The Land & Climate Podcast Land and Climate Review

Alasdair speaks to environmental attorney Peter Lehner about US agriculture's contribution to global emissions.
Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food and Farming Programme and former executive director of the National Resources Defence Council.
Alasdair and Peter discuss the future of the US farm bill, the adverse climate effects of crop insurance and the influence agrochemical lobbies have on agriculture across America. 
Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading:

Peter’s recent articles for the American College of Environmental Lawyers:
Building on the IRA’s Farm Policy MomentumHarvesting Climate Benefits from the 2024 Farm BillRipe for Change The Real Cost of FoodPeter’s book:
Farming for Our Future: The Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral AgricultureClick here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Does our society have an addiction to short term thinking and planning? Is our failure to mitigate climate change a result of this?

Vincent Ialenti spent three years doing fieldwork in Finland, interviewing experts working on Posiva's Safety Case for the world's first long term nuclear repository, Onkalo.

His book about that fieldwork, Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now, explores the idea of "shallow" and "deep" time thinking. Dr. Ialenti uses Onkalo as a case study for how policy can involve ongoing work over decades, and look ahead towards potential impacts hundreds of thousands of years into the future - if expertise is as trusted and depoliticised as it is in Finland.

Bertie spoke to Vincent about the book, and how policymakers and the climate sector can think beyond the next generation or electoral cycle.

Dr. Vincent Ialenti is a Research Associate at California State Polytechnic University Humboldt’s Department of Environmental Studies. Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.

Further reading: 
Buy Deep Time Reckoning from MIT Press here. 'The Art of Pondering Earth’s Distant Future', Scientific American, 2021'The benefits of 'deep time thinking'', BBC Future, 2023'Temporality, fiction and climate – reading Mark Bould’s Anthropocene Unconscious', Land and Climate Review, 2022Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Bertie speaks to Austin Frerick about his new book Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry.

Austin Frerick is an agricultural and antitrust policy fellow at Yale University, and has advised on policy for senior US politicians including Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden during his presidential campaign.

Bertie and Austin discuss lobbying and state capture in the US, the history of farming deregulation, and the environmental impact of food monopolies.

Barons was published last week and is available to buy from Island Press here.

Further reading: 
Book excerpt: ‘Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry’, Minnesota Reformer ‘Hidden costs, public burden: The real toll of Walmart's "always low prices"’, Salon‘Do You Know Where Your Strawberries Come From?’, The New Republic‘Why Austin Frerick Is Taking On The Grocery Barons’, ForbesClick here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Last month an investigation by Transport and Environment (T&E) exposed a number of challenges facing Eni's African biofuel projects.

The Italian oil giant's "second generation" biofuel crops have not met production targets in Kenya and Republic of the Congo. The investigation found that key promises have not been met around intercropping, and collected testimonies of alleged expropriation driven by Eni's business partners. T&E say farmers are now giving up on the projects.

To hear more details, Alasdair welcomed Agathe Bounfour back to the podcast, Oil Investigations Lead at T&E.

 Audio engineering by Vasko Kostovski.   

Further reading: 
Read Agathe's op-ed about the investigation on Land and Climate Review. Read T&E's full investigation.Read The Continent's front page cover story about the investigation. Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

Following new allegations from the BBC that a UK power station is "burning wood from some of the world's most precious forests" in British Columbia, Bertie speaks to Richard Robertson about Canada's forestry sector.

Richard Robertson is a Forest Campaigner at Stand.Earth, and recently contributed to a report prepared by numerous NGOs, which accused the Canadian government's own forestry report of being “akin to an industry ad, promoting questionable and misleading claims.”

Bertie and Richard discuss these findings, the biomass industry, certification and regulation, and whether Canadian forestry deserves its leading reputation.

Further reading: 
Read the report by Canadian environmental organisations:  The State Of The Forest In Canada: Seeing Through The SpinRead the Canadian government's own report, which the new publication responds to: The State of Canada’s ForestsRead Stand.Earth's report about their old growth satellite monitoring tool: Forest Eye: An Eye on Old Growth Destruction'Drax: UK power station still burning rare forest wood', BBC, 28/2/24Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org

As the EU butts heads with the UK over fishing policy, Bertie speaks to Steve Trent, CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation, to get a more global overview of fishing regulation and its importance to environmental and human rights.

They discuss past and future EU policy and its impact in South East Asia, and use Thailand as a case study to discuss the issue of durability with environmental reform. The Thai fishing sector's reliance on forced labour and overfishing reduced dramatically in the 2010s, but reforms may now be overturned.

Further reading:
'Europe already has the tools it needs to end forced labour', Land and Climate Review, 2023'Civil society urges Thai government to stop deregulation of the fisheries industry', Environmental Justice Foundation, 2023Thailand’s progress in combatting IUU, forced labour & human trafficking, 2023The ever widening net: mapping the  scale, nature and corporate structures of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by the Chinese distant-water fleet, 2022A manifesto for our ocean, 2023'Denmark and Sweden press Brussels to act against UK in fishing dispute', Financial Times, 2024Click here to visit The Future Unrefined, our curated collection of articles and podcasts on raw materials and extraction.

Find more podcasts and articles at www.landclimate.org