting genuine prey that they need to survive and grow.
Turtles at this life stage live at the ocean’s surface, sheltering in floating mats of seaweed, where they feed on invertebrate prey such as zooplankton. These floating seaweed mats gather in the Atlantic, in an area known as the Sargasso Sea, which is bounded by four major ocean currents and covers much of the central Atlantic Ocean. The area is heavily polluted with plastic, as both seaweed and plastic travel on and are concentrated by the same ocean currents. Our study suggests that these baby turtles are mistakenly feeding on plastic floating in and around the seaweed.
The Sargasso Sea is an important feeding ground for immature Atlantic sea turtles, but the same currents that concentrate seaweed there also carry drifting plastic trash. University of Florida, CC BY-ND
Post-hatchling sea turtles are young and need to feed and grow rapidly. This means they are particularly at risk from the harmful consequences of ingesting plastic. We find it especially troubling that almost all of the animals we assessed had ingested plastic in such large quantities. Plastic pollution is only one of many human-related threats that these charismatic and endangered creatures face at sea.
Stemming the plastic tsunami
Since plastic persists for hundreds of years in the environment, clearing it from the oceans will require ingenious cleanup technologies, as well as lower-tech beach and shore cleanups. But in our view, the top priority should be curbing the rampant flow of plastic that is swamping oceans and coasts.
Earth’s ecosystems, especially the oceans, are interconnected, so reducing plastic waste will require global solutions. They include improving methods for recycling plastics; developing bio-based plastics; banning single-use plastic items in favor of more sustainable or reusable alternatives; and reducing shipment of plastic waste abroad to countries with lax regulatory regimes, from where it is more likely to enter the environment.
Our observations in post-hatchling turtles are part of a growing body of research showing how plastic pollution is harming wildlife. We believe it is time for humanity to face up to its addiction to plastic, before we find ourselves wading through swathes of plastic debris and wondering what went wrong.
