Room for Improvement: Using DNA Analysis to Address Rhino Horn Trafficking

Law enforcement officials from around the world have seized illegal supplies of rhino horn at least once a week on average for the past 10 years. The type of seizure ranges widely. It could be a pair of fresh horns confiscated from poachers who just gunned down a rhino inside a national park. Or possibly dozens of horns were discovered cleverly hidden in an air cargo shipment. Sometime it’s just a few grams of powdered horn found in a traveler’s luggage. Maybe a mix of raw and carved horns was seized after a police raid on a trafficker’s home.

• Wildlife
• South Africa
• Rhinos

Mukulagate

While the coronavirus pandemic rages on, ravaging Zambia’s economy and crippling its citizens' lives, new findings by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) show that illegal exploitation and trade in mukula (Pterocarpus tinctorius) persists unabated, benefitting a small number of well-connected and wealthy individuals. A probing undercover investigation into illegal mukula logging and trade sheds light on the apparent theft of more than 10,000 trees and unveils information connecting the Zambia Agency For Persons With Disabilities (ZAPD), the Ministry of Community and Social Services, the Ministry of Tourism and Arts, and the office of the vice president. Nearly two years after EIA’s exposé on the institutional looting of Zambian forests, it appears that the more things have changed with the pandemic, when it comes to mukula, the more they’ve stayed the same.

• Forests
• Rosewood
• Timber
• China - Forests

EPA Must Stop a New Black Market in Super Greenhouse Gases

Op-ed by Cynthia Giles and Alexander von Bismarck - Against the backdrop of the booming and prosperous drug trade of the 1990s, a lesser known but also lethal black market was emerging from an unfamiliar source – gases that caused the hole in the ozone layer. At the same time ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were being phased out globally, CFCs were flooding into the United States illegally...

Still Waiting for Action: Tokyo's Ivory Trade Assessment

The reality of the scope and impact of COVID-19 hit home for much of the world when the Tokyo 2020 Games were postponed. A year later and looking far different than ever expected or hoped, the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games finally arrived. As the host of the 2020 Games, Tokyo has come under increased scrutiny for its legal market for elephant ivory. Even as the Games were underway, the influential capital city faced mounting international pressure to close its legal ivory market for good. For World Elephant Day 2021, in between the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, we take a look at where Tokyo stands in doing its part to protect the world's elephants from the threats of ivory trade and poaching. 

• Elephants
• Ivory
• Wildlife
• Japan - Wildlife

EIA calls on the FSC Board of Directors to stop the re-association of HS Timber

During its meeting this week, the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) Board of Directors will determine whether to end its disassociation with one of the largest timber processors in Europe, the Austrian HS Timber Group (formerly known as Holzindustrie Schweighofer). At stake is not only HS Timber's hoped-for shot at restoring its name after a series of scandals, but also the reputation and the future of the FSC itself.

• Romania

Respuestas de las empresas a Carne Contaminada

Respuestas de las empresas a Tainted Beef/Carne Contaminada

• Colombia

Día Internacional de la Madre Tierra 2021

En el Día de la Tierra más de 100 organizaciones de la sociedad civil y de pueblos indígenas exigimos medidas urgentes que garanticen la protección de las y los Defensores de Derechos Humanos

International Earth Day 2021

This Earth Day EIA joins 100+ civil society and indigenous organizations on a public statement demanding the government of Peru to take urgent measures to guarantee the protection of defenders of the environment and human rights.

Unkept Promises: Chemours Newest Targets Miss the Mark

Following EIA’s call to cease irresponsible operations and subsequent mounting press pressure, the American chemical giant, the Chemours company released a new statement on their climate goals yesterday.

• Climate
• Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)

EIA Statement on Anti-AAPI Hate

With horrific acts of anti-Asian violence and racially-motivated crime on the rise in the U.S., EIA wants to join those expressing their outrage and support for Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. We also specifically want to call out the reality of anti-Asian bias within the environmental movement. EIA believes that every organization and individual fighting for the environment must root out, confront, and combat all forms of prejudice and hate they encounter.

Respaldo de Sociedad Civil a Defensora Ambiental en Perú

60 instituciones y miembros de la sociedad civil y organizaciones indígenas en Perú emitieron hoy un comunicado respaldando a la Defensora Ambiental Lucila Pautrat ante los ataques que viene recibiendo de parte de una empresa investigada por la instalación no autorizada de monocultivos agroindustriales en Tamshiyacu, en la Amazonía peruana.

• Forests
• Peru

Escazu Agreement Offers Hope but is Only the Beginning

2020 was a terrible year across the globe, but particularly for Latin America’s environmental defenders. After record numbers of murders in 2019, the perils for environmental and human rights defenders did not decline in 2020. In fact, these threats remained high and even increased during the pandemic, as illegal loggers, miners, and other land grabbers had free reign to encroach upon remote communities. And this time, the intruders brought with them the deadly coronavirus.

