Reaching net zero in Australia relies on the bush. That’s where the land, sun, wind and freshwater resources are.

But as the clean energy build accelerates, some landholders are pushing back. Unfortunately, their legitimate worries have been magnified by media coverage and vested interests.

The recent series of News Corp Australia Bush Summits promoted farming and mining while mining magnate Gina Rinehart took aim at the damage she claims renewables and the “net zero ideology” were doing to farmers already struggling with “devastating droughts, fires [and] floods”.

Clean energy – key to mitigating climate change – is growing rapidly, driven by projects in rural areas. In just five years, Australia has almost doubled how much clean energy goes into its main grid, reaching 40% this year.

The speed of the rollout has caused fractures in regional and rural areas as the “presumed benevolence” of renewable energy comes face-to-face with the realities of large-scale infrastructure development. In Victoria, controversial new laws mandating access for transmission line builders are likely to inflame relations with host landowners. The carrot of increased payments seems barely enough.

Farmers worry more and more about changes to the climate. Most quietly support renewables and many benefit directly from the reliable income of solar and wind. But rapid change can create real tensions, especially when change is seen as being done to a community, not with it.

What should be done? Policymakers, project developers and landowners should focus on finding ways of equitably sharing the very real benefits of the clean energy transition with the communities who will host them.

Polarisation serves vested interests

The energy debate has long been polarised in Australia, characterised by outrage and negativity. Australia’s long-running “climate wars” gave rise to a decade of political instability and a succession of prime ministers.

Media coverage amplifies the sense of an intractable conflict between clean energy projects and the bush. In politics, energy and climate policy continues to be weaponised in debates. The debate over the “net zero agenda” has fractured the Coalition.

Inflaming this debate is useful for vested interests who benefit from delaying climate action as long as possible.

Farmers see climate change as their top threat

Farmers are already feeling the effects of climate change. In a 2023 survey of Australian farmers, 92% reported experiencing unwelcome changes in seasons and climate in recent years, and 71% are spending money to cut emissions from their farms.

Asked to name the main threat they were facing, 55% chose climate change. Just 1% chose transmission lines and another 1% chose the renewable rollout.

“The bush” is often presented as an immovable bloc resistant to renewables, but this framing is simplistic. Farmers have long fought against coal and gas projects in fertile areas such as the Hunter Valley. And many farmers directly benefit from clean energy projects, quietly exploring ways of pairing renewables and transmission lines with farming.

In July, Bendigo hosted a national expo on renewables and agriculture. Farmers, researchers, policymakers and advocates discussed methods such as agrivoltaics, where sheep graze under solar panels.

This month, Farmers for Climate Action hosted a national summit exploring similar territory. At the conference, farmers spoke about how renewables were a financial lifeline amid challenging conditions.

Taking the heat out of the debate

Rural concerns should not be dismissed. Wind farms attract fears over noise and visual impact, and large transmission lines provoke concerns over potential impact on farming through to lower property values.

The best way forward? Ignore the noise, listen to genuine concerns, and focus on sharing benefits, clear communication and making decisions collaboratively. Here’s how:

Share the benefits

Renewable developers often initiate community benefit schemes such as funding community initiatives or committing to local jobs. The Clean Energy Council estimates these schemes could be worth A$1.9 billion by 2050.

Renewable projects can help by leaving a legacy of infrastructure and programs to make life better in the bush. Shared equity schemes go even further. In Canada, communities get a mandatory 25% of project equity. In Australia, the First Nations Clean Energy Network is pushing for similar shared equity.

Decide together, share knowledge

Towns in designated renewable energy zones are getting in early to ensure the community has a bigger role through community meetings and discussion. Residents in Hay made it clear they wanted to ensure benefits would flow to their region.

Citizen assemblies can help create common ground in communities before conflict sets in.

Open discussion gives communities more power and more buy-in. Local knowledge and expertise can feed into related initiatives, such as encouraging biodiversity on solar farms.

Fill the information vacuum

When communities aren’t kept well informed, misinformation can flourish. Trust and transparency are key. Communication has to be early, two-way and ongoing. One solution may be local energy hubs, where staff can answer questions directly.

Share the load

Rural and regional areas are doing the heavy lifting on clean energy, as a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry recently heard. Urban areas can contribute through mechanisms such as the new urban renewable energy zone in the Illawarra, though these have their own complexities.

Community power networks offer another way for urban communities to shoulder some of the responsibility for the energy shift by producing, storing and using their own energy.

Through the increased electrification of homes – coupled with flexible demand and greater network utilisation – cities and urban areas could become “giant batteries.”

Polarisation is pointless

Change is not always easy. Anxieties can be magnified to create polarisation or gridlock. But issues can be worked through.

We need to put aside fearmongering and collaboratively decide how best to shape the emerging clean energy era to benefit all Australians – rural or otherwise.

Elianor Gerrard, Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney and Kimberley Crofts, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Energy Transitions, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate shocks threaten to devastate communities, overwhelm emergency services and strain health, housing, food and energy systems according to a federal government assessment released today.

The report, Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, confirms the devastating consequences of climate change have arrived. It also reveals the worsening effects of extreme heat, fires, floods, droughts, marine heatwaves and coastal inundation in coming decades.

The sobering assessment is a major step forward in Australia’s understanding of who and what is in harm’s way from climate change. It is also a national call to action. The sooner Australia mitigates and adapts, the safer and more resilient we will be.

Australia’s climate risk revealed

The assessment involved more than 250 climate experts, including the authors of this article, and contributions from more than 2,000 specialists. It was also informed by data and modelling from the Australian Climate Service, CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, the Australia Bureau of Statistics and Geoscience Australia, among other major institutions.

The report provides the vital evidence base to inform Australia’s first National Adaptation Plan, also released today.

Earth has already warmed by 1.2°C since pre-industrial times, and remains on track for 2.7°C by the end of the century if no action is taken. The assessment considers the impacts on Australia at 1.5°C, 2°C and 3°C of global warming.

The risks to Australia are assessed under eight key systems, as we outline below.

1. Health and social support

Climate hazards will severely impact physical and mental health. The most vulnerable communities include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the elderly, the very young and those with pre-existing health conditions, as well as outdoor workers.

At 3°C global warming, heat-related deaths increase by 444% for Sydney and 423% for Darwin, compared to current conditions.

Deaths from increased disease transmission are expected to rise. Vector borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever may spread in the tropics.

Attracting health care workers to remote areas will be increasingly hard, and services will be strained by rising demand and disrupted supply chains.

2. Communities

Coastal, regional and remote communities face very high to severe risk.

More than 1.5 million people in coastal communities could be exposed to sea level rise by 2050, increasing to more than 3 million people by 2090.

Communities within 10km of soft shorelines will be especially vulnerable to erosion, inundation and infrastructure damage.

Extreme weather events – including heatwaves, bushfires, flooding and tropical cyclones – will intensify safety and security risks, especially in Northern Australia.

Compounding hazards are expected to erode community resilience and social cohesion. Water supplies in many areas will be threatened. Economic costs will escalate and people may be forced to migrate away from some areas.

3. Defence and national security

Climate risk to defence and national security is expected to be very high to severe by 2050. This system includes emergency management and volunteers.

Defence, emergency and security services will be increasingly stretched when hazards occur concurrently or consecutively.

If the Australian Defence Force continues to be asked to respond to domestic disasters, it will detract from its primary objective of defending Australia. At the same time, climate impacts will cause instability in our region and beyond.

Repeated disasters and social disruptions are likely to erode volunteer capacity. Increasing demands on emergency management personnel and volunteers will intensify and may affect their physical and mental wellbeing.

4. Economy and finance

Risks to the economy, trade and finance is expected to be very high by 2050. Projected disaster costs could total A$40.3 billion every year by 2050, even at 1.5°C.

Losses in labour productivity due to climate and weather extremes could reduce economic output by up to $423 billion by 2063. Between 700,000 and 2.7 million working days would be lost to heatwaves each year by 2061.

Extreme weather will lead to property damage and loss of homes, particularly in coastal areas. Loss on property values are estimated to reach A$611 billion by 2050. Insurance may become unaffordable in exposed areas, putting many financially vulnerable people at further risk.

Coupled with increased prices for essential goods, living costs will rise, straining household budgets.

The economy could experience financial shocks, leading to broader economic impacts which especially affect disadvantaged communities.

5. Natural environment

Risk to the natural environment is expected to be severe by 2050.

Important ecosystems and species will be lost by the middle of the century. At 3°C warming, species will be forced to move, adapt to the new conditions or die out. Some 40% to 70% of native plant species are at risk.

Ocean heatwaves and rising acidity, as well as changes to ocean currents, will massively alter the marine ecosystems around Australia and Antarctica. Coral bleaching in the east and west will occur more frequently and recovery will take longer.

Ocean warming and acidification also degrades macroalgae forests (such as kelp) and seagrasses. Freshwater ecosystems will be further strained by rainfall changes and more frequent droughts.

Loss of biodiversity will threaten food security, cultural values and public health. The changes will disrupt the cultural practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their connection to Country.

6. Infrastructure and the built environment

By 2050, the climate risk to infrastructure and built environment is expected to be high or very high.

Climate risks will push some infrastructure beyond its engineering limits, causing disruption, damage and in some cases, destruction. This will interrupt businesses and households across multiple states.

Extreme heat and fires, as well as storms and winds, will increasingly threaten energy infrastructure, potentially causing severe and prolonged disruptions.

Transport and supply chains will be hit. Water infrastructure will be threatened by both drought and extreme rainfall. Telecommunications infrastructure will remain at high risk, particularly in coastal areas.

The number of houses at high risk may double by 2100. Modelling of extreme wind shows increasing housing stock loss in coastal and hinterland regions, particularly in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

7. Primary industries and food systems

By 2050, risks to the primary industries and food systems will be high to very high. This increases food security risks nationwide.

Variable rainfall and extreme heat will challenge agriculture, reducing soil moisture and crop yields. Farming communities will face water security threats.

Hotter climates and increased fire-weather risks threaten forestry operations. Fisheries and aquaculture are likely to decline in productivity due to increased marine temperatures, ocean acidity and storm activity.

The livestock sector will face increased heat stress across a greater area. At 3ºC warming, more than 61% of Australia will experience at least 150 days a year above the heat-stress threshold for European beef cattle.

Biosecurity pressures will increase. Rainfall changes and hotter temperatures are expected to help spread of pests and diseases.

8. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

As part of the assessment, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples identified seven additional nationally significant climate risks:

• self-determination
• land, sea and Country
• cultural knowledges
• health, wellbeing and identity
• economic participation and social and cultural economic development
• water and food security
• remote and rural communities.

As the report notes, climate change is likely to disproportionately impact Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in terms of ways of life, culture, health and wellbeing as well as food and water security and livelihoods. It also notes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples “have experience, knowledge and practices that can support adaptation to climate change”.

Doing more. Doing better.

The assessment poses hard questions about how climate change will affect every system vital to Australia.

Ideally, such an assessment would be carried out every five years and be mandated by legislation.

Future assessments should comprehensively examine global impacts and their flow-ons to Australia. As the COVID pandemic showed, Australia is part of a global system when it comes to human health and supply chains. Defence, trade and finance all are international by nature. And climate change refugees from the South Pacific are already arriving.

The assessment makes clear that current efforts to curb and adapt to climate change will not prevent significant harm to Australia and our way of life. We must do better – and do it quickly.

Young people, and unborn generations, can and will hold us all to account on our progress from today.

