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By Sharon Kimathi, Energy and ESG Editor, Reuters Digital

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Protecting environmental laws and ramping up climate targets form the main agenda in today’s newsletter as both Brazil and the European Union take action against resistance to reform. And water preservation takes over today’s ESG Spotlight as seven U.S. states that depend on the Colorado River reached an agreement to cut down consumption.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva plans to commit Brazil to a more ambitious climate change goal this year, addressing criticisms of the previous target set by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, two sources told Reuters.

In 2021, amid growing global outrage over Bolsonaro’s light-touch stewardship of the Amazon rainforest, his government pledged to cut greenhouse emissions by 50% by 2030, up from a previous commitment of 43%. 

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest fell 68% in April from the previous year, preliminary government data showed, a positive reading for Lula’s government. Bolsonaro had slashed environmental protection efforts, cutting funding and staff at key agencies as he called for more farming and mining on protected lands.

Deforested area during an operation to combat deforestation at the Cachoeira Seca indigenous reserve, in Uruara, Para State, Brazil Jan 19, 2023. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino/File Photo

Brazilian lobby group Climate Observatory calculated that the Bolsonaro target would allow an additional 400 million tonnes of greenhouse gas to be emitted, compared to the prior target.

Bolsonaro’s government used a higher, 2005 baseline – a move that made it easier for Brazil to reach its target compared with the previous pledge and that was widely criticized by environmentalists.

To address those issues, Lula’s government intends to maintain the 50% reduction but fix the issue with the baseline, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Both spoke anonymously as the move is not yet public.

Speaking of amending climate legislation, the European Commission will not redraft a landmark law to restore damaged environments, the bloc’s green policy chief said, in the face of calls from some lawmakers to throw out the proposal.

Brussels is attempting to salvage two proposed environmental laws, the future of which is in doubt after the biggest lawmaker group in the European Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), called for them to be rejected.

One law would require countries to introduce measures to restore nature in 20% of their land and sea. The second, designed to cut pollution and halt the collapse of Europe’s bee and butterfly populations, would halve the EU’s chemical pesticide use by 2030.

“We will not come up with another proposal, time simply isn’t there,” vice-president of the Commission Frans Timmermans said of the nature restoration law at a European Parliament committee meeting.

Timmermans said by improving the health of nature, the proposals would make Europe’s farms more resilient to worsening climate change impacts like floods and drought, improve the land’s ability to absorb water and avoid soil erosion.

Rejecting them, he said, would endanger the EU’s overall green agenda to cut greenhouse gas emissions and clean up pollution.

Timmermans said the Commission was ready to address parts of the law that have caused concern, for example by clarifying that measures to restore nature should not obstruct countries’ plans to build wind farms.

Clothes with discount signs are displayed at Le Printemps Haussmann in Paris, France, July 15, 2020. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

Alina Liviet, vice-chair of the Bonn-based, non-profit Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) Permanent Indigenous Peoples Committee, shares her thoughts on carbon credits’ role in preserving forests in Mexico:

“The Ixtlán community of Oaxaca, Mexico, ventured two years ago into the sale of carbon credits. It has forests certified for more than 20 years by the FSC. 

“In order to have strong and healthy forests, the community requires a large economic investment that ranges from the seed collection, tree cultivation, reforestation, maintenance, combating pests and fires, conservation of aquifers, preservation of native and endangered flora and fauna, among other activities. 

“For more than 40 years, the Ixtlán community has carried out all these activities with its own resources and with some support from the government, therefore, the sale of carbon credits has brought economic resources that have been used in part to finance these activities and thereby giving back to the forest a minimum part of everything it offers us.”

Investors globally have been racing to fund more climate-friendly technologies as the world tries to shift towards a lower-carbon economy, new data from consultants Oliver Wyman shows.

The United States’ Inflation Reduction Act and the European Union’s Net Zero Industry Act, which offer public subsidies for green industries, look set to turbocharge that interest, industry experts predict. Battery technology, storage solutions and renewable technology made up two-thirds of last year’s global venture capital investment, according to the analysis.

Colorado River water runs through Central Arizona Project canals in Pinal County, Arizona, U.S., April 9, 2023. REUTERS/Rebecca Noble

Seven U.S. states that depend on the overused Colorado River reached agreement to cut consumption and help save a river that provides drinking water for 40 million people and irrigation for some of the country’s most bountiful farmland. And scroll on for a scientific discovery of an extinct apex predator’s journey for survival.

Arizona, California and Nevada will reduce intake from the river by 3 million acre-feet (3.7 billion cubic meters) through the end of 2026, an amount equal to 13% of their river allotment, under a deal brokered and announced by the Biden administration.

The river’s long-term health is critical for the entire region, particularly for the economies of major cities such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix, and the agricultural industry.

This undated illustration shows the Permian Period tiger-sized saber-toothed protomammal Inostrancevia atop its dicynodont prey, scaring off the much smaller species Cyonosaurus. Matt Celeskey/Handout via REUTERS

Scientists said fossils unearthed in South Africa provide a glance at a tale of an apex predator that migrated halfway around the world over multiple generations in a desperate, and ultimately failed, bid to survive.

This beast, a tiger-sized, saber-toothed mammal forerunner called Inostrancevia, had been known only from fossils excavated in Russia’s northwestern corner bordering the Arctic Sea until new remains were discovered at a farm in central South Africa.

Inostrancevia and all of its closest relatives disappeared in the mass extinction called “the Great Dying”, dooming perhaps 90% of species – roughly 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian Period.

“Now is the time for concrete global action. With action comes hope and the desire to be part of the change.”

Santiago Lefebvre, founder and CEO of the France-based social enterprise, ChangeNOW

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