The Land & Climate Podcast

In April, the International Maritime Organisation held the 83rd session of its Environment Protection Committee, where it established a system of penalties and rewards to advance shipping decarbonisation. This follows 2023 industry commitments to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030.  Alasdair speaks with Simon Bullock about whether the recent agreement is strong enough to meet climate goals and explor...

Yesterday, the U.S. Congress approved President Donald Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill'. This controversial federal budget is set to defund a huge proportion of the nation's climate and environmental science - what will the impacts be for America, and for global efforts against the climate crisis? Bertie spoke to John Holdren, who served as President Barack Obama's D...

In 2022, Gustavo Petro became the first left-wing candidate to win the Colombian presidential election. During his election campaign, Petro pledged to end the granting of new oil and gas exploration contracts, a commitment his government has so far succeeded in maintaining.  This week, Alasdair speaks with third-year doctoral student Guy Edwards who has interviewed over 50 people - from former gov...

Germany's 2025 federal election saw the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) double its support to 20.8%, becoming the second largest party, while the Green Party fell from 14.8% to 11.6%. The AfD denies climate science and opposes environmental policies on economic grounds.  This week, Alasdair interviews academic Felix Schulz, whose recent research has examined public attitudes towar...

From widespread industrial pollution to emerging as a green powerhouse, China’s economic evolution shows how grassroots activism has pushed ecological issues to the political forefront.   Tianjie and Bertie discuss China’s green evolution, Pan Yue’s introduction of environmental nationalism (now championed by Xi Jinping), flawed provincial reporting, and whether the country’s model can be sustaine...

A UK government agency recently announced it would spend £57 million on a controversial project to develop geoengineering technologies.    The Exploring Climate Cooling Programme will fund 21 international research teams to conduct small-scale, controlled outdoor experiments to thicken Arctic sea ice and brighten clouds, to prevent global warming from increasing past irreversible tipping points. ...

On 6th June 2023, the Nova Kakhovka dam was breached while under Russian occupation, releasing a wave of toxic pollution into Ukraine’s rivers. The number of casualties – both human and animal – may never be fully known.  Ukraine is one of a small number of countries to include ecocide in its domestic criminal code, and the destruction of Kakhovka Dam is one of hundreds of incidents that prosecuto...

In 2022, the Swedish government granted an exploitation concession to Jokkmokk Iron Mines AB — a subsidiary of British company named Beowulf Mining — to develop an open-pit iron mine in Northern Sweden. The decision has been opposed by both Indigenous and environmental activists, who have expressed concerns about the mine’s impacts on Saami communities and the surrounding ecology. Bertie speaks to...

Nearly half of the global agriculture market is controlled by four companies. This level of concentration - driven by decades of mergers and poor regulation - has allowed agribusiness “titans” to dominate the farming sector.   Alasdair talks to Dr Jennifer Clapp, author of a new book about corporate domination of the farm sector and why it matters. Alasdair and Jennifer discuss how and why mass-me...

It is becoming common for the fossil fuel industry to sue governments that attempt to decarbonise over “lost future profits.” They do so via an obscure part of international law called international-state dispute settlements (ISDS) that can allow them to extract billions in public money.  Alasdair speaks to Eunjung Lee, a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G. The two discuss how ISDS began, how...

With India kicking off 2025 with an historic space-docking experiment, and Elon Musk's growing power in the US government raising questions over the future of his spacecraft and satellite companies SpaceX and Starlink, we may be at the dawn of a new era for space exploration. Unlike the 20th Century Space Race, however, it will likely be private companies that cross new mildstones - not publi...

Alasdair speaks to journalist Margot Gibbs about her investigation into a US government-funded PR firm that profiled pesticide scientists.  Last autumn, Lighthouse Reports - in collaboration with media partners across Europe - published an investigation into v-Fluence, a US-based PR firm that worked to discredit anti-pesticide scientists and campaigners. Alasdair speaks to Margot Gibbs, a journali...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shocked global energy markets, and changed the EU's long and short-term plans for decarbonisation. But how have three years of conflict changed Ukraine's own policies and plans around energy security and net zero?  Bertie discusses this issue with Ukrainian economist Maksym Chepeliev, Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Global Trade An...

