The Land & Climate Podcast

Copa Cogeca is the largest agricultural lobbying group in Europe, claiming to be "the united voice" of 22 million farmers. But a new investigation from Lighthouse Reports suggests the true size of their membership is far smaller than this - and that the group uses its unrivalled influence to block climate and environmental reform, and lobby for industrial farmers at the expense of smallh...

Alasdair speaks to Professor Ángela Vergara about the history, economics, and environmental impact of mining in Chile. Ángela Vergara is a member of the history faculty at California State University. Her books include Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile   (Pittsburgh, 2021), and Copper Workers, International Business and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile   (Penn State, 2008). Podca...

Joëlle Gergis ( @joellegergis ) is an award-winning climatologist and writer based at the Australian National University. Her latest book, Humanity's Moment: A Scientist's Case for Hope, is a passionate and unsparing look at what has been lost but also what can still be saved - and why should still have hope. Dr Gergis draws on her experience as the lead author of Working Group 1, of the...

Following US Climate Envoy John Kerry's latest remarks on overpopulation, Bertie spoke to Diana Ojeda, Associate Professor in sustainability, environment and development at the Universidad de los Andes' Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies, about why many scholars and activists are wary of populationist narratives in climate planning. Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski. Further...

Alasdair speaks to Thomas Pellerin Carlin, Director of the EU Programme at the Institute for Climate Economics, about France's relationship with nuclear energy, growing support for legislation focused on sufficiency, and how party politics shapes these issues.  Audio editing by Vasko Kostovski. Send us Fan Mail Find all our latest investigations, features and interviews at www.landclimate.org

Bertie speaks to Professor Laura Murphy about international supply chains and forced labour in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region, where more than a million Uyghur people have been detained in concentration camps. The solar panel industry has been disentangling itself from the Uyghur genocide for several years, since researchers publicised how much polysilicon was produced by Uyghur forced la...

The UK was the first major power to sign net zero into law in 2019, and was once considered a global leader on climate policy. After Brexit and a change of government, is the country failing to live up to its promises?  Alasdair speaks to Dr. Doug Parr, Greenpeace UK's Chief Scientist, about the UK's place on the global stage, how its net zero policies are progressing, and how the countr...

Bertie speaks to Wijnand Stoefs, Carbon Market Watch's policy lead on Carbon Removal, about how EU policy is developing around greenhouse gas removals.  They discuss the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, along with other legislation like the Innovation Fund and the Sustainable Carbon Cycles Communication, as well as talking about risks with bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and...

In this next installment in our oil series, we have Professor Paul Stevens, Emeritus Professor at the University of Dundee and senior research fellow at Chatham House. Professor Stevens is a world leading expert on global petroleum policy. We spoke about the history of energy transitions and the fallacy of ‘peak oil’. Covered in this episode are: the current “energy establishment”, forecasts of th...

Bertie speaks to fashion journalist and sustainability consultant Lucianne Tonti about her new book Sundressed: Natural Fabrics and the Future of Clothing . They discuss issues with sustainability indexes and modern fibres created from crude oil and trees, vs the benefits of clothes made from natural materials produced through regenerative agriculture. Podcast editing by Vasko Kostovski. Futher re...

Alasdair speaks to Professor Mike Norton, Environment Programme Director at the European Academies Science Advisory Council, about newly published research on neonicotinoid pesticides.  In 2013, the European Commission severely restricted the use of several 'neonics' due to emerging research showing they had wide ranging harfmul environmental impacts on insect populations and ecosystems....

In this episode, Lauren Sneade speaks to Professor Thane Gustafson for a second instalment on how the Russian oil industry affects the country's attitudes towards climate change, given the country's distinguished history of climate science. They cover how climate change has affected the country so far, and how Russian policymaking has responded, raising questions around the political wil...