Andrew B. Watkins, Associate Research Scientist in Climate Science, Monash University; Lucas Walsh, Professor of Education Policy and Practice, Youth Studies, Monash University, and Tas van Ommen, Adjunct Professor in Climate Science, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate risks are hitting where Australians feel it most: at home.

One of the headline-grabbing figures in a new climate risk assessment was that Australian property values could take a A$611 billion hit by 2050, under a 3°C warming scenario.

That level of warming is something Australia needs plan for. As a new National Adaptation Plan, also released yesterday, said:

it is prudent to plan for global warming levels of 2°C to 3°C by the end of this century, with temperatures in Australia likely to track higher than the global average.

But what does that $611 billion hit to property values actually mean? And what more can we do to better protect our homes – including 1.5 million of them already at high or very high risk today?

The $611 billion property price forecast

Australia’s first comprehensive National Climate Risk assessment, released yesterday, forecasts losses in Australian “property values” could reach $571 billion by 2030 under a 3°C warming scenario. By 2050, that could hit $611 billion.

To be clear, that isn’t the bill to repair or rebuild homes after disasters. And it doesn’t include the cost of replacing public assets such as roads, bridges or power stations.

It’s the drop in market value of properties as climate risk becomes clearer, buyers pay less, banks may value homes lower, and insurance can get more expensive or harder to obtain.

For example, if a house that might have sold for $800,000 without these risks sells for $720,000 once flood risk and higher premiums are factored in, that $80,000 difference is a “loss in value”.

Aggregated across the country, those individual discounts add up to the assessment’s forecast of $611 billion by 2050.

1.5 million homes at high risk – even now

The assessment found about 751,000 (8.2%) of residential buildings are currently located in “high risk” areas for floods, bushfires, tropical cyclones and heatwaves, while 794,000 (8.7%) are in “very high risk” areas. That’s a total of more than 1.5 million homes today.

Even under a conservative 2°C warming scenario, that’s expected to rise to 789,000 homes (8.9%) in high-risk areas, and more than 1 million (11.1%) in very high-risk areas.

And you don’t have to own a beachfront home to be at growing risk from rising sea levels.

The assessment found 1.5 million people in coastal communities – especially in low-lying areas within 10 kilometres of soft shorelines – could be in high and very high risk areas for coastal flooding and erosion by 2050. That could grow to a third of coastal communities – home to more than 3 million people – by 2090 if populations stayed put.

Costlier home insurance, if you can get it

The new assessment also warns insurance affordability and availability are likely to worsen, with flow-on effects to mortgages and house prices if insurance cover is withdrawn.

Direct impacts from floods, coastal inundation, fires, wind and subsidence could more than double the number of properties classed as high risk by 2100.

For some homes, insurance premiums could rise enough to knock 10% off the property value.

That all assumes things stay the same as they are today. Governments, communities and households can all do more in response to these two new reports.

4 key gaps we need to act on

Australia’s new adaptation plan is a start. It outlines national leadership across seven systems and sets out $3.6 billion committed since 2022 and around $9 billion to 2030 for measures that support resilience. These include the $1 billion Disaster Ready Fund and urban river cooling projects.

But what else would help?

The federal government is expected to announce its new emissions reduction targets this week.

In the meantime, there are four pillars of practical adaptation that would give Australians greater confidence, all of which align with the new assessment’s evidence.

1) National floodplain mapping with consistent data: Australians need clear, comparable hazard bands to guide land-use planning and building decisions. The assessment points to risk-based planning and building codes as core tools. National mapping would feed these directly.

2) Open-access extreme weather–water models: publicly accessible tools linking rainfall, rivers, floodplains and coasts, so councils and insurers can stress-test decisions off the same, transparent system.

3) Continuous monitoring and event forensics: after every major flood, fire or storm, we need to collect consistent exposure, damage and claims data to reconstruct what failed – and why. This would support the adaptation plan’s push for effective, evidence-based adaptation and would avoid investing in measures that don’t work.

4) Regional ‘testbeds’ linking researchers, councils and insurers: piloting risk-based planning, climate-adjusted building codes, and nature-based coastal protections (such as mangroves) in high-risk regions. After testing, we then need to scale up what works.

This would help us develop more community-level plans to reduce damage bills and make homes insurable for longer.

What households and communities can do

If you’re in a flood-prone street, elevate electrics and appliances and use flood-tolerant materials. In bushfire zones, ember-proof vents and upgrade roofs and gutters.

Rooftop solar plus batteries and local community microgrids can help keep the power on during heat and storms. The assessment lists microgrids and storage as practical adaptation measures for energy resilience.

Finally, try using the assessment report’s new interactive online maps to understand your local risk. These show where climate risks are already high (for example, parts of northern Australia and coastal areas) and how it grows with increased warming.

Ehsan Noroozinejad, Senior Researcher and Sustainable Future Lead, Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New figures show Australians bought a record 85,000 home batteries in the first half of 2025. That’s almost three times more than the year before, and nearly fivefold growth since 2022.

Eventually, those batteries will need to be reused or recycled. What happens then? The rules we create today will shape whether that’s affordable or easily available for householders.

My research – prepared for the federal Treasury at the request of the Australian and New Zealand governments – shows how both countries can reduce regulatory barriers to the net-zero transition.

For example, my consultation with industry revealed that moving a home or car battery from Melbourne to Perth can require multiple permits. This makes transporting batteries across different Australian states needlessly costly.

Unless this is addressed, battery recycling and repurposing markets will be smaller in some places than necessary. This drives up prices and reduces consumer choice.

So how do Australia and New Zealand compare on our current approaches to regulatory standards? And what three reforms do we need to deliver practical changes across the two countries, such as rolling out EV chargers that work with all electric cars, at the lowest price possible?

How standards affect our lives

When we picture barriers to a cleaner economy, we often think of coal plants or polluting petrol cars. Yet a serious obstacle is less visible: regulatory standards.

These technical rules were first introduced in Australia a century ago, for bolts on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Today Australia has around 10,000 voluntary standards, covering everything from workplace and car safety to EV chargers and batteries. These can become mandatory when adopted by regulators or governments.

Operating out of sight, standards are like the economy’s plumbing.

Built well, they help the economy run smoothly. Standards give businesses, investors, and consumers confidence that products are safe, compatible and reliable. They enable trade, cut transaction costs, and help scale up new technologies.

But when standards are set up poorly, we get blockages: slower investment, stifled competition and higher costs.

It’s crucial we get this right now. Over the next decade alone, it’s estimated Australia will need up to 4,000 more new standards to help manage the net-zero transition, along with cyber-security and more.

The price of getting it right or wrong

Take the example of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure.

If we want more people to buy EVs, drivers need to know that chargers are safe, “interoperable” (able to seamlessly work for different cars) and widely available.

But if each Australian state sets slightly different regulatory standards, manufacturers and operators face higher costs. Electric car owners then risk ending up with incompatible systems or paying higher prices.

For new technologies, aligning with international benchmarks would cut costs, improve safety, and accelerate the development of a circular battery economy.

The Australian Productivity Commission has estimated that simply broadening recognition of overseas standards in mandatory consumer safety product rules could save businesses A$500 million a year.

In the energy sector, the commission found adopting international standards for vehicle-to-grid technology – to allow electric cars to feed power into the grid – could unlock a net present benefit of $2 billion by reducing the need for extra grid-scale battery storage.

How Australia and NZ compare

Right now, Australia faces three systemic problems.

• Duplication: regulators often replicate the work of international bodies, such as the International Electrotechnical Commission. For small economies, this adds cost without value and delays access to technology.

• Fragmentation: states, territories, and regulators adopt or interpret standards differently. Businesses must comply with multiple regimes, raising costs and discouraging investment.

• Outdated processes: standards are slow to update, leaving Australia out of step with global best practice. Consumers risk missing out on newer, safer, and cheaper products.

The impact is clear. Australia’s small economy is split into eight smaller slices. Consumers face fewer choices, higher prices, and slower adoption of innovation.

In contrast, I found New Zealand takes a more pragmatic approach. It defaults to trusted international or overseas standards unless there is a strong local reason to do otherwise.

3 fixes for Australia and NZ

The report recommended three reforms for both Australia and New Zealand.

• Clarity: clearly define when standards should be mandatory. They should be adopted only when essential for achieving public policy objectives, and designed to avoid unnecessary burdens on competition and innovation.

• Default to international standards: international and trusted overseas standards should be the starting point, with regulators required to justify any departure. This would reduce duplication, cut compliance costs, and make it easier for firms to participate in global supply chains.

• Coordination: regulators must collaborate across jurisdictions to close gaps, avoid overlaps, and consider the broader policy impacts of standards.

What to watch next

Since receiving my report, the Australian and NZ governments recently committed to work together on electric vehicle charging, electrical products (including batteries), building and construction standards and product safety standards.

If they do adopt a smarter approach – clarifying when standards are needed, defaulting to trusted international norms, and improving coordination across jurisdictions – Australia and New Zealand can better support and speed up the clean energy transformation.

Flavio Menezes, Professor of Economics, Director of the Australian Institute for Business and Economics, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The clock is ticking on the federal government’s big climate reveal: Australia’s 2035 emissions targets. The declaration is expected later this week, and will signal to the world how hard Australia will go to help avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Draft advice by the Climate Change Authority, which is advising the government on the target, flagged it may recommend a range of emissions cuts between 65-75%, from 2005 levels. The government is being pushed from both sides – to either go bold, or settle on a conservative figure.

Adding heat to the debate, the government on Monday released the National Climate Risk Assessment, which laid bare the frightening implications for Australia if global warming is not curbed.

So what must the government weigh up when choosing the 2035 emissions target? What is at stake? And how should we judge whether the government’s decision is good or bad?

The target must be genuinely achievable

Steep emissions reductions will be required across all sectors of the economy to land anywhere inside the 65-75% range by 2035.

Some sides of the debate, such as the Climate Council and Business for 75, suggest Australia can rapidly accelerate its pace of emissions reduction.

To deliver these emissions cuts in ten short years requires real-world investment and action. In the electricity sector, for example, an estimated A$142 billion in capital investment is needed for essential electricity infrastructure by 2050 – to deliver, among other things, a 140% increase in generation by 2035.

However, the rollout of electricity generation and transmission infrastructure is struggling to meet even the current 2030 targets. This should give optimists pause.

Other voices have sought to highlight the potential negative impacts of higher emissions targets. The Business Council of Australia, for example, says a target over 70% may send businesses offshore, leading to a loss of export earnings.

However, good policy design can avoid or minimise these outcomes. For example, the Safeguard Mechanism – which aims to reduce industrial pollution – already includes carefully designed rules for trade-exposed heavy industry.

Importantly, when it comes to setting an emissions target, all argument and analysis used to inform the decision should be evidence-based and grounded in reality. And real-world policies must be available to deliver the target.

So when assessing the achievability of the government’s target, we should ask ourselves:

– does the target reflect what the evidence says is possible in the next decade?

– how can Australia speed up action and negate potential economic and social harms?

– does the government have the right policies to achieve the targets?

The target must be genuinely ambitious

The benefits-versus-costs ratio of climate action has improved markedly in recent years, for several reasons.

First, the cost of renewable energy has fallen quickly. And analysis shows around 60% of the emissions reductions required to 2035 can be met using renewable energy and other existing technologies. These also have the potential to save households and businesses money.

Second, our understanding of current and future climate harms is growing. For example, as the National Climate Risk Assessment revealed, projected climate disaster costs could total $40.3 billion every year by 2050, even if global warming was limited to 1.5°C.