In a recently published report, “Criminalisation and Repression of Climate and Environmental Protests”,  Dr. Oscar Berglund and his colleagues identified four key mechanisms through which climate and environmental protests are repressed: the introduction of new anti-protest laws, the broadening use of existing legislation, excessive policing and killings and disappearances of activists.  Alasdair...

“The capitalist system is necessarily built on creating ecological crises.” Bertie speaks to Ståle Holgersen about his new book Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World , in which he argues that, contrary to popular economic thought, economic crises are not triggered by ecological ones but instead the capitalist economy benefits from ecological crises.  Bertie and Ståle discuss t...

One month ago, Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as the new president of Indonesia. An investigation by The Gecko Project has revealed that Subianto has invested in or owned companies involved with rainforest logging, coal mining, palm oil production, and industrial fishing - but many of the companies appear to be inactive. Do these investments representing potentially concerning conflicts of inter...

This year, Land and Climate Review’ s first investigative series has documented more than 11,000 breaches of environmental law at North American wood pellet mills.  Alasdair MacEwen speaks to Camille Corcoran, whose recent reporting was published with The Times in the UK, and Bertie Harrison-Broninski, who normally co-hosts with Alasdair, but here discusses Land and Climate Review ’s Canadian inve...

As the UN Biodiversity Conference draws to a close Bertie speaks to María Arango, a lawyer at the international human rights organization Forest People’s Programme, about the impacts of the sugar cane industry on Black communities in the Cauca River Valley region of western Colombia.  A new report titled The Green Illusion finds that more than 80% of the region’s wetlands have been drained in orde...

“In 2022, Indonesia only consumed about 70,000 tonnes of wood for electricity. In 2023, we consumed almost half a million.” Alasdair speaks to Timer Manurung, Chairman of the Indonesian NGO Auriga Nusantara, about a new report he worked on with five other environmental charities. Titled Unheeded Warnings , the report warns that the Indonesian government’s plans for biomass power risk harming 10 mi...

Bertie speaks to Sherri Goodman about her new book, Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security. From 1993-2001, Sherri Goodman served as the first US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, making her the Pentagon's Chief Environmental Officer. She then went on to help deliver influential reports that helped to establish climate cha...

Last week, Greenpeace Africa published their new report “Fast Fashion, Slow Poison: The Toxic Textile Crisis in Ghana”. The report outlines the shocking environmental and public health impact of the second-hand clothing industry in Ghana - revealing that every week, up to half a million items of clothing from the Kantamanto Market in Accra end up discarded in open spaces and informal dumpsites. Be...

In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, a legally binding treaty with the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Since then, climate planning has increasingly revolved around overshooting this target, with the hope that temperature levels can be brought back down in later decades. Temperature overshoot models are now the default, but also a cause of scient...

Many governments are wary of providing transparency around their militaries' emissions, and campaigners can be hesitant to focus on the carbon footprint of conflicts, rather than more obviously humanitarian issues. But Ukraine has helped to shift opinion this year, after pushing for more accountability for wartime environmental harm. Recent estimates put the CO2e cost of Russia's invasio...

Alasdair speaks to Jonas Algers about steel decarbonisation; what the options are, where there are challenges, and what is happening so far.  Jonas Algers is a PhD candidate at Lund University, Sweden, researching steel decarbonisation policy.  Further reading:  ' Leading with Industrial Policy: Lessons for Decarbonization from Swedish Green Steel ', Roosevelt Institute, 2024 ' Phas...

Bertie speaks to fashion expert and journalist Alden Wicker about her book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick - and How We Can Fight Back. Drawing from case studies in Alden's book, they discuss the health risks with chemicals modern clothing is often treated with, and whether there has been enough research and regulation on the issue. Further reading:  Buy To Dye For from Pengui...