18 May 2023 - NPWJ News Digest on Environmental Justice and Human Rights

Buckle up because El Niño is almost here, and it’s going to get hot
The Verge, 17 May 2023

The next five years are almost guaranteed to be sweltering, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned today. Climate change has already raised baseline temperatures for the planet. Now, a weather pattern known as El Niño is going to make things even hotter when it develops later this year. There’s a 98 percent chance that one of the following five years will be the warmest on record, according to a WMO report released today. There’s also a 98 percent likelihood that the average temperature for the entire five-year period will be hotter than the previous five years

Plastic pollution could be cut by 80% by 2040, says UN report
Phys.org, 16 May 2023

Plastic pollution could reduce by 80% by 2040 if countries and companies make deep policy and market shifts using existing technologies, according to a new report by UN Environment Program (UNEP). The report is released ahead of a second round of negotiations in Paris on a global agreement to beat plastic pollution and outlines the magnitude and nature of the changes required to end plastic pollution and create a circular economy. 

Congo Basin communities left out by ‘fortress conservation’ fight for a way back in
Mongabay, 16 May 2023

Since the colonization of the Congo Basin by Europeans, many Indigenous communities have been cordoned off from land they once relied on in the name of conservation. The contentious “fortress conservation” model remains popular with some governments in Central Africa, but conservation leaders are shifting their opinion, signalling a desire to move toward inclusive and rights-based approaches to protected areas and ecosystems, including in declarations such as the Kigali Call to Action. However, Indigenous leaders and conservation experts say action, not just talk, is urgently needed to achieve the goals outlined by the 30×30 initiative, and to make good on promises to address injustices faced by Indigenous communities across the basin. 

Indigenous chief shot in head in Brazil’s ‘palm oil war’ region; crisis group launched
Mongabay, 16 May 2023

On May 14, Indigenous chief Lúcio Tembé was shot by gunmen on an unpaved road in Brazil’s northern Pará state. This is the latest episode of violence in an area facing an outbreak of land conflicts between a major palm oil company and local communities, the so-called “palm oil war.” The Federal Public Ministry raised the possibility of the crime’s connection to conflicts with palm oil companies in the region and requested urgent measures of the Federal Police and Pará’s State Department of Public Security and Social Defense (Segup) in view of the intense level of conflict in the region “with concrete risks to the Indigenous peoples’ life and physical integrity.”