What’s more, Australia has much to gain from the global clean energy transition. Its world-class sun and wind resources can underpin new export industries in energy-intensive commodities such as iron and steel. My research in 2023 showed new energy industries and related opportunities could boost national income by at least $60 billion by 2050. The potential has only expanded since then.

Ambitious targets are important. They provide businesses with the clarity and confidence to deploy the capital and workers to actually make the net-zero transition happen. They are also crucial to attracting international investment and talent.

Conversely, a low target would discourage potential investors and entrepreneurs, and undermine Australia’s future prosperity.

Ambitious targets also motivate government, driving both policy tweaks and more substantive changes.

And Australia’s global reputation is on the line. We must walk the talk on climate – both to maintain our status as a responsible global citizen, and to encourage others to do the same.

All this strengthens the case for Australia to set the most ambitious target it can confidently achieve.

So when assessing the ambition of government’s target, we should ask ourselves:

– is it proportionate to climate impacts and threats we seek to avoid?

– will it attract the investment and talent needed?

– will it encourage (or discourage) stronger climate action by other countries?

Consolidating momentum

Global action is not yet sufficient to limit climate change to 1.5°C. However, the emissions curve has tilted down from previous runaway growth – and policy momentum is building.

Crafting an effective global response to climate change is a diabolical problem for the world’s democracies, but we are making progress.

Australia’s middle ground is now larger, more diverse and better-informed than it was 15 years ago. Many more people now understand the need for sensible emissions reduction and the potential benefits of the energy transition.

Some may argue Australia must go on a war footing – set a 2035 target of at least 85% and do whatever it takes to meet it. Maybe they’re right. But no democractically elected government could follow this path unless the majority of Australians were convinced.

Australia cannot afford to get stuck in the past. Setting – and delivering – an ambitious emissions target will leave the nation better placed than pursuing a timid target.

The 2035 target is a huge opportunity for Australia. The government must ensure it is evidence-based, achievable, ambitious, and in the national interest.

Steve Hatfield-Dodds, Honorary Professor of Public Policy, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There’s a chilling line in Australia’s new climate adaptation plan:

It is prudent to plan for global warming levels of 2°C to 3°C by the end of this century, with temperatures in Australia likely to track higher than the global average.

Australia is already adapting to the existing 1.3°C of climate change, but as the new National Climate Risk Assessment shows, we will need to adapt to much more change. This includes the warming locked in due to the lag time between emissions and warming, as well as the warming yet to come from future emissions. Climate adaptation is many things, from planting mangroves to slow coastal erosion to rebuilding flood-damaged bridges to tolerate more extreme conditions.

For well over a decade, we and other climate adaptation scientists have called on successive governments to create a national plan to guide Australia’s response. It’s finally here. Is it up to the task?

The plan does many things right, such as describing which tier of government is responsible and laying out the government’s thinking about future programs. But there are gaps. Proposed future actions are not clear nor proportionate to the challenge, while monitoring and tracking won’t start for several years. Until we have effective monitoring, we won’t know which actions work best – and which don’t.

We should think of this plan as a vital starting point. Now the real work begins. Australia is huge and climate change will affect every sector. That means the government must choose carefully where to put their funding and to engage with others so they also contribute to overall action.

What’s in the plan?

Released today, the government’s National Adaptation Plan draws on the long-delayed National Climate Risk assessment, which outlines many of the escalating threats climate poses to humans, our activities and the environment. By releasing both together, the government is suggesting adaptation is a key way of responding to these threats.

This is true. But all adaptation has limits. Adaptation must be linked to emission reduction, given slower progress on emission reduction increases the need for climate adaptation. Later this week, the government will release its 2035 emission reduction targets.

The report lays out A$3.6 billion in spending since 2022 on policies which can benefit climate adaptation, and points to a further $9 billion by decade’s end. That’s not to say these are explicitly climate adaptation policies and initiatives – rather, they can support Australians to “adapt and strengthen their resilience”, according to the plan, especially if climate adaptation aspects are integrated. For example, the $1 billion Disaster Ready fund has aspects directly tackling climate adaptation, while the $200 million Urban Rivers and Catchments program greening city rivers has more indirect benefits.

It’s widely accepted climate adaptation can have very high returns on investment. For instance, a 2022 Insurance Council of Australia report estimates $1 spent on resilience returns $9.60 by avoiding future financial, health and social damage. Given this return, are we under-investing?

Some adaptations such as early warning systems for disasters, nature-based solutions to slow floodwaters and building climate-smart homes can save many times the initial investment. But others may not be.

The report has a welcome focus on “betterment” – rebuilding bridges, roads or other infrastructure after a disaster to be better adapted for the next one.

On agriculture, Australian farmers have been adapting well to the climate changes to date. But the report indicates existing adaptation options are unlikely to be able to meet the rapid, large-scale changes likely to arrive. We need to invest in the research and development to enable the next generation of agricultural adaptation.

The report focuses on finding ways to direct private finance to climate adaptation measures, such as by including adaptation in Australia’s sustainable finance classification system. This is welcome, as much focus to date has gone to climate emission-reduction even as investors increasingly ask how they can invest in adaptation.

A reasonable strategy, not a full plan

It’s essential to find out which climate adaptation measures work. There’s no point building expensive seawalls if rising seas will rapidly make them ineffective.

Many coastal councils are already under pressure to act by residents affected by worsening coastal erosion. But what does “act” look like? Who should pay? And at what point should decisions on relocating infrastructure or communities be made – and by whom ?

The plan is quite light on in terms of metrics. Nations such as the United Kingdom and Finland already have climate change laws that include progress measures and five-year updates for climate adaptation built in.

Globally, this is where good practice on climate adaptation is headed, alongside a focus on identifying which actions work best over specific time frames and under different future climates.

We should see the National Adaptation Plan as a critical foundation to build on for a well-adapted and prosperous Australia. Ideally, this plan and the associated National Climate Risk Assessment will kickstart wide interest in adaptation and lead to a prioritisation of actions likely to generate best outcomes as well as clear workplans outlining which tier of government does what.

Effective adaptation will require greater effort in areas such as:

• giving workers climate adaptation knowledge and skills across all sectors
• investing in climate adaptation science to ensure each sector has a robust evidence base and adaptation options
• rapid development of indicators to be able to track progress on adaptation.

What this report makes clear is that there’s no time to lose. Government capabilities must become much stronger to get ahead of escalating climate change, as well as to ensure better integration across sectors and between levels of government.

Johanna Nalau, Associate Professor in Climate Adaptation, Griffith University and Mark Howden, Director, ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The sound of a large drone humming over a forest at night, combined with a bright floodlight, is an eerie sight. It might evoke ominous thoughts of a search-and-rescue operation.

But our new study published in Ecological Applications shows that drones equipped with thermal cameras could also help detect and monitor some of Australia’s most elusive forest wildlife. In turn, they can help us make smarter, evidence-based decisions for conservation.

Elusive creatures few have seen

Eucalypt forests across Victoria shelter some of our most threatened nocturnal wildlife, such as Victoria’s critically endangered faunal emblem, Leadbeater’s possum, and the endangered southern greater glider. Few people would have seen these creatures in the wild – in large part because they spend most of their time high in the trees and can be incredibly difficult to detect.

But monitoring them is crucial. Populations are shrinking due to habitat loss, forest fires and climate change. Conservation and management decisions depend on accurate data about where these animals live and how abundant they are.

Traditionally, researchers conduct these surveys by walking along defined paths called transects through the forest, sweeping torches to catch the eyeshine of animals as it reflects back to the observer. Eyeshine varies by species – greater gliders glow golden, Krefft’s gliders blue, and brushtail possums red. But binoculars help in identifying species as well.

But this process – known as “spotlighting” – can be slow, labour intensive and potentially dangerous for the survey teams, especially in steep or dense forests. Even with careful sampling, spotlighting often fails to detect all the animals present.

Remote sensing techniques that help collect information from a distance are changing the game for wildlife monitoring. For example, acoustic recorders can survey birds and frogs and motion-activated cameras can detect shy mammals. This recently led to the discovery of critically endangered Leadbeater’s possums far outside their assumed range.

But animals like the greater glider rarely make calls that can be captured by acoustic recorders and their strict diet of eucalypt leaves means they can’t be attracted to baited camera traps.

This is where drones equipped with thermal cameras come in.

Scanning the canopy – from above

Until recently, most thermal drone surveys had been tested on animals in open landscapes, such as feral goats, or in tree plantations, such as koalas. They have also helped find some elusive species in the rainforests of Queensland that are active during the day. But no one has previously studied their effectiveness in detecting nocturnal animals in native forests.

As part of our new research, we flew drones across forest compartments up to 200 hectares in size while also conducting ground-based surveys to compare results. Drones flew systematic paths over the canopy, using thermal cameras to detect animals’ heat signatures. After an animal was spotted, a zoom camera and floodlight were then used to identify species.

The results were striking. Our drones detected all nine tree-dwelling mammals expected in the study areas. Species commonly surveyed using spotlighting were recorded most frequently. But we also recorded species that are usually detected using remote cameras, such as Leadbeater’s possums, or through their calls, such as yellow-bellied gliders.

In total, we made more than 1,000 observations of native mammals, as well as forest birds, and ground-dwelling fauna such as bandicoots, wombats, feral deer and cats.

Drone surveys were also far more efficient – one drone survey could cover roughly ten times the area a spotlighting team could survey in the same time.

Guiding future forest management

Once we knew that thermal drone surveys are effective in finding forest-dwelling species, we conducted over 100 additional drone surveys and found more than 4,000 animals, including observations of more than 400 greater gliders.

The ongoing study will help inform wildlife recovery in Victoria. It allows us to explore questions such as: do specialist species such as greater gliders use younger forests for foraging? Are they truly edge sensitive – meaning do they avoid the areas where mature forest borders young forest or other land uses? At what forest age may they re-establish stable populations?

Answers to these questions will help guide future forest management – including where and how to conduct prescribed burns, where to establish fire breaks, and how to buffer key habitat from future disturbance.

While drones will not entirely replace all ground-based surveys, they vastly improve the scale and detail of our wildlife observations. And while there may be concerns about disturbances to the observed animals from the sometimes loud drones overhead, collected footage indicates that most animals don’t seem to notice they are being observed from the air.

This contrasts with what we usually experience during spotlighting, where animals “freeze” in place while being observed with a strong torchlight. Analysing hours of videos from our drone surveys, we are currently researching potential behavioural impacts of these new methods to contrast them with traditional ground methods.

So, while the buzzing of a drone overhead at night may feel unfamiliar for now, this new technology will provide great leaps in monitoring and protecting some of Australia’s most iconic and threatened forest species.

Benjamin Wagner, Research Fellow - Forest Resilience and Adaptation, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The federal government on Thursday announced a 2035 emissions reduction target of 62-70% below 2005 levels. Importantly, it also released a net zero plan and blueprints for six major economic sectors. The target signals Australia is committed to a net zero economy. The plans will help guide the way in each sector.

Our work shows Australia has the technologies to meet and exceed its new target. With solutions known and ready, the work now is to ensure they’re deployed at scale.

Creating a safer climate needs more real-world action. So what measures are likely to be first off the rank?

1. Accelerating renewables

Renewable energy is crucial for Australia’s climate action. It cuts emissions by replacing the fossil fuels in the energy sector, the nation’s largest source of carbon pollution. It also helps other sectors decarbonise by, for example, providing clean power to run electric vehicles and industrial processes.

In this vein, the government on Thursday announced a A$2 billion boost for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation – a government entity that invests in renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-emission technologies. This will be especially important for helping industry and transport to access affordable, renewable electricity.