• Forests
• Peru

Carta pública pide suspender la selección del nuevo director del SERFOR en Perú

59 organizaciones de Pueblos Indígenas y de la sociedad civil en el Perú hicieron pública una carta enviada al Ministro de Desarrollo Agrario y Riego, Federico Tenorio, y a la viceministra María Isabel Remy, expresando su profundo rechazo al modo en que se está llevando a cabo el proceso de selección del nuevo director ejecutivo del Servicio Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre (SERFOR), sin antes haber resuelto las irregularidades y vacíos normativos identificados en la remoción del anterior director ejecutivo.

Major Climate Win: Lessons for the Montreal Protocol

Two new papers published in Nature suggest that the CFC-11 emissions are back on a downward trajectory potentially avoiding substantial delays in the recovery of the ozone layer. The papers show an accelerated decline in global atmospheric concentrations of CFC-11 from 2018 to 2019, and attribute 60% of the decline to China. This is a huge win for the ozone layer and our climate, which would not have been possible without a concerted global response to the findings from the ground and the atmosphere.

• Climate
• Standards
• Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)

EIA Calls Upon the Biden Administration to Take Bold Action

The Biden-Harris administration takes the helm at a time when the world faces multiple interrelated ecological and social justice crises. Bold, transformative approaches are urgently needed to change systems too long operating at the expense of environmental, social and human rights priorities. The Environmental Investigation Agency calls for the new administration to implement measures that prioritize biodiversity protection and rapid emissions mitigation while centering environmental justice and good governance.

Kruger National Park Rhino Population Crash Underscores Continued Poaching Threat Facing World’s Rhinos

Newly released rhino population data reveals how the protracted poaching crisis fueled by consumer demand for rhino horn in Asia has decimated Kruger’s rhino population over the past decade.

• Wildlife
• Rhinos

EIA Statement on Capitol Riot

n January 6th, as Congress gathered for the official certification of electoral votes in the U.S. presidential election, armed white supremacists and rioters broke into the House and Senate chambers, forcing elected officials, journalists, and others to flee...

The AIM Act: Your Questions on U.S. HFC Legislation – Answered

A new year’s gift for our climate came wrapped in the coronavirus relief package passed by Congress at the end of 2020. Among the bill’s several significant climate provisions is the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, or AIM Act, that enacts a phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

• Climate
• Country Transitions
• Standards
• HFC-free Alternatives
• Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)

How the Cooling Industry Can Turn Down the Global Temperature

The HVAC&R industry needs to implement critical changes to build back better – and help turn the tide on global warming.

• Climate

International Statement of Solidarity with Peruvian Indigenous Peoples During the Political Crisis

The undersigned organizations, allies of the Peruvian Indigenous movement for decades, previously concerned about the COVID19 situation in the Peruvian Amazon and today alerted to the political situation in Peru, respectfully address public opinion and Peruvian authorities to state the following

• Peru

Letter to Peru President Vizcarra

Civil society organizations ask Peru President Vizcarra to fight against impunity and not be fooled by the company sentenced for deforesting Tamshiyacu

• Forests
• Peru

World Rhino Day 2020: No Time for Complacency

Today marks the 10 years since the first World Rhino Day celebration on September 22, 2010. The past decade has been fraught with challenges for the world’s rhinos, yet some progress has been made. If the next 10 years are to be better for rhinos than the past 10 years, we cannot afford to lose focus now.

• Wildlife
• South Africa
• Vietnam
• Rhinos
• CITES
• China - Wildlife

Can I be HFC-free? A Quest for Climate-friendly Cooling

Supermarkets in particular have enormous refrigeration systems that extend past the display cases to back room chillers, refrigerated trucks, cold warehouses and so on. With such large systems, supermarkets are among the largest corporate offenders of HFC use, with thousands of tons of these chemicals throughout their cold chain. Yet out of nearly 40,000 supermarkets in the U.S., barely 1% are known to have transitioned to HFC-free systems; our Supermarket Scorecard shows that action and change throughout the industry is needed. These large companies have a greater climate footprint than you or me, and thus a greater responsibility to transition to climate-friendly alternatives.

• Climate
• HFC-free Alternatives

Finding the Promise in Compromise: EIA Proposal to Jumpstart California HFC Reclaim

Last week EIA participated in California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) 6th workshop on proposed regulations to reduce emissions of super pollutant hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) used in cooling. The state’s rigorous process for proposing new regulations on HFC refrigerants has been ongoing for several years now and is in the final stretch. Opportunities for stakeholder engagement have been abundant and ARB has invited input from industry along the way. They even aligned with an industry proposed 2023 deadline for transitioning new air conditioning equipment to refrigerants with a global warming potential (GWP) less than 750.

• Climate
• Global Actions
• HFC-free Alternatives
• Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)

Seizing the Moment: How Ghana Can End the Destruction of the Illegal Rosewood Trade Now

As exports and imports worldwide are estimated to be at their lowest levels in four years due to the impact of COVID-19, Ghana, a key epicenter of the rosewood trade in West Africa, is no exception to this trend.

• Forests
• Rosewood
• Timber
• China - Forests
• Ghana