cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/33477490

Ecuador has 65 oil and gas lease blocks, 88% of them in the Amazon, covering a quarter of the country’s total area. That’s according to a new data set from the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI).

Many of the lease blocks overlap with several Indigenous territories, including the Cuyabeno-Imuya Intangible Zone, which is home to 11 Indigenous communities from the Secoya, Siona, Cofán, Kichwa and Shuar nations. Oil and gas leases also overlap with other Indigenous Shuar communities in Pastaza and Morona Santiago provinces, among others.

A Mongabay estimate based on the dataset found that roughly 21% of the leases overlap with protected areas and 61% overlap with Indigenous territories in Ecuador. Image by Andrés Alegría/Mongabay.

The SEI data set also shows lease blocks overlapping with protected areas, including the west side of Yasuní National Park. In a historic referendum in 2023, more than 5.2 million Ecuadorians voted to halt all current and future oil drilling in the park. Cofán-Bermejo Ecological Reserve (RECB) and Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, both home to a great diversity of wildlife including pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) and jaguars (Panthera onca), also host active oil and gas production blocks, according to the data.

Combined, the blocks cover 7 million hectares (17 million acres), one-fourth of Ecuador’s total land area.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24447292

Europe’s supermarket shelves are packed with brands billing their plastic packaging as sustainable, but often only a fraction of the materials are truly recovered from waste, with the rest made from petroleum.

Brands using plastic packaging – from Kraft’s Heinz Beanz to Mondelēz’s Philadelphia – use materials made by the plastic manufacturing arm of the oil company Saudi Aramco.

The Saudi state-owned holding opposes production cuts under the UN plastic treaty and is the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter (more than 70m tonnes up to 2023).

Aramco’s petrochemical subsidiary, Sabic, along with other big players, devised a successful way to rebrand their harmful business as “planet saver”. They label plastic as “circular” and climate-friendly, although in practice it remains almost entirely fossil-based, exacerbating global warming and the plastic crisis.

Under industry pressure, Europe is on track to legalise this practice, which independent experts have described as greenwashing, with lax EU rules set to take effect in 2026 and similar UK regulations to be enforced as of 2027.

Han Zeng at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology in China and his colleagues began finding fossils at a quarry in the mountainous region of Huayuan County in Hunan Province in 2021.

So far, they have analysed 8681 fossils from 153 species, nearly 60 per cent of which are new to science. The team has christened this ancient ecosystem the Huayuan biota and say the site is comparable and possibly superior to the most famous Cambrian fossil site, the Burgess Shale in Canada.

• Involuntary parks — areas made largely untenable for human habitation due to environmental contamination, war, border disputes or other forms of conflict and violence — have often unintentionally benefited nature, with flora and fauna sometimes thriving in the absence of people.
• In some cases, these unanticipated refugia have been formalized as wildlife preserves. Hanford Reach National Monument in the U.S. state of Washington is one example. Though the land of this conserved area surrounds a Cold War site contaminated by chemical and radioactive waste, hundreds of species thrive there.
• The southern Kuril Islands — territory disputed by Russia and Japan — offer another example. Russia has set up preserves within the long-contested area, while Japan has declared a national park just outside it. But attempts at creating a permanent border peace park or resolving tensions have failed, and future conservation is uncertain.
• With the world now rocked by geopolitical conflict and by worsening environmental disasters (due to pollution, climate change and land-use change), nations need to assess how places that become unhealthy to humanity — turning them into involuntary parks — can be healed, and what role conservation can play in recovery.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/48752448

Archived

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The Medog site sits in a region defined by volatile tectonics, rapid climate warming, glacial retreat, and fragile sediment structures. Recall the January 2025 earthquake on the Tibetan Plateau that caused massive damage to human life, ecology, and security. Combined with the political sensitivities surrounding Tibet and China’s upper-riparian status, the project raises a series of questions that cannot remain outside the purview of global climate governance, especially the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Two critical questions become unavoidable: can the UNFCCC maintain credibility if it overlooks the destabilizing ecological impacts unfolding on the Tibetan Plateau? And what happens when one country’s ‘green’ initiative directly compromises the climate resilience and water security of an entire region?

[...]

Interpreting China’s Internal Narrative

[Chinese] state agencies, the National Development and Reform Commission (国家发展和改革委员会), the Ministry of Water Resources (水利部), and powerful state-owned energy corporations, present the dam as a logical extension of China’s historical expertise in water engineering. State media narratives emphasize national rejuvenation, infrastructural leadership, and the moral legitimacy of transitioning to renewable energy. Medog has been lauded as a key project, one that supports China’s ambitions for net-zero emissions and clean energy development.

However, beneath this confident exterior lie quieter debates within China’s scientific community. Hydrologists, environmental researchers, and geologists have expressed unease regarding the project’s feasibility and safety. Some studies published in domestic academic journals, though often constrained by political sensitivities, highlight the extreme seismic volatility of the Indo-Tsangpo Suture Zone (印‑藏缝合带). This region sits along the collision boundary of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. Drilling vast tunnels through this terrain may disturb permafrost layers, trigger mass wasting events, or alter the course of subterranean water flows.

[...]

The principle of climate justice must extend to Himalayan and South Asian communities that bear the consequences of decisions made far upstream. Adaptation and loss-and-damage frameworks cannot ignore water-related vulnerabilities in the Brahmaputra basin. Indeed, the Medog project strengthens the argument for the UNFCCC to formally recognize Tibet as a critical climate zone whose stability is essential to continental resilience.

The UNFCCC must insist that China conduct transparent, independent environmental impact assessments; share real-time hydrological data; and participate in regional water-governance frameworks that include India and Bangladesh.

In the end, the Medog dam is not merely a Chinese domestic project but a bellwether for the integrity of the global climate system. If Tibet continues to be treated as an internal developmental frontier rather than a global ecological asset, the world risks overlooking one of the most important climate flashpoints of the 21st century.