2. Modernising electricity use

Decarbonising energy supplies is important. So too is making shifts in energy demand. This involves changing the way homes and businesses consume electricity and gas – such as by using less, using it at different times, or even generating their own electricity.

For example, smart hot-water systems could reduce pressure on the electricity grid if timed to heat at times of plentiful energy, such as solar energy peaks. Analysis suggests this could also save consumers in Australia about $6.7 billion a year by 2040.

The government’s new electricity and energy sector plan committed to guiding these opportunities through a new demand-side roadmap. It will aim to reduce costs, improve reliability and create financial benefits for investors and consumers. It will be produced by governments and the Australian Energy Market Operator.

3. Improving energy efficiency in homes

The government’s sector plan for the built environment will help decarbonise buildings through a range of measures. They include ratings and standards for energy efficient buildings and equipment, and obligations to provide this information when selling or leasing.

The government has also committed $85 million to improve the energy efficiency of homes and buildings.

The next step is ensuring information about these measures is available – and the policies are implemented and enforced. The funding should also be expanded, so all households can become more efficient. Climateworks research shows the right home energy upgrades - such as improvements to insulation and installing double-glazed windows - and appliance electrification can save households up to $2,000 a year.

4. Cleaning up transport

The government’s plan for the transport sector emphasises the role of the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard. The standard requires car manufacturers and suppliers to reduce the average emissions of new passenger cars and light commercial vehicles over time.

This will help ensure Australians have access to different types of low- and zero-emissions vehicles. A review of the scheme next year will set targets to 2035. More focus on electrifying freight transport is also needed.

5. Building capacity in exports that matter

Reaching a net zero future requires phasing down fossil fuels. It also requires expanding the extraction and processing of mineral resources needed in a net zero economy – such as lithium, graphite and rare earths for EVs and high-purity silica for solar panels. The government’s plan for the resources sector recognises these realities.

Australia is currently highly dependent on imported oil. Some industrial processes can switch from diesel and petrol to electricity or green hydrogen. However, other sectors – such as aviation and heavy freight – will need alternative fuels. The government this week announced $1.1 billion for local production of low-carbon liquid fuels.

6. Promoting cutting-edge new tech

The government has announced a $5 billion Net Zero Fund to help industry cut emissions and become more energy-efficient, and scale up manufacturing in low-emissions technology. This will kickstart new industrial processes and make investments in clean technologies less risky.

A major next step for the industry sector is the planned 2026 review of the Safeguard Mechanism, which limits emissions from Australia’s largest industrial facilities. It’s vital to ensure the Net Zero Fund and the review complement each other.

7. Using land well

The government’s agriculture and land sector plan recognises the need to scale up carbon storage in the land (for example by protecting forests and increasing vegetation). It also noted these actions should help meet Australia’s commitments to protecting biodiversity, allow for increased food production and involve First Nations people.

Our research shows land-use planning can be aligned to meet food, climate and nature goals.

Australia can go beyond our 2035 targets

The above list is not exhaustive. As the government’s sector plans show, more work will be needed. And participation from across the economy and government is crucial.

The task goes beyond the 2035 targets, to reaching net zero emissions as soon as possible. A look back at Climateworks’ research shows, in past decades, Australia’s emissions reductions have exceeded government targets.

It will take sustained and increasing effort to reach net zero. But the prize is worth it: economic gains, global market advantage, and energy and job security. It’s an investment in a better future for workers, regions, companies and communities.

Anna Skarbek, Climateworks Centre CEO, Monash University; Anna Malos, Climateworks Centre Country Lead, Australia, Monash University, and Katherine Quinn, Impact Manager, Australian Policy, Climateworks, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As I walked out onto the frozen Arctic water off Utqiagvik, Alaska, for the first time, I was mesmerized by the icescape.

Piles of blue and white sea-ice rubble several feet high gave way to flat areas and then rubble again. The snow atop it, sometimes several feet deep, hides gaps among the blocks of sea ice, as I found out when one of my legs suddenly disappeared through the snow.

As a polar climate scientist, I have focused on Arctic sea ice for over a decade. But spending time on the ice with people who rely on it for their way of life provides a different perspective.

Local hunters run snowmobiles over the sea ice to reach the whales and seals they rely on for traditional food. They talked about how they know when the sea ice is safe to travel on, and how that’s changing as global temperatures rise. They described worsening coastal erosion as the protective ice disappears earlier and forms later. On land, they’re contending with thawing permafrost that causes roads and buildings to sink.

Their experiences echo the data I have been working with from satellites and climate models.

Most winters, sea ice covers the entire surface of the Arctic Ocean basin, even extending into the northern North Atlantic and North Pacific. Even in late summer, sea ice used to cover about half the Arctic Ocean. However, the late summer ice has declined by about 50% since routine satellite observations began in 1978.

This decline of summer sea ice area has a multitude of effects, from changing local ecosystems to allowing more shipping through the Arctic Ocean. It also enhances global warming, because the loss of the reflective white sea-ice surface leaves dark open water that absorbs the Sun’s radiation, adding more heat to the system.

What coastal communities are losing

Along the Alaskan coast, the decline of the Arctic sea ice cover is most apparent in the longer ice-free season. Sea ice is forming later in the fall now than it used to and breaking up earlier in the spring.

For people who live there, this means shorter seasons when the ice is safe to travel over, and less time when sea ice is present to protect the coastline from ocean waves.

Open water increases the risk of coastal erosion, particularly when accompanied by thawing permafrost, stronger storms and rising sea level. All are driven by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, particularly burning fossil fuels.

In some places along the Alaskan coast, erosion threatens roads, houses and entire communities. Research has shown that coastal erosion in Alaska has accelerated over recent decades.

More weeks of open water also affect animals. Polar bears spend the summer on land but require sea ice to hunt their preferred food, seals. The longer the sea ice stays away from land, the longer polar bears are deprived of this high-fat food, which can ultimately threaten the bears’ survival.

The ice is also thinning and getting younger

Across the Arctic, satellite data has captured how sea ice has been thinning and getting younger.

As recently as the late 1970s, about 60% of the Arctic sea ice was at least 1 year old and generally thicker than younger ice. Today, the amount of ice more than a year old is down to about 35%.

Local residents experience that change in another way: Multiyear sea ice is much less salty than new sea ice. Hunters used to cut blocks of multiyear sea ice to get drinking water, but that older ice has become harder to find.

Sea ice forms from ocean water, which is salty. As the water freezes, the salt collects in between the ice crystals. Because the higher the salt content, the lower the freezing point of the water, these enclosures in the sea ice contain salty liquid water, called brine. This brine drains out of the sea ice over time through small channels in the ice. Thus, multiyear sea ice, which has survived at least one melt cycle, is less salty than first-year sea ice.

Since the coastal landfast sea ice around Utqiagvik no longer contains much multiyear sea ice, if any, the hunters now have to take a block of lake ice or simply gallon jugs of water with them if they plan to stay on the ice for several days.

Why data shows a continuing decline

As long as greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, Arctic sea ice will generally continue to decline, studies show. One study calculated that, statistically, the average carbon dioxide emissions per person per year in the U.S. led to the disappearance of an area of summer sea ice the size of a large hotel room – 430 to 538 square feet (40 to 50 square meters) each year.

Today, when Arctic sea ice is at its minimum extent, at the end of summer, it covers only about half what it covered in 1979 at that time of the year. The Arctic still has around 1.8 million square miles (4.6 million square kilometers) of sea ice that survives the summer melt, approximately equal to the area of the entire European Union.

Climate models show the Arctic could be ice-free at the end of summer within decades, depending on how quickly humans rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

While a win for accessibility of shipping routes through the Arctic in summer, studies suggest that the large reduction of sea ice would bring profound ecological changes in the Arctic Ocean, as more light and heat enter the ocean surface.

The warmer the surface ocean water is, the longer it will take for the ocean to cool back down to the freezing point in the fall, delaying the formation of new sea ice.

What now?

Arctic sea ice will continue to form in winter for the next several decades. The months of no sunlight mean it will continue to get very cold in winter, allowing sea ice to form.

Climate models have estimated that it would take extremely high atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to warm the climate enough for no sea ice to form in the winter in the Arctic Ocean – close to 2,000 parts per million, more than 4.5 times our current level.

However, winter sea ice will cover less area as the Earth warms. For people living along the Arctic Ocean coast in Alaska, winter ice will still return for now. If global greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, though, climate models show that even winter sea ice along the Alaskan coast could disappear by the end of the 21st century.

Alexandra Jahn, Associate Professor of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Arctic Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sought to strengthen security ties with Pacific island nations and counter China’s growing influence during a trip to the region this week. If he walks away with one lesson, it’s that Australia’s climate policy remains a significant sticking point.

The main purpose of Albanese’s visit was to attend annual leaders’ talks known as the Pacific Islands Forum. On the way, Albanese stopped in Vanuatu hoping to sign a security agreement – but he couldn’t ink the deal.

I am in the Solomon Islands this week to observe the talks. I saw firsthand that Australia clearly has its work cut out in its quest to lead regional security – and our climate credibility is key.

Pacific countries say unequivocally that climate change – which is bringing stronger cyclones, coastal inundation and bleached coral reefs – is their single greatest threat. If Australia’s geo-strategic jostling is to work, we must show serious commitment to curbing the dangers of a warming planet.

Australia’s strategy tested in the Solomons

The location of this year’s talks – Solomon Islands’ capital, Honiara – is a stark reminder of Australia’s geopolitical stakes amid rising Chinese influence in the region.

The Solomon Islands signed a security deal with China in 2022, which set alarm bells ringing in Canberra. Penny Wong – then opposition foreign minister – described it as the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific since World War II.

Since then, the Albanese government has sought to firm up Australia’s place as security partner for Pacific countries by pursuing bilateral security agreements with island nations. So far, it has completed deals with Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

On his way to the Solomon Islands, Albanese stopped in Vanuatu hoping to sign a security agreement which reportedly included A$500 million over ten years to address worsening climate impacts. But that deal was postponed. Members of Vanuatu’s coalition government were reportedly concerned about wording that could limit infrastructure funding from other countries, including China.

Albanese had more success in Honiara, where he advanced talks with Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka for a new bilateral security pact.

Working with island nations to tackle climate change has become key to Australian strategy in the region. This week Albanese also joined Pacific leaders to ratify a regional fund intended to help island communities access international finance to help adapt to climate impacts. Australia has already pledged $100 million for the project, known as the Pacific Resilience Facility.

Australia is bidding to host the COP31 United Nations climate talks in partnership with Pacific countries in 2026. Pacific leaders formally restated support for Australia’s bid this week.

Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr said an Australia-Pacific COP had broad support from the rest of the world:

We deserve to host COP31, and given the breadth and depth of support, it would be seen as an act of good faith if others would clear the way. We don’t want to let this major international opportunity slip by us.

Whipps also championed an initiative for the Pacific to become the world’s first region to be powered 100% by renewable energy.

Pacific Island countries spend up to 25% of their GDP on importing fossil fuels for power generation and transport. As the costs of renewable energy and battery storage quickly fall, Pacific countries could save billions of dollars by making the clean energy shift.

Albanese this week appeared to acknowledge regional concerns about climate change, saying taking action was “the entry fee, if you like, to credibility in the Pacific”.

But the real test is whether Albanese can follow words with meaningful action.

The work starts at home

Albanese’s Pacific visit comes amid heightened scrutiny of Australia’s efforts to curb emissions.

