Carbon

Keeping peoples on their land is our responsibility if we want to succeed in building a world for climate justice.

Indigenous peoples, shifting cultivators and rural women lose out under the UN REDD+ programmes.

Warming of 2°C would release billions of tonnes of soil carbon.

Exporting emissions is not the same as cutting them. 

'Governments are weakening environmental protections, violating existing indigenous land rights.'

Animal agriculture is the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and responsible for up to 18 percent of emissions worldwide.

A sufficient reduction in emissions can only be achieved if all countries are fully committed to a coordinated, cooperative effort.

Buried wetland sites could explain some of the differences between global carbon cycle models and real-life observations.

The transition to renewable energy will entail a period of economic deintensification or 'degrowth' that could benefit wellbeing.

The Argentine government is set to push ahead with controversial fracking despite warnings.

Britain will become 'world leaders in decarbonising our economy' claims John McDonnell at his speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton today. And with Labour still ahead of the polls, his radical agenda for renewable energy could become government policy, reports BRENDAN MONTAGUE

Science textbooks aimed at teenagers simply ignore the most effective lifestyle changes to prevent climate change: go vegetarian, cycle, take the train overseas and have fewer kids. It is time parents sat down and explained the low carbon birds and the bees, asks BRENDAN MONTAGUE

Indonesia's plans to meet its Paris Agreement obligations by protecting its swamp forests, the world's biggest land reservoir of carbon, have been acclaimed by the world's press, writes Yuyun Indradi. But they contain so many loopholes and flawed compromises that - unless radically reformed - they are doomed to certain failure.

For years the 'market mantra' has been to save forests by selling the carbon they embody, writes Chris Lang, harnessing the profit motive for the benefit of trees and climate. But it never worked, and now even former fans are admitting that REDD is just another failed conservation fad. So what next? How about asking local communities to manage their forests as commons?

Mainstream solutions to climate change are all based on reducing the world down to a single metric - tonnes of carbon. But as Camila Moreno, Daniel Speich Chassé & Lili Fuhr explain, this uni-dimensional world view is doomed to failure as it neglects all the difficult things that matter most: people, communities, ecosystems, love, beauty, politics, money, corruption, and corporate power.

The over-hunting of wildlife in the Amazon has an unexpected knock-on effect: the reduced seed dispersal reduces the forest's capacity to store carbon in its biomass, increasing emissions from apparently 'intact' rainforest areas.

It sounds like a modest ambition: France wants to raise the amount of carbon in its soils by 0.4% a year, writes John Quinton. But that represents a vast amount of carbon, and its capture into soils will bring a host of other benefits. We should all get with the program!

We are alive in a pivotal year, writes the Earth League. 2015 offers the opportunity to build a sustainable and prosperous future for people and planet. But if we fail to act on climate change, safeguard crucial ecosystems and biodiversity, and secure a just and equitable world order for all, grave and irreversible perils await Earth and all who dwell on her.

To date the Amazon has been a huge carbon sink, soaking up billions of tonnes of our emissions from fossil fuels, write Oliver Phillips & Roel Brienen. But now that's changing, as trees grow faster and die younger: the sink appears to be saturating.

Univerisities' core mission is one of civilization and enlightenment, and that's incompatible with investing in fossil fuels that pose an existential threat to humanity and the planet, writes Cutler J Cleveland. It's is also financially prudent for for them to avoid sinking capital into future 'stranded assets' of unburnable carbon.

Indian coal firm Adani is struggling to finance its proposed mega coal mine in Australia's Galilee Basin, write Marina Lou & Christine Ottery, as promised government support evaporates and a major investor looks set to pull out.

The carbon market has certainly seen its fair share of skullduggery, writes Chris Lang, with massive frauds perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. This new thriller captures the essence of the wheeler-dealer carbon business to produce a compulsive work of fiction that is, sadly, all too believable.

The Warsaw 'COP-19' climate negotiations were a widely acknowledged failure. But Assaad Razzouk sees a small silver lining among the dark clouds. There is a real prospect of effective action on climate in the run up to COP20 in Paris, 2015.

After rabbits, foxes, brambles and the cane toad, you would have thought Australia would have had enough of invasive exotic species, writes Jane Wright. Wrong! CSIRO scientists are introducing a French dung beetle, in the hope it will lead to fewer flies, improved soil fertility and structure, and greater carbon sequestration.