Alasdair talks to Roger Smith , Japan Director for Mighty Earth, about Japanese biomass imports and the risks of the country's coal power stations switching to wood-burning. Further reading:  SMOKESCREEN: SUMITOMO’S “CARBON NEUTRAL” FAILURES   SUMITOMO CORPORATION’S DIRTY ENERGY TRADE: Biomass, Coal and Japan’s Energy Future Biomass cofiring loopholes put coal on open-ended life support in As...

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) was signed in 1959, and will not be modified until 2048. Climate diplomacy expert Dhanasree Jayaram tells Bertie about the environmental risks that could threaten Antarctica before then, including illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, militarisation, bioprospecting, increased tourism, and resource extraction. Dr. Jayaram is Assistant Professor at the...

Long before Elon Musk's takeover drew accusations of increased disinformation on the platform, there was already a rapid growth of climate scepticism and denial on Twitter, according to research by The IRIS Academic Research Group. Their analysis studied climate discourse during the annual UN Climate Change Conferences (COPs), and found that criticism of climate action had grown from 1% of in...

Alasdair speaks to Kelly Stone, Senior Policy Analyst at ActionAid, about her time at COP27 and where international diplomacy is taking offset markets and their governance. Further reading:  CLARA's resources on 'net zero' , including info on Article 6.  Read Kelly's articles on the ActionAid blog  ' Silicon Valley's non existent offsets ', in Land and Climate Re...

Afforestation projects are being used worldwide as a nature-based solution to climate change.  Afforestry is the practice of planting trees on otherwise arid, barren land. Harvard scholar Rosetta Elkin explains how large-scale tree planting in otherwise treeless environments rarely makes ecological sense. In many instances throughout history, these projects have also been used as instruments of co...

Lauren Sneade talks to Thane Gustafson about the future of Russian oil through the climate crisis and the context of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Gustafson is a professor of political science at Georgetown University, and an author of numerous books about Russia's fossil fuel dependence, the most recent being 2021's Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change. Lauren and Professor Gustafs...

A major report published ahead of COP27 analysed national climate policies and found that "over-reliance on carbon removals could push ecosystems, land rights and food security to the brink." Alasdair spoke to Dr. Kate Dooley, one of the Land Gap Report authors and a Research Fellow at Melbourne University’s Climate & Energy College, to hear about what policymakers are getting wrong....

As COP27 begins in Egypt following historic floods in Pakistan and a summer of international droughts, will this finally be the year rich governments begin to take climate finance seriously? Bertie speaks to Karim Ahmed about his recent white policy paper on loss and damage, which is being presented at COP27. Dr. Ahmed is a director of the Global Council for Science and the Environment, and a Prof...

Governments and the aviation industry have been promising for decades that fuel made from plants could solve the transport sector's CO2 emissions. Why hasn't it happened? John DeCicco, Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan, has been studying transport emissions & biofuels for decades. Alasdair asked him about the alarming findings of his research: liquid biofuels could be wors...

Bertie talks to science journalist Matt Simon about his upcoming book; A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies. Further reading:  pre-order Matt's book from Island Press Plastic: A Toxic Love Story Read Wired 's reporting on plastic Read Beyond Plastic's report on the link between plastics and climate change The Human Planet: How We Created the...

After being "stonewalled" by his bosses over concerns about decarbonisation claims, Finlay Asher quit his job as a senior aviation engineer at Rolls Royce to found Safe Landing , an organisation that campaigns against growing the aviation sector. Alasdair spoke to him about this journey, the reasons technological and market-based solutions to aviation emissions are not going to get us to...

On 23 May 2022, the Australian Labor Party entered government for the first time since 2013, under the leadership of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Alasdair spoke to Dr. Marija Taflaga, Director of the Australian National University's Center for the Study of Australian Politics, to talk about shifting climate politics in the county, and what the new government could mean for the green trans...

Lauren talks to Tania Li, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, about the sustainability of the oil that's in 50% of supermarket food products - and the issues with labour and land rights in Indonesia's palm oil industry. Further reading:  Tania's books and other publications can be found on her website, taniali.org   Oil palm development in Thailand: economic, soc...