The government must set Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target this month. The latest reports suggest the commitment may be less ambitious than Pacific leaders, and many others, would like.

Pacific leaders also expect Albanese to curb fossil fuel production for export. Australia’s biggest contribution to climate change comes from coal and gas exports, which add more than double the climate pollution of Australia’s entire national economy.

However, in coming days the federal government is expected to approve Woodside’s extension of gas production at the Northwest Shelf facility off Western Australia, out to 2070. The decision could lock in more than 4 billion tonnes of climate pollution – equivalent to a decade of Australia’s annual emissions.

All this comes in the wake of a landmark legal ruling in July this year, when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion confirming countries have legal responsibilities for climate harms caused by fossil fuel exports.

Vanuatu led the legal campaign. In Honiara this week, Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu reiterated that Australia must heed the ruling, saying:

The advisory opinion of the ICJ made it clear that going down the path of fossil fuel production expansion is an internationally wrongful act under international law. The argument Australia has been making that the domestic transition is sufficient under the Paris Agreement is untenable. You’ve got to deal with fossil fuel exports as well.

Albanese may have taken on board some of the Pacific’s concern about climate – and made a little progress at this week’s Pacific Islands Forum. But there is work to do if Australia is to be seen as a credible security partner in the Pacific – and that work starts at home.

Wesley Morgan, Research Associate, Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Plastic pollution is everywhere: in rivers and oceans, in the air and the mountains, even in our blood and vital organs. Most of the public attention has focused on the dangers of microplastics. These are fragments smaller than 5 millimetres.

But an even smaller class of fragments, nanoplastics, may pose a greater risk to our health and our environment. With diameters of less than a micrometre (one millionth of a metre), these tiny particles can cross important biological barriers and accumulate in the body. Because they’re so tiny, detecting nanoplastics is extremely difficult and expensive. As a result, determining the extent of their impact has been largely guesswork.

A cheap, easy and reliable way to detect nanoplastics is the first step in addressing their potential impact. In our new study published today in Nature Photonics, my colleagues and I describe a simple, low-cost method that detects, sizes and counts nanoplastics using nothing more than a standard microscope and a basic camera.

Breaking down into ever-smaller pieces

What makes plastics useful is their durability. But that is also what makes them problematic.

Plastics do not disappear. They are not broken down by the ecosystem in the same way as other materials. Instead, sunlight, heat and mechanical stress slowly split the plastic apart into ever-smaller fragments. Larger pieces become microplastics, which eventually become nanoplastics once they are less than a micrometre in size.

At such a small size, they can pass through important biological safeguards such as the blood–brain and placental barriers. They can then start to accumulate in our organs, including our lungs, liver and kidneys. They can also carry other contaminants into our bodies, such as pollutants and heavy metals.

Yet, despite these dangers, real-world data on nanoplastics are scarce.

Today, detecting and sizing particles below a micrometre often relies on complex separation and filtration methods followed by expensive processes, such as electron microscopy. These methods are powerful. But they’re also slow, costly and usually confined to advanced laboratories.

Other optical laboratory techniques, such as dynamic light scattering, work well in “clean” samples. However, they struggle in “messy” real-world samples such as lake water because they cannot easily distinguish plastic from organic material.

An optical sieve

To address these issues, our international team from the University of Melbourne and the University of Stuttgart in Germany set out to make detection simple, affordable and portable.

The result of our collaborative work is an optical sieve: an array of tiny cavities with different diameters etched into the surface of a type of semiconductor material called gallium arsenide. Essentially, a collection of tiny holes, invisible to the naked eye, in a flat piece of a suitable material.

Physicists call these cavities “Mie voids”. Depending on their size, they produce a distinct colour when light is shone on them. When a drop of liquid containing nanoplastics flows over the surface, the nanoparticles will tend to settle into cavities that closely match their size.

Then, with a chemical rinse, mismatched particles wash away while matched ones stay tightly held in place by electromagnetic forces.

That part is simple. But it wouldn’t make the process cheaper or more portable if it still required a large, expensive electron microscope to visualise the trapped particles.

But here’s the key: when a particle is captured inside a cavity, it changes the colour of that cavity. This means filled cavities are easily distinguishable from empty ones under a standard light microscope with an ordinary colour camera, often shifting from bluish to reddish hues.

By observing colour changes, we can see which cavities contain particles. Because only certain-sized particles fill certain-sized cavities, we can also infer their size.

In our experiments, using nothing but our optical sieve, a standard light microscope and a simple camera, we were able to detect individual plastic spheres down to about 200 nanometres in diameter – right in the size range that matters for nanoplastics.

Putting it to the test

To validate the concept, we first used polystyrene beads in a clean solution. We observed clear colour changes for particles with diameters between 200 nanometres and a micrometre.

We then tested a more “real-world” sample, combining unfiltered lake water (including biological material) with clean sand and plastic beads of known sizes: 350 nanometres, 550 nanometres and a micrometre.

After depositing this mixture onto the optical sieve and then giving it a rinse, we were able to see distinct bands of filled cavities with diameters that matched the beads we had added.

This confirmed the optical sieve had successfully detected the nanoplastic particles in the lake water sample and determined their sizes. Importantly, this did not require us to separate the plastics from the biological matter first.

What’s next?

Our new method is a first step in developing a cheap, easy and portable method for routine monitoring of waterways, beaches and wastewater, and for screening biological samples where pre-cleaning is difficult.

From here, we are exploring paths to a portable, commercially available testing device that can be adapted for a range of real-world samples, especially those like blood and tissue that will be crucial in monitoring the impact of nanoplastics on our health.

The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of Lukas Wesemann to this article.

Shaban Sulejman, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In a historic move, the New South Wales government has announced a Great Koala National Park will be established on the state’s Mid North Coast, in a bid to protect vital koala habitat and stop the species’ sharp decline.

The reserve will combine existing national parks with newly protected state forest areas, to create 476,000 hectares of protected koala habitat. Logging will be phased out in certain areas, and a transition plan enacted for affected workers and communities.

Conservationists have welcomed the move as a win for biodiversity. However, some industry groups have raised concerns about the economic impact on the region’s timber operations.

The announcement, which follows a long campaign by koala advocates, shows the NSW government recognises the importance of protecting biodiversity. But announcing the national park is just the first step in saving this iconic species.

A worrying decline

Koalas are notoriously hard to count, because they are widely distributed and difficult to spot.

In 2016, a panel of 15 koala experts estimated a decline in koala populations of 24% over the past three generations and the next three generations.

Habitat loss and fragmentation is the number one threat to koalas. Others include climate change, bushfires, disease, vehicle strikes and dog attacks.

The decline gave momentum to calls by conservationists and scientists for the establishment of a Great Koala National Park, taking in important koala habitat on the NSW Mid North Coast.

In 2023, the NSW government pledged A$80 million to create the park. The announcement on Sunday increased the pledge to $140 million.

Announcing the development, NSW Premier Chris Minns said it was “unthinkable” that koalas were at risk of extinction in that state.

The government also proposed the park’s boundary and announced a temporary moratorium on timber harvesting within it – as well as a support package for logging workers, industries and communities.

However, the logging industry remains opposed to the plan.

Not the end of the story

The creation of the park is a welcome move. It will protect not just koalas but many other native species, large and small.

But on its own, it’s not enough to save the NSW koala population. Even within the national park, threats to koalas will remain.

For example, research shows climate change – and associated heat and less rainfall – threatens the trees koalas use for food and shelter. Climate extremes also physically stress koalas. This and other combined stresses can make koalas more prone to disease.

Bushfires, and inappropriate fire management, can degrade koala habitat and injure or kill them outright.

The NSW government says logging must immediately cease in areas to be brought into the park’s boundary. However, logging pressures can remain, even after national parks are declared. Forestry activities must cease completely, and forever, if the park is to truly protect koalas.

What’s more, recreational activities, if allowed in the national park, may negatively impact koalas. For example, cutting tracks or building tourist facilities may fragment koala habitat and disturb shy wildlife.

These threats must be managed to ensure the Great Koala National Park achieves its aims.

Prioritising nature

Of course, the creation of a new national park does not help koalas outside the park’s boundaries. Koala populations are under threat across their range in NSW, Queensland and the ACT.

That’s why the national recovery plan for the koala should be implemented urgently and in full. It includes increasing the area of protected koala habitat, restoring degraded habitat, and actively conserving populations. It also includes ending habitat destruction by embedding koala protections in land-use planning.

As I have previously written, koala protection areas should be replicated throughout the NSW and Queensland hinterlands. My research shows the future climate will remain suitable for koalas in those areas.

And logging must be curbed elsewhere in Australia, such as in Tasmania, where it jeopardises threatened species and ancient forests.

The Great National Koala Park promises be a sanctuary for koalas and other wildlife, and a special place for passive, nature-based recreation and tourism. Yes, the plan has detractors. But saving Australia’s koalas means prioritising nature’s needs over that of people.

And we must not forget: the national park is just one step on a long road to preventing koala extinctions.

Christine Hosking, Conservation Planner/Researcher, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Our planet continues to warm because of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. The polar regions are especially vulnerable to this warming. Sea ice extent is already declining in both the Arctic and Antarctic. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting, and abrupt changes in both polar environments are underway.

These changes have significant implications for society through sea level rise, changes to ocean circulation and climate extremes. They also have substantial consequences for polar ecosystems, including polar bears and emperor penguins, which have become iconic symbols of the impacts of climate change.

The most effective way to mitigate these changes, and lower the risk of widespread impacts, is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet decarbonisation is slow, and current projections suggest temperature increases of roughly 3°C by 2100.

Given the expected change, and the importance of the polar regions for planetary health, some scientists and engineers have proposed technological approaches, known as geoengineering, to soften the blow to the Arctic and Antarctic.

In research published today in Frontiers in Science, my colleagues and I assessed five of the most developed geoengineering concepts being considered for the polar regions. We found none of them should be used in the coming decades. They are extremely unlikely to mitigate the effects of global warming in polar regions, and are likely to have serious adverse and unintended consequences.

What is polar geoengineering?

Geoengineering encompasses a wide range of ideas for deliberate large-scale attempts to modify Earth’s climate. The two broadest classes involve removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and increasing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space (known as “solar radiation modification”).

For the polar regions, here are the five most developed concepts.

Stratospheric aerosol injection is a solar radiation modification approach that involves introducing finer particles (such as sulphur dioxide or titanium dioxide) into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight back out to space. In this case, the focus is specifically on the polar regions.

Sea curtains are flexible, buoyant structures anchored to the seafloor at 700 metres to 1,000m depth and rising 150m to 500m. The aim is to prevent warm ocean water from reaching and melting ice shelves (floating extensions of ice that slow the movement of ice from Greenland and Antarctica into the ocean) and the grounding lines of ice sheets (where the land, ice sheet and ocean meet).

Sea ice management includes two concepts. The first is the scattering of glass microbeads over fresh Arctic sea ice to make it more reflective and help it survive longer. The second is pumping seawater onto the sea ice surface, where it will freeze, with the aim of thickening the ice – or into the air to produce snow, to the same general effect, using wind-powered pumps.

Basal water removal targets the ice streams found in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. These streams are fast-moving rivers of ice that flow toward the coast, where they can enter the ocean and raise sea levels. Water at their base acts as a lubricant. This concept proposes to remove water from their base to increase friction and slow the flow. The concept is thought to be especially relevant to Antarctica, which has much less surface melting than Greenland, and therefore melt is more about the base of the ice sheet than its surface.

