Kavya Gopal

Rethinking Climate Leadership: Ina-Maria Shikongo is a Namibian climate activist and artist fighting against the extraction of fossil fuels in the Okavango River Basin. Through her activism, she is trying to stop ReconAfrica, a Canadian oil company, from fracking the Okavango Delta, and putting at risk the waterways and land that is home to 200,000 people and keystone species such as the African elephant. At the heart of her activism is the resounding reminder that people in the global north must see Africans as climate leaders. Her message at COP27 was loud and clear: “For my friends in the US and the UK, I’m telling you: our present is your future. We know how to survive. We know how to live with the Earth. We are actually the ones who have the solutions to the climate crisis.”

 Nick Obradovich

Upcycling at the building scale: I love upcycling. There's something quite special about turning a thing destined for the landfill into a repurposed—and often even more interesting—newly functional object. But now, instead of just the odd object, home designers are adapting creative material reuse to the building scale. Emerging practices include reclaiming old-growth timber from water towers and hardwood beams from traditional Japanese buildings. Such building-scale reuse can have important implications for reducing the carbon emissions required to build anew. And it can spread out the 'embodied carbon' used to build existing buildings over even longer periods by ensuring old buildings live on in new ones. Nature leaves nothing to waste. It's nice that some architects and builders are thinking similarly.

 Robert Denney

Advice from kids on addressing climate change: A recent NPR article provides sage advice from kids on how they are not only coping with the realities of climate change but addressing it head-on. The article gives four pieces of advice that may sound simple, but are helpful for people of all ages: (1) talk to a friend about what’s up, (2) get out in nature, (3) join people doing something in your community, and (4) don’t be too intimidated to speak out. From high school students that helped Denver Public Schools pass its first climate policy to a teenager who started a local chapter of Fridays for Future (a climate protest group for schools) to cope with his climate anxiety, kids are leading the way. 

 Tim Treuer

Climate change fouling remote Arctic rivers: There's a disturbing phenomenon going on in the high arctic in Alaska where otherwise perfectly pristine rivers are turning putrid orange and brown colors. The cause seems to be driven by climate change leading to increased microbial activity in melting permafrost. It's a region where Alaska Natives and others are still living off the land or depend on these waterways for drinking water. There may be serious knock-on impacts too–one friend had a pretty terrifying story of a research expedition to this area that went awry during the first year of the orange water. Her team was repeatedly charged by extremely aggressive bears and almost had to call for an emergency evacuation. She thinks their behavior was affected either by the water or the water conditions making them unable to feed off the abundant fish in the river.

 Amy Boyer

Rising to the Challenge: This article on sea level rise and the struggle to adapt to Virginia's Eastern Shore compelled me because I grew up in the area. I've visited shrinking Hog Island, seen the ruins of its Coast Guard station, and dined in Oyster, the small town featured in the article. Sea level is rising faster in Virginia than anywhere else on the U.S. Atlantic coast, and homeowners are raising their houses while farmers are trying salt-tolerant crops. Nature-based solutions are being proposed and piloted, such as these oyster towers that slow wave action and reconstructed wetlands at a frequently flooded park. Change is urgent and inevitable, but a promising blueprint for coastal resilience is currently running afoul of political changes that make adaptation even more difficult.

 Benjamin Felser

Return of the Buffalo: After centuries of resistance, Native American tribes are pioneering the reintroduction of buffalo to the American West. Native communities like the Sioux, Lakota, and Blackfoot used to manage the 30 million buffalo which once roamed the great plains, but attempts by the US government to starve Native communities by exterminating the buffalo nearly succeeded. From the low point of 1,000 buffalo in 1889, 65 Native tribes now steward 20,000 of the current 500,000 bison in the American plains. While this is a far cry from their previous abundance, organizations like the InterTribal Buffalo Council have been instrumental in connecting tribes to buffalo conservation programs. The organization has reintroduced 2,041 bison to 22 tribes in 10 states this fall, combining reintroduction with educational workshops on bison harvesting to relearn the knowledge suppressed through decades of government reeducation programs. Regardless, the buffalo stand strong.

 Claire Krummenacher

Black and Indigenous Solidarity in Reclaiming Stolen Land: This week, my favorite read was this article on how the Indigenous-led Lank Back movement and Black land reclamation movements in the United States have overcome a past of being turned against one another to build solidarity through offering refuge and sharing knowledge. Today, organizations like Soul Fire Farm work towards both Black Land reconnection and Indigenous homeland governance by providing agroecology training that draws from both groups' traditions to BIPOC farmers. Others, like the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, have introduced policy initiatives with an emphasis on climate justice as part of their work. According to Indigenous and Black organizers from both movements, their ultimate aim is to achieve true land justice by creating healing relationships with one another and dismantling systems of power that benefit white supremacy.

 Courtney White

Hard Data on Regenerative Agriculture: The first year of the 1,000 Farms Initiative has been completed and the results are promising. The Initiative is the brainchild of entomologist Jonathan Lundgren, who lost his job with USDA in 2015 when he blew the whistle on the dangers of neonicotinoids. Lundgren took his research skills to the nonprofit community, starting a foundation and a research farm in South Dakota. The goal of the Initiative is to do full-system evaluations of 1000 farms that are in various stages of adopting regenerative agriculture, with a focus on soil health. To date, they’ve quantified nearly 400 farms across North America. A recent grant from the Rockefeller Foundation will help Lundgren expand his research to include Indigenous, Black, and other underrepresented farming communities.

 Juliana Birnbaum

Ecosystem Regeneration: Mangroves are one of the most carbon-rich habitats on Earth, with the ability to remove up to four times more CO2 from the atmosphere than terrestrial forests. They are havens of biodiversity, providing homes to sea life, birds, reptiles, manatees, and the endangered Bengal tiger, and offer protection to coastlines and their communitiesagainst extreme weather events and sea level rise.  Yet up until recently, mangrove forests were one of the world's most endangered ecosystems, primarily due to rice and palm oil production, development, and industrial aquaculture.  In the past few years, however, initiatives to protect them have been incredibly successful and the latest reports show a sharp decline in the overall rate of mangrove loss, mainly due to an increased recognition of their value and improved tools to track and restore these key biomes.

 Kate Furby

Water water everywhere: Freshwater is a critical player in the future of our climate. A new study from Sweden analyzes the power of the freshwater cycle in our changing climate. Wetlands were found to be extremely important to sequestering carbon, as well as keeping the water cycle healthy. It's the first-ever summary of its kind. Access to water around the world is already heavily impacted by climate change, hitting some areas much harder than others. Good news for understanding water and climate is on the horizon, however. NASA will be launching a new satellite next month that will be able to monitor bodies of water, looking more closely at the impacts of climate change. It will be the first time all water on earth is under this kind of surveillance. While the satellite won't be spraying clean water to places that need it, the hope is that by better understanding and predicting our changing climate, we can better prepare and support the people here on earth.

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