Mongabay Newscast

• Top court delivers a huge climate ‘win’ for island nations

  The recent advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on states' obligations regarding climate change was celebrated globally for providing clarity on countries’ legal obligation to prevent climate harm, but was also appreciated by island nations for its additional certainty on their maritime boundaries remaining intact regardless of sea level rise. This week on Mongabay’s podcast, environmental lawyer Angelique Pouponneau, a Seychelles native and lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), explains these victories, their legal implications, and how they matter for small island nations. She says Small Island Developing States (SIDS) face a multitude of, “one of which [was] this idea of the shrinking exclusive economic zones.” Exclusive economic zones are the waters that lie within the jurisdiction of a nation, usually 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from its shore. With the ICJ advisory opinion, there’s now legal certainty that this zone will remain within the jurisdiction of a state, even if its shoreline shrinks as a result of rising seas due to climate change. “What island nations were trying to guard against through state practice was essentially if there were ever to be loss of territory, it would not mean loss of exclusive economic zone,” Pouponneau says. Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website. Mike DiGirolamo is a host & associate producer for Mongabay based in Sydney. He co-hosts and edits the Mongabay Newscast. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Image Credit: Island in the South Pacific, Fiji. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay. ---- Timecodes (00:00) The importance of the SIDS alliance (10:09) ’Wins’ in the ICJ advisory opinion (17:38) What about enforcement? (21:29) Maritime boundaries will remain (27:38) What are sustainable ‘blue economies?’ (32:32) Concerns about development & ‘debt for nature’ (42:12) Frustrations with Global Plastic Treaty negotiations (45:50) Looking to the BBNJ treaty

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• Saving ourselves and nature means tackling inequality

  Wealth inequality is a primary culprit behind the ecological and environmental collapse of societies over the past 12,000 years, which have come to be dominated by a small circle of elites hoarding resources like land, research shows. Today, instead of an isolated collapse, we face a global one, says Luke Kemp, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. On this episode of Mongabay’s Newscast, Kemp explains how wealth inequality is not just tied to, but may be the very cause of the ecological destruction we are witnessing today, and how tackling that is key to how we solve all these challenges, as he recently told The Guardian. “Imperial overexpansion, depleting the natural environment, having elite competition and popular immiseration, all [are] just simply the natural effect of inequality. All is driven by growing concentrations of power and wealth inequality,” he says. Humans are not naturally like this, Kemp explains. Rather, for the vast majority of their existence, they have coexisted in nomadic, interconnected societies, functioning in a largely egalitarian fashion. Until the discovery that grain could be harvested — and therefore also stolen and hoarded with violence — humans did not dominate one another, as we do today. As mentioned in the episode, you can read a recent opinion piece on what listeners and readers can do overcome despair in the face of existential threats such as climate change and biodiversity loss.  Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website. Image Credit: Statue of Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt. Photo by Rhett Butler/Mongabay. ----- Timecodes (00:00) Why humans are egalitarian (08:06)  Why authoritarianism is so pervasive (14:12) How and why societies fall (20:58) Our global society is at risk (24:22) How we solve it (30:25) Capping wealth at 10m (37:54) Citizen juries and how they work (45:11) Could a ‘ministry for the future’ work? (46:54) Lessons from the Khoisan Peoples (51:00) Democracy isn’t just a ‘left-wing’ idea

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• ‘To protect nature, you have to love it,’ says Natalie Kyriacou

  On this episode of the Newscast we take a look at Natalie Kyriacou’s widely praised new book, Nature’s Last Dance: Tales of Wonder in an Age of Extinction, whose high-profile fans, like Paris climate agreement architect Christiana Figueres, call it a “lyrical call to awaken our love for the wild before the music stops.” Kyriacou, the founder of the environmental organization My Green World, shares her aim of the book, her thoughts on real solutions to our ecological problems, what she wishes more people understood about nature, and why they need to fall in love with it. “If there’s one simple thing that we can do, it is to just step outside and feel that wonder and look up and appreciate it … if we are going to protect nature, to protect something, you need to fall in love with it.” Always honest and often humorous, this deeply researched volume clearly outlines the economic, political and cultural drivers of our most significant ecological problems, and what the reader can do to effect meaningful change. Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website. Image Credit: Natalie Kyriacou. Photo by Chloe Paul. -- Timecodes (00:00) Making nature mainstream (04:28) Challenging bias about nature (12:38) Stories of recovery (16:23) How we all depend on nature (21:55) Porches and peacocks (27:03) Your actions are a vote (35:18) Inspiration from Costa Rica (38:55) Lessons from the Montreal Protocol (45:08) To protect it, you have to love it

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• Rewilding the world, one acre at a time

  Rewilding advocate, financier and host of the popular podcast Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith, joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss nature restoration in his home country of England, where a significant cultural change is taking hold toward reviving biodiversity, such as beavers. Once seen as a nuisance there, many farmers and planners now embrace the rebound of the huge rodent, thanks to its impressive ability to mitigate flooding events that the island nation now experiences with regularity, due to climate change. “If you stop a random person on the street now, in the city or in the countryside, they know that beavers are back, that [they] are native species, that they play a vital role in managing our rivers,” he says. However, he argues that while there has been some rewilding momentum in England, it’s not happening fast enough, particularly for larger carnivores like wolves. “The idea of reintroducing them is considered madness. Even though there are news reports of swelling populations of deer and growing incidents of Lyme disease and road traffic collisions and a disequilibrium in our forests,” Goldsmith says. Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website. Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com. Image Credit: Chrome Hill in Yorkshire, England. Image by Tim Hill via Pixabay (Pixabay free content license). Timecodes ------ (00:00) “We don’t have wildlife here” (11:46) England’s rewilding comeback (15:05) Cultural and economic shifts (25:24) Changing environment policy (30:52) Nitrogen and pollinators (37:43) Getting along with ‘difficult’ wildlife (47:51) Rewilding the World

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• Alan Weisman’s ‘Hope Dies Last’ weaves stories of environmental hope

  On this week’s episode of Mongabay’s podcast, best-selling author Alan Weisman details the people and places he visited in reporting his new book, Hope Dies Last, a chronicle of miraculous accomplishments and resilience of the book’s protagonists, many of whom are working to solve humanity’s most intractable ecological problems. The book’s impetus was an accumulation of despair at the state of the world and how humanity treats it. “I started this book because I was really, really, really depressed about how I saw systems breaking down,” Weisman says. But as he uncovered each story, Weisman’s tune changed. He explains the ingenuity and bravery of the people and projects he visited that altered his perspective on what is possible. “By the end of this book, I was so uplifted by all these people — and by the variety of people — that I found, in the most extraordinarily different circumstances, each of them daring to hope and oftentimes succeeding, that I'm there with them. This ain't over.” Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website. Please send questions, feedback or comments to podcast[at]mongabay[dot]com. Image Credit: Kicker Rock in the Galápagos, Ecuador. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay. Timecodes ------- (00:00) The Mesopotamian Revitalization Project (07:56) Why does Hope struggle against itself? (13:27) Creating food from thin air (24:06) Suing the government to protect species (31:03) The most dangerous country Alan visited, the U.S. (35:54) New forms of energy (45:39) Power is the most addictive drug (51:53) This ain’t over

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