Ocean fertilisation involves adding nutrients such as iron to polar oceans to promote the growth of phytoplankton. These tiny creatures absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which gets stored in the deep ocean when they die and sink.

The risk of false hopes

In our research, we assessed each of these concepts against six criteria. These included: scope of implementation; feasibility; financial costs; effectiveness; environmental risks; and governance challenges.

This framework offers an objective way of assessing all such concepts for their merits.

None of the proposed polar geoengineering concepts passed scrutiny as concepts that are workable over the coming decades. The criteria we used show each of the concepts faces multiple difficulties.

For example, to cover 10% of the Arctic Ocean with pumps to deliver seawater to freeze within ten years, one million pumps per year would need to be deployed. The estimated costs of sea curtains (US$1 billion per kilometre) are underestimates of similar-scale projects in easier environments, such as the Thames Barrier near London, by six to 25 times.

One project that planned to spread glass microbeads on ice has also been shut down citing environmental risks. And at their most recent meeting, the majority of Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties made clear their view that geoengineering should not be conducted in the region.

Polar geoengineering proposals raise false hopes for averting some disastrous consequences of climate change without rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

They risk encouraging complacency about the urgency of achieving net zero emissions by 2050 or may be used by powerful actors as an excuse to justify continued emissions.

The climate crisis is a crisis. Over the time available, efforts are best focused on decarbonisation. The benefits are rapidly realisable within the near term.

Steven Chown, Director, Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future and Professor of Biological Sciences, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Far North Queensland, one special winged mammal helps keep rainforests alive. The spectacled flying fox travels vast distances each night, pollinating flowers and spreading seeds far and wide.

But the species is in trouble. It’s now listed as endangered, yet – as my new paper shows – little has been done to protect this vital species.

The spectacled flying fox has a PR problem. It can be seen as a noisy, smelly pest — especially when it roosts in urban areas. But this doesn’t justify inaction.

Local groups and scientists are working to protect the spectacled flying fox, but government support is lacking. Without urgent action, a species that helps hold rainforests together might be gone for good.

A spectacled forest saviour

The spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) is named for the light-coloured fur around its eyes, which resembles spectacles. It’s found in the Wet Tropics and Cape York in Far North Queensland, and plays a vital role in the region’s rainforests.

Spectacled flying-foxes can fly more than 200 kilometres in a single night – leaving their roosts to find food and returning by morning.

The animals feed on the fruit and nectar of many tree species. They pollinate flowers and move fruits in their guts and mouths. This boosts biodiversity and helps keep trees healthy by preventing inbreeding.

Recovery plans aren’t enough

Global warming and habitat loss are the two biggest threats to the survival of the spectacled flying fox. Persecution by humans is also a threat.

The spectacled flying fox population is in sharp decline. Recent numbers are hard to come by, due to a lack of monitoring. But between 2004 and 2017, the species’ numbers fell by an estimated 75%, and it is listed nationally as endangered.

Authorities draw up “recovery plans” for some endangered species. The plans outline threats to a species, and the action required to prevent its extinction. Species that receive a recovery plan are considered fortunate. Many threatened species never get one.

The federal and Queensland governments jointly published a recovery plan for the spectacled flying fox in 2010, which expired in 2020.

Even a recovery plan does not prevent a species from declining. As I outline in my new paper, most of the 25 recovery actions for the spectacled flying fox haven’t happened.

They include protecting native foraging habitat, increasing knowledge of roosting requirements, and protecting important camps.

The National Flying Fox Monitoring Program did proceed. It provided scientific evidence that the spectacled flying fox population has declined, prompting a change in its status from vulnerable to endangered. However, the program is no longer operating.

Threats are growing

My paper also provides the first update since 2011 of threats to the spectacled flying fox.

Extreme heat is now a lethal reality for the species. For example, in 2018 a major heatwave in Cairns killed 23,000 individuals over several days. This was the first mass death recorded for the species.

Habitat destruction continues, despite the species’ endangered status. Every year, more than 2,000 hectares of forest – which could serve as habitat for the spectacled flying fox – is cleared.

Invasive ants are a new challenge. They can affect roosting behaviour in flying foxes and even kill animals such as skinks.

Introduced grasses are also a threat because they change forest airflows which keep the roosts cool and increase fire risk.

Humans also pose a threat. Spectacled flying foxes have been harassed and deliberately killed. They can also become caught in nets over fruit trees and die.

Some people consider the spectacled flying fox to be a nuisance. This can lead to damaging policies that prioritise public convenience over a species’ decline.

A PR problem

Spectacled flying-foxes can congregate in large numbers and become noisy and smelly. They can also roost in urban areas and drop faeces onto properties and public places. This soils paintwork, swimming pools, roofs and clothes on washing lines.

But these impacts can be minimised – for example, by installing pool covers and shade structures.

Flying foxes carry diseases that can cause illness in people and livestock. Most can be prevented by hygiene measures and avoided by not handling bats. People who regularly handle bats are inoculated to prevent infection.

Sometimes, flying foxes are wrongly accused of carrying certain diseases, as occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Flying foxes also eat fruits in gardens and orchards and can damage fruit trees. However, netting is available to protect fruit.

Looking ahead

Positive, citizen-led action is being taken to prevent the extinction of the spectacled flying-fox. For example, the Tolga Bat Hospital rescues individuals and advocates for the species.

Researchers are monitoring spectacled flying fox colonies using drones, and investigating the species’ heat tolerance. Research and monitoring is also being conducted through federal funding.

But the continued decline in numbers of the spectacled flying fox shows much more action is needed.

Governments are not required to publicly report whether recovery plans are acted on. This must change. And long-term, dedicated funding is needed for conservation and research.

The spectacled flying fox urgently needs our help. The problems they cause can be managed, and their ecological value far outweighs the nuisance.

Noel D. Preece, Adjunct Asssociate Professor, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For many plants, spring is just a really good time. They have endured a cold, dark, hard winter and in some places, winters can be murderously tough for plants.

It makes sense that when spring comes around, plants are ready to take advantage of warmer temperatures, longer days and more sunshine. They resume growth after their winter dormancies and many rapidly produce flowers.

You’ve probably been spotting the sudden springtime explosion of flowers everywhere on your neighbourhood walks, your commute or in your own garden.

But why exactly do flowers go crazy in spring, and how do they know exactly when to show up for duty? Here’s the science.

Letting loose in a big rush

For many plants, the conditions for growth in spring are close to ideal. Water, warmth and sunlight are suddenly readily available.

Plants don’t have to hold back anymore. They can resume almost unconstrained growth and have the energy and resources to invest in flowering.

Your garden (or a patch of natural bush) is, in fact, a highly competitive environment.

Plants will rush to produce masses of flowers in the hope this will give individual plants an advantage in the reproductive race that ultimately might lead to seed and reproduction. This, after all, is the universal goal of biological success.

There is another factor, however, that also influences spring flowering.

The birds and the bees (and other insects)

Flowering plants (known as angiosperms) are relatively recent arrivals on the evolutionary time line. They first became significant during the Cretaceous Period, about 100 to 120 million years ago.

By then, insects had already been on the scene and evolving for millions of years. Birds had evolved more or less at the same time as these flowering plants, becoming more common during the Cretaceous Period too, but a few million years earlier.

These creatures, the plants noticed, were excellent at dispersing pollen and seeds. Many flowering plants evolved to use their helpful services.

Before the angiosperms, ancient plants used spores for reproduction. Conifers, which had evolved hundreds of millions of years before angiosperms, used wind to disperse their pollen. Seed dispersal was often limited, unreliable and slow.

Flowering plants needed to attract pollinators and seed dispersal vectors, such as insects and birds. Many developed flashy and showy flowers: the epitome of good advertising.

So flowering in spring coincides with the return of migratory birds and the life cycles of insects (insect activity usually declines over winter).

It makes great sense that many plants flower when the insects and birds so vital to their reproductive success are also getting active (and getting busy).

It is a matter of great timing that benefits all involved.

Timing is everything

The way flowering plants time their flowering is superb biology.

Many people assume warmer temperatures trigger spring flowering. But temperature is renowned for its variability and unpredictability. Temperature is not a good indicator of season or time.

So most plants measure day length using a green pigment called phytochrome (literally plant colour). This exists in two forms, one of which is active in triggering plant metabolism.

This phytochrome system enables plants to measure, with remarkable accuracy, both day length (also known as photoperiod) and the night length.

The ratio of the two forms allows plants to measure time like a biological clock.

Photoperiod is a very accurate and reliable measure of time and season and so plants nearly always get their flowering times in spring right.

In some plants there is an extra feature that can affect flowering, where the plants produce an inhibitor (abscisic acid) before winter that keeps them dormant.

Abscisic acid is cold-sensitive. So when spring comes, the inhibitor level is low. This, combined with photoperiod, helps initiate flowering.

The two mechanisms combined are a very reliable and consistent trigger for flowering.

Advantages to being a flower in spring

Flowering in spring means plants can use insects and birds to facilitate pollination and disperse seeds.

The pollen can be spread effectively and in a targeted way to other flowers of the same species. Less valuable pollen is wasted than if you’re relying on wind dispersal.

The seed can spread over much greater distances. The seed for many species will germinate during spring when growth conditions are highly favourable.

It’s not a coincidence flowering plants with this type of reproductive biology spread around the globe very quickly after their emergence during the Cretaceous Period.

They are highly efficient and successful plants.

Not everyone can be a flower in spring

So why don’t all flowering plants bloom in spring?

It is one of the delights of biology that there is nearly always room for contrarians and exceptions.

Some plants flower in autumn or perhaps during winter and some in summer, but there is always advantage in them doing so.

Sometimes it’s to avoid the fierce competition from all those other spring flowers in attracting pollinators.

Sometimes it’s because they are focused on a particular insect or bird vector that another season suits better.

Sometimes it’s because the plants can only survive in a highly competitive environment by not flowering in spring.

In the complex web of plant biology, a one-size-fits all approach never works.

Spring flowering has a lot going for it – as the current profusion of flowers attests – but many plants have made success of being different.

Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

You are probably familiar with kangaroos. Wallabies too, and most likely quokkas as well.

Less famous are their small endangered cousins, the bettongs. These little marsupials love to dig and have a thing for mushrooms.

Because of their size and relative scarcity, it has always been hard to work out exactly how many different species of bettongs there are and where they all live.

Scientists have believed there are five living species of bettongs – but our new research, published today in Zootaxa, changes our understanding of the diversity of these creatures. And knowing that might help us understand why many efforts to protect them have failed, and how we can do better in future.

A small hopping engineering crew

A single bettong weighs just a couple of kilos, but can move tonnes of earth each year in an effort to find food. This makes them “ecosystem engineers”, turning the soil over and improving ecosystem health as they forage.

There have long been five acknowledged living species of bettong: the boodie, the woylie, the northern bettong, the rufous rat-kangaroo, and the eastern bettong. There are also a few subspecies that are thought to have gone extinct due to feral cats and foxes.

But our new study changes things.

Bones and teeth

We measured the skulls and teeth of 193 bettongs from museums across Australia, as well as in the Natural History Museum of London and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. We also looked at their arm and leg bones, to determine how the shape and function of their limbs can be used to tell between species, something that had not been done in detail previously.

The aim of our investigation was to better understand the woylie. It has always been difficult to identify woylie bones in fossil beds, so our work would also help palaeontologists in the field.

Our analysis surprisingly showed that what we have been calling a woylie was actually three separate species.

Meet the family

It was previously believed there were two subspecies of woylie.

