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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category pollution.
  • Divesting Won’t be Enough to Achieve Climate Justice

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    Guest Contributor  //  July 14, 2020  //  By Kate Neville
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    A quiet disruption to the established financial order is underway: Around the world, institutions are pulling their investments out of fossil fuels. Climate activists campaigning for divestment suggest that such economic rearrangements might keep oil, gas, and coal in the ground, curbing carbon emissions. In parallel, some high-profile advocates call for reinvestment in renewable energy. But can the financial sector really drive the structural changes needed to address climate change—and, more fundamentally, climate justice? 

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  • Exposure to Air Pollutants and Heat Made Worse by Climate Change Impact Black Mothers the Most

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    Dot-Mom  //  Reading Radar  //  June 26, 2020  //  By Leah Emanuel
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    Environmental exposures exacerbated by climate change are contributing to adverse pregnancy outcomes across the United States, with a disproportionate impact on Black women. A new study published in JAMA Network Open draws concrete connections between exposure to air pollution, ozone, and high temperatures during pregnancy and the likelihood of adverse pregnancy outcomes—premature birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth.

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  • Cobalt is Critical to the Renewable Energy Transition. How Can We Minimize its Social And Environmental Cost?

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    Guest Contributor  //  June 17, 2020  //  By Bianca Nogrady

    This is a Gecamines owned artisanal cobalt mining site

    This article was originally published on Ensia.

    Its name conjures an image of vivid deep blues. But when cobalt is dug out of the ground in ore form, there’s barely a hint of the rich hue it lends its name to. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which produces more than half of the world’s supply, it takes the form of heterogenite, a dull brownish mineral that could easily be mistaken for small clods of dirt.

    But people die for this mineral. Children suffer for it. Livelihoods, educations, neighborhoods, environments and personal safety are sacrificed for it.

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  • Fair Trade Seeks a Foothold in Artisanal Gold Mining

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    Guest Contributor  //  May 11, 2020  //  By Kristin Sippl
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    COVID-19 isn’t the only problem going viral. Economic insecurity is driving gold prices to record highs around $1,700 per ounce, causing levels of global mercury pollution to rise too. In the United States coal-fired power plants drive mercury pollution, but globally, the leading cause is small-scale ‘artisanal’ gold mining. Roughly 30 million men, women, and children in poor countries depend on mining for subsistence incomes. Unfortunately, the cheapest and easiest way to mine gold uses mercury, a highly toxic heavy metal the United Nations is striving to eliminate.

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  • China Increasing Agricultural Production on a Sea of Plastic

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    China Environment Forum  //  April 24, 2020  //  By Karen Mancl
    shutterstock_1498131911

    This article was originally published on China-US Focus

    I saw plastic greenhouses as far as the eye can see from the train as I traveled across Shandong Province to visit the Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Ninety percent of the world’s plastic greenhouses are in China, covering 3.3 million hectares, about the area of Maryland, with the majority in Shandong.

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  • Delivering a Solution to the World’s Ocean Plastic Problem

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    China Environment Forum  //  February 27, 2020  //  By Zizhu Chen
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    This article was originally published on China-U.S. Focus.

    In 2017, the Green Volunteer League of Chongqing, an environmental NGO, filed a suit against China’s three biggest food delivery companies—Meituan, Baidu, and Ele.me—for damaging the environment by generating excessive waste. Specifically, these three e-commerce platforms provided consumers with single-use chopsticks that consumed 6,700 trees every day as well as massive amounts of plastic containers, bags, and utensils. Today, over 400 million Chinese are regular users of food delivery. Since summer 2019, daily app use for Meituan was over 30 million orders, generating 100 million plastic containers every day—enough to carpet 360 football fields.

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  • Where Do the Plastic Miners Go When the “Mine” Disappears?

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    China Environment Forum  //  January 16, 2020  //  By Yining Zou
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    Usually after dinner, Mr. Ma would take off his shirt, shut the door, and begin work making plastic pellets from scrap. But tonight, he sits in his darkened yard staring at two SUV-sized plastic processing machines and a bundle of colorful scrap plastic. No lights are on, no machines grind, and no familiar theme song of CCTV-1 plays in the background. Walking through other villages in Wen’an County, more men meander around their yards filled with the same idle processing machines and mini-mountains of scrap plastic. Most have never studied English, but they are fluent in the language of plastics, sprinkling words like ABS, PP, and PVC into their conversations. They are the owners of small plastic scrap recycling workshops that were once booming—but are now silent.

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  • Without the Enforcement of Environmental Laws, Petroleum Infrastructure Projects in Timor-Leste Come at a Cost

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    Guest Contributor  //  December 3, 2019  //  By Adilsonio da Costa
    Road Crossing

    Ignoring environmental laws in Timor-Leste to build a petroleum infrastructure project could mean serious problems for communities including environmental destruction, loss of land, and loss of livelihoods. Communities are already facing some of these problems because project proponents haven’t fulfilled their legal obligations to do extensive environmental research and planning to mitigate any damage to the local environment. The supporters have also failed to meaningfully involve local communities, including interested experts, academics, and civil society groups, in this process.

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