The first is what we generally call a woylie: Bettongia penicillata ogilbyi, a living species found in Western Australia. The second is extinct: Bettongia penicillata penicillata (the brush-tailed bettong), once found in South Australia and New South Wales.

However, our study indicates there are enough differences in the teeth and skull to recognise these as two separate species.

We also identified an extinct third species, Bettongia haoucharae or the “little bettong”. Its partially fossilised remains were located in the Great Victoria Desert and Nullarbor Plain, indicating that it was well adapted for the arid outback.

Once we were able to split the woylie (Bettongia ogilbyi) from the brush-tailed bettong (Bettongia penicillata) we could look more closely at the populations within the southwest.

From here we identified that the living woylies of the southwest are made up of two subspecies, both critically endangered. These are Bettongia ogilbyi sylvatica, or the “forest woylie”, and Bettongia ogilbyi ogilbyi, the “scrub woylie”.

The forest woylie is found throughout the cool wet forests southwest of Western Australia, particularly the Jarrah forest, while the scrub woylie is found in more open scrub habitats. Some individuals of scrub woylies were recorded as far as Shark Bay in Western Australia’s arid Gascoyne region. The scrub woylie was better adapted to dry conditions than the forest woylie, but was not a true desert dweller like the extinct little bettong.

So why does this matter?

The woylie is critically endangered, with about 12,000 individuals thought to remain. Conservation efforts have been focused on moving individuals to areas where they were thought to have previously occurred.

At least 4,000 woylies have been moved into different habitats during conservation efforts. However, our new study shows woylies were always restricted to southwest Western Australia and so were unsuited to some of the areas they were moved to. The bettongs that once lived in those other areas were very likely different species, with different adaptations.

Woylies eat fungi, which are known to grow in damp places on the forest floor. The northern bettong is also a fungi specialist, and it faces a threat as temperature increases make mushrooms less available.

When woylies are moved out of the southwest they no longer have access to their fungi food sources. Some previous attempts to move individuals have failed – and researchers have been unsure of why the woylies could not survive where they were thought to have previously lived.

According to our research, the woylie actually was never present in these environments. It was instead another kind of bettong that was better adapted to live in these arid habitats.

Moving individual animals can be a useful tool for both species conservation and ecosystem management. If a species becomes extinct, it may be substituted with a similar species that performs the functions previously carried out by the extinct species.

In the case of bettongs, it’s about finding which species can do that job and thrive in these arid ecosystems. This is worth doing as the ecosystems are suffering in their absence.

With the brush-tailed bettong elevated to full species and the description of the little bettong, our findings add two new extinct species to the ever-growing list of extinct mammal species in Australia.

Our work further highlights the terrible loss of unique marsupial species across Australia that we were not even aware of, and the urgency of protecting what remains.

Jake Newman-Martin, PhD Candidate in Palaeontology, Curtin University; Alison Blyth, Associate Professor, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University; Kenny Travouillon, Curator of Mammals, Western Australian Museum; Milo Barham, Associate Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, and Natalie Warburton, Associate Professor in Anatomy, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For decades, beekeepers have fought a tiny parasite called Varroa destructor, which has devastated honey-bee colonies around the world. But an even deadlier mite, Tropilaelaps mercedesae – or “tropi” – is on the march. Beekeepers fear it will wreak even greater havoc than varroa – and the ripple effects may be felt by the billions of people around the world who rely on honey bee-pollinated plants.

From Asia to Europe

Tropi’s natural host is the giant honey-bee (Apis dorsata), common across South and Southeast Asia. At some point, the mite jumped to the western honey-bee (Apis mellifera), the species kept by beekeepers around the world. Because this host is widespread, the parasite has steadily moved westwards.

It has now been detected in Ukraine, Georgia and southern Russia, and is suspected to be in Iran and Turkey. From there, it is expected to enter eastern Europe, then spread across the continent. Australia and North America are also at risk.

Why tropi spreads so fast

Like varroa, tropi is a tiny mite that breeds inside capped brood cells, the life stages of the honey-bee when the late larvae and pupae develop inside honeycomb cells that are sealed by a layer of wax. The mite feeds on bee pupae and transmits lethal viruses, such as deformed wing virus – the deadliest of the bee viruses. But there are crucial differences.

Varroa can survive on adult bees for long periods, but tropi cannot. Outside brood cells, it lives only a few days, scurrying across the comb in search of a new larva.

Because tropi spends more time in capped cells, it reproduces quickly. A capped cell that contains a female varroa will result in one or two mated varroa offspring emerging with the adult bee. Tropi offspring develop faster inside a capped cell than varroa offspring, so a tropi “mother” may result in more offspring emerging than a varroa infested cell, more quickly overwhelming the colony.

As a result, colonies infested with tropi can collapse far faster than those plagued by varroa.

Current control methods

In parts of Asia where the parasite is already established, small-scale and commercial beekeepers often manage it by caging the queen for about five weeks.

With no eggs being laid, no brood develops, leaving the mites without a food source. This method is practical where beekeepers manage dozens of hives, but not in places like Europe where commercial operations often involve thousands.

Another option is treating the beehive with formic acid, which penetrates brood cell caps and kills the mite without necessarily harming the developing bee, provided concentrations are kept low. This treatment may offer beekeepers a practical tool.

Why varroa treatments won’t work

Many wonder whether the chemicals used against varroa could also fight tropi. The answer is, mostly no.

Varroa spends much of its life outside of a capped cell clinging to adult bees, where it comes into contact with mite-killing chemicals known as miticides spread through the colony on bee bodies. By contrast, tropi rarely attaches to adults, instead darting across comb surfaces.

Because of this, it is far less exposed to chemical residues. Treatments designed for varroa are often ineffective against the faster-breeding tropi.

Managing both mites together will be particularly difficult. Combining treatments risks harming colonies or contaminating honey. For instance, formic acid for tropi and insecticides such as amitraz for varroa might interact at even low levels, killing the bees as well as the parasites.

There is also the danger of resistance. Over-use of varroa treatments has already produced resistant strains, reducing the effectiveness of several once-reliable chemicals. Introducing more compounds to fight tropi, without careful integrated pest management, could accelerate this process and leave beekeepers with few effective tools.

The wider impact

The spread of tropi will not only devastate beekeepers but also agriculture more broadly. Honey-bees are critical pollinators of many crops. Heavier hive losses will raise costs for both honey production and pollination services, affecting food prices and availability.

Research is underway in countries such as Thailand and China to develop better management strategies. But unless effective and practical treatments are found soon, the spread of this new mite around the world could be catastrophic.

The story of varroa shows how quickly a single parasite can transform global beekeeping. Tropi has the potential to be even worse: it spreads faster, kills colonies more quickly, and is harder to control with existing methods.

The author would like to acknowledge the contribution of Robert Owen, a beekeeper who completed a PhD on the varroa mite at the University of Melbourne in 2022, to this article.

Jean-Pierre Scheerlinck, Honorary Professor Fellow, Melbourne Veterinary School, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For much of Sydney’s history, the city supported its population with crops, orchards, dairies, abattoirs, oyster beds, wineries and market gardens scattered across the basin.

In 1951, New South Wales’ soon-to-be premier Joseph Cahill saw the development pressures building on the city’s food bowl. In parliament, he promised Sydney’s rural areas would be preserved “for vital food production […] soil conservation, irrigation, afforestation”.

Cahill’s promise was in vain. Farms continued to be paved over or turned into housing as the suburban expansion gathered pace. Smaller urban farms disappeared in the face of pressures from developers and larger rural producers. Urban development has now severely weakened Sydney’s local food economy.

Sydney still has room to grow food, which would boost resilience in the face of climate threats and extreme weather. But the city has long been geared towards converting farmland into houses, shops or industries. Today, the city’s five million residents rely almost entirely on food transported into the city’s topographic basin.

We have unearthed the diversity of what was lost in our new book, Sydney’s Food Landscapes and in our Google Maps database of the city’s former wealth of food production sites.

Botany: Sydney’s backyard vegetable garden

In 1770, the naturalist Joseph Banks recorded the botanical abundance of Kamay (Botany Bay). He later convinced the British House of Commons this would quickly lead to a self-sustaining colony. Following reconnaissance, Governor Arthur Phillip moved the settlement north to Port Jackson, but European crops didn’t grow well in the sandstone soils.

The colony almost collapsed in the “hungry years” of 1788–92. Soil fertility is usually blamed for this, but we argue poor agricultural planning and social factors were also central causes.

In the mid-19th century, Botany became a prolific food district. Chinese market gardeners transformed sandy wetlands through highly productive cooperatives, ingenuity, irrigation and liberal application of night soil as fertiliser. At their peak, market gardeners supplied up to half the city’s vegetables, hawking vegetables such as cabbages and turnips door to door.

Prejudice and industrialisation intervened. In 1901, the Immigration Restriction Act came into effect – laws aimed at limiting Chinese migration. Market garden leases were withdrawn amid persistent racism.

By the 1970s, most had been displaced by factories, ports and airports, with a few gardens remaining today at Matraville, La Perouse, Arncliffe and Kyeemagh – fragile traces of an industry once vital to Sydney’s food security.

Hawkesbury: Sydney’s engine room

From Botany, the story moved inland. Wheat and maize fields in Parramatta proved the colony’s first real agricultural success, but slash-and-burn practices soon exhausted soils. Farmers switched to citrus orchards, planting as widely as Pittwater.

Dyarubbin (the Hawkesbury River) was the true catalyst making the colony viable. In the 1790s, these rich floodplains became the “granary of the colony”. The Darug had cultivated the yam daisy, murnong, on these flats for millennia. The bloody dispossession known as the Sydney Wars lasted decades.

Convicts, ex-convict emancipists and opportunistic officials planted wheat, maize, fruit and vegetables. By 1810, Governor Lachlan Macquarie had proclaimed five farming towns to secure food supply.

Sadly, even Sydney’s most fertile soils for agriculture would succumb to suburbanisation after World War II. Large land parcels continue to be lost. Turf-growing, ornamental plants and cut flowers further typically prove more lucrative than food.

Lost landscapes

Botany and the Hawkesbury are only part of a kaleidoscopic legacy.

Histories range from the troubling use of child labour to produce 40,000 cabbages a year on Cockatoo Island, to local triumphs such as the Granny Smith apple and Narrabeen Plum varieties.

Six cows brought by the First Fleet escaped and made their way to rich grasslands. When rediscovered in what is now Camden, their numbers had multiplied. The rich “Cowpastures” catalysed a pastoral industry which would eventually dominate half the continent.

Dairies proliferated, with 517 registered in 1932. The gaols at Parramatta and Long Bay produced convict-grown crops. Liverpool became home to Australia’s first irrigation district in 1856, before giving way to industrial-scale poultry farming and billion-dollar empires.

Oyster leases producing what were praised as “the world’s finest oysters” dotted the Georges River. Warriewood’s “glass city” of greenhouses foreshadowed Spain’s plastic megafarms.

Vineyards expanded before the Phylloxera mite devastated much of the industry in 1888. One of the oldest wineries was paved over in 2015 for the construction of the Western Sydney International Airport. In the early 20th century, the St George region became Sydney’s “salad bowl”.

Could it have been different?

England gives its farmland greater protection through green belts, while Oregon in the United States relies on urban growth boundaries. Japan uses “productive green zones” to protect millions of farms ringing large cities and the European Union has policy settings to help small and medium producers near cities.

By contrast, Sydney has historically treated farming as a mere transition stage before urban development. Mid 20th century plans for a green belt collapsed under developer pressure, as agriculture was written out of official metropolitan plans.

Eating the future

As development squeezed out local food production, more and more food had to be brought in. Sydney now relies on trucks, ships and planes importing food from farms hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. The energy required for transport is greater than the calorific energy in the food. The city’s food system is exposed to natural disasters, global supply shocks and climate volatility.

Over the last 70 years, Sydney has engulfed most of its local food producers. It wasn’t due to poor soils, floods or disappointing harvests. It was a deliberate choice to privilege capital gains above all else.

It’s a slow process to re-centre a city around local food production. But it can be done, if planners and decision makers protect farms and food producers the same way they protect heritage buildings, parks and water catchments. Like clean water, food production has to be treated as vital civic infrastructure – not expendable land. Not all has been lost. Western Sydney still has available farmland.

Sydney may have eaten itself. But it need not starve. Its spectral metropolitan food landscapes offer both warning and inspiration for more resilient, equitable and sustainable futures.

Joshua Zeunert, Scientia Associate Professor in Environmental Design, UNSW Sydney and Alys Daroy, Lecturer in English and Theatre, Murdoch University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Buying a house is one of the most high-stakes decisions many people will make in their lives. Yet many households are investing millions without an adequate understanding of a property’s exposure to growing climate risks.

In Australia, perhaps the starkest climate hazard is flood. Flooding ranks as one of the most financially damaging weather-related disasters, with costs rising sharply over the past five years.

So, how do you find out a given property’s flood risk? This information certainly exists. It is embedded in the insurance premiums we are charged.

But in Australia, unlike many comparable countries, this information is not readily available to all households. Changing that would help them make smarter, more informed decisions – and could benefit us all.

The growing threat of floods

Flooding is a growing problem for households across the nation, and forecast to grow as the climate changes. Yet, flood risk is not always easy to identify. It reflects the complex interplay of two key elements.

The first is topography, the layout of natural and built features on the land, such as hills, rivers, roads, and buildings. The second is hydrology, the way water sources including rainfall, rivers and groundwater are distributed and interact with the environment and human systems.

Efforts to create a unified flood risk map have been limited by fragmented data ownership, proprietary licensing and poor coordination.

Some detailed resources do exist. Queensland, for example, has developed a Property Level Flood Information Portal, currently available to 39 eligible local governments. It’s part of an opt-in program requiring councils to voluntarily participate.

Scaling this kind of initiative to a national level would require collaboration across hundreds of councils, each with varying priorities, resources and technical capacities.

Other public resources, such as the Australian Flood Risk Information Portal (AFRIP), provide metadata that can help identify where flood studies have been done, but do not offer consistent, property-level flood risk data.

Helpful insights, hidden

Australia does, however, have a National Flood Information Database (NFID). This estimates flood risk for approximately 14 million Australian homes and is used by insurers to assess and price flood risk.

It was constructed by the Insurance Council of Australia over many years, by integrating and harmonising much of the flood mapping undertaken by local and state governments in Australia.

Currently, this data is proprietary – meaning insurers who pay can access it to set premiums, but Australian households can’t due to commercial licensing and data ownership restrictions.

This sits awkwardly with the fact that much of National Flood Information Database is based on mapping and studies commissioned by local and state governments.

Lagging the world

Australia is an outlier among comparable countries in not having reliable public data on property-level flood risk. On this front, the Netherlands is widely considered to be the gold standard.

National flood maps are made accessible to households through a government website that allows households to view flood risk information tailored to individual addresses.

This includes information about possible flood depth, what to expect in a flood event and how to stay safe. Information is presented in plain language and with simple infographics.

Elsewhere around the world, the United States has long provided national flood maps in relation to its National Flood Insurance Program. There are also laws in many US states requiring flood risk disclosures when a property is sold.

One of the US’ largest real estate listing websites, Zillow, includes detailed information on an individual property’s exposure to the full range of climate hazards.

And in the United Kingdom, the government produces national maps of flood risk and makes them publicly available.

How we could benefit

In fighting climate change, we need to understand the flood risk to reduce exposure and vulnerability as much as possible.

One key federal government initiative is the Disaster Ready Fund. This supports a variety of programs, from investments in physical and social infrastructure to nature-based solutions and research.

While this holistic approach is important, a much more structured one is needed, especially around flood risk mitigation.

Providing Australians with greater transparency around a home’s flood risk would enable households to make more informed decisions about the properties they purchase or rent.

It would also limit insurance bill shock and better align households’ expectations with the reality of the climate risks they face.

Most importantly, it would provide a much-needed climate signal to property owners and may encourage many to undertake measures to reduce damage in the event of a flood.

More informed discussions

Having reliable and consistent publicly shared flood data information will also support community discussions on what is an acceptable level of risk and guide decisions on where and how to mitigate or relocate.

Making the data we already have on property-level flood risk available for general consumption is a no-brainer. But it is the thin end of the wedge. We also need better data to begin with.

In many areas, the current flood maps are outdated. This introduces additional uncertainty, which is priced into insurance premiums.

This problem calls on Australia to raise the bar, improving the quality and updating the frequency of flood mapping to better inform decisions and debate.

The taxpayer spending required to do this is hard to justify if this data remains locked up within the insurance industry – but it makes more sense if there are wider public benefits, such as for households.

Daniel Melser, Senior Research Fellow, Monash University; Antonia Settle, Lecturer, Monash University, and Francesca Perugia, Senior Lecturer, School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Scientists have long used sound to study wildlife. Bird calls, bat echolocation and whale songs, for example, have provided valuable insights for decades. But listening to entire ecosystems is a much newer frontier.

Listening to rivers is especially tricky. Beneath the water is a soundscape of clicks, pops and hums that most of us never hear. Many of these sounds are a mystery. What produces them – an insect? A fish? The water itself?

A new tool developed by my colleagues and I aims to help scientists decode what underwater river sounds really mean. We hope it will help monitor river health and tell the untold stories of these fascinating underwater places.

Sonic sleuthing

Rivers around the world face growing threats, including pollution, water extraction and climate change. So scientists are always looking for better ways to keep an eye on river health.

Sometimes river animals make sounds to attract a mate or ward off rivals. Other times the noise may simply be incidental, made when the animal moves or feeds.

These sounds can reveal a lot. Changes in the pattern or abundance of a sound can be a sign that a species is in decline or the ecosystem is under stress. They might reveal that a species we thought was silent actually makes sounds. Or we might discover a whole new species!

That’s why scientists use sound to monitor ecosystems. It essentially involves lowering waterproof microphones into the water and recording what’s picked up.

Recorders can run continuously, day and night, without disturbing wildlife. Unlike cameras, the recorders work in murky waters. And scientists can leave a recorder running and leave, allowing them to capture far more information with far less effort than traditional surveys.

Every recording is a time capsule. And as new technology develops, these sound files can be re-analysed, offering fresh insights into the state of our rivers.

But there’s a catch. Analysing the hours of recordings can be very time-consuming. Unlike for land-based recordings, no automatic tools have existed to help scientists identify or document what they’ve recorded underwater.

The best method available has been painfully old-fashioned: listening to recordings in real time. But a single recorder can capture tens of thousands of sounds each day. Manually analysing them can take a trained professional up to four times longer than the recording itself.

Our new, publicly available tool sought to address that problem.

A smarter way to listen to rivers

Our tool uses R, a free program for analysing data. The author of this article wrote a code instructing the program to analyse sound from underwater recordings.

We then uploaded sound recordings from Warrill Creek in Southeast Queensland. The program scanned the recordings and pulled out each individual sound.

Using the frequency, loudness and duration of every sound, it compared them all — a mammoth task if done by hand. Finally, it grouped similar sounds together — for example, clicks with clicks or hums with hums — turning them into simple clusters of data.

This process allows researchers to study the sounds more easily. Instead of spending hours listening to a recording and trying to distinguish the clicks of waterbugs from the grunts of a fish, the tool sorts the sounds into groups so researchers can jump straight to analysing patterns in the data.

For example, they might analyse which sounds are present in which rivers, or how the sounds change over time or between regions.

In yet-to-be published research, we tested the tool on a further 22 streams and found it successfully processed the sound data into groupings.

Our study found the tool is accurate. It correctly identified almost 90% of distinct sounds – faster and with far less effort than manual listening.

Listen to life beneath the surface

Listen to this recording of waterbugs from the order Hempitera. You’ll hear a chorus of sharp clicks, like marbles rattling in a glass. The recording is filled with hundreds of near-identical calls — a task that would take hours to label by hand.

After we uploaded the sound file, the tool grouped these repetitive calls automatically, saving huge amounts of listening time.

Below is an underwater recording of aquatic macroinvertebrates. The calls of these tiny river creatures, from the orders Hemiptera and Coleoptera, hum like cicadas. The sound is interspersed with the grunts of a fish (order Terapontidae), all set against the quiet backdrop of flowing water.

The tool can handle these layers, grouping sounds to show the community beneath the surface.

In this next clip, the sound of flowing water is prominent. This is one of the biggest challenges in listening to rivers. But our tool can separate out sounds masked by the constant background noise, so scientists can analyse them.

Below, a chorus of clicking macroinvertebrates fills the recording, until a vehicle sound cuts across from above the water’s surface. It shows how easily human noise crosses the boundary between air and water.

Helping protect our rivers

The tool allows underwater recordings to be processed at scale. It moves beyond hours of manual listening towards truly exploring what rivers are telling us.

It’s also flexible, able to handle data sets of any size, and adaptable to different ecosystems.

We hope the tool will help protect rivers and other water resources, such as oceans. It opens up new ways to monitor these environments and find strategies to protect them.

Scientists have only just begun exploring freshwater sound. By making this tool free, easy to use and publicly available, we hope more people can join in, ask questions and make discoveries of their own.

Katie Turlington, PhD Candidate, Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has described her plan to “maximise extraction” of the UK’s oil and gas from the North Sea as a “common sense” energy policy.

Politicians are using language like this increasingly often – calling themselves “pragmatic” on climate change and invoking “common sense”. It sounds reasonable, reassuring, and grownup – the opposite of “hysterical” campaigners or “unrealistic” targets.

But new research my colleagues and I conducted, calling on a decade of interviews with UK MPs, shows that political “pragmatism” is fast becoming a dangerous form of climate delay. By framing urgent action as “extreme” and steady-as-she-goes policies as “pragmatic”, leaders across the political spectrum are protecting the fossil-fuel status quo at the very moment scientists warn we need rapid, transformative change.

Badenoch’s latest intervention is a perfect example. She said “common sense” dictates that every drop of oil must be extracted from the North Sea, and that net zero by 2050 was a policy pushed by “bullies”. This came just a day after the UK Met Office declared summer 2025 as the hottest on record.

We found that members of parliament deploy the same language of pragmatism to defend fossil fuel companies and to insist to their constituents that nothing needs to change too fast. The paradox, of course, is that more urgent social and economic change is precisely what the world’s climate scientists say is necessary to avert climate breakdown.

In our recent interviews with politicians, MPs from across the political spectrum tended towards gradual change in order to maintain political and public support. One said:

First and foremost be pragmatic. Accept incremental change, because incremental change often accelerates, but you take people with you. If you didn’t take people with you, you’ll start getting resistance.

Another MP contrasted a pragmatic approach with the calls from some campaign groups for more rapid action:

There are campaigns that say we’ve got to be net zero by 2025, or 2030. [laughing incredulously] … do you realise what the consequences of that will be … you’d have a revolution in Britain if you tried to do that, in terms of destroying people’s quality of life.

Interestingly, despite rejecting more ambitious targets, later in the interview the same MP acknowledged that faster change was needed:

We need to do more, we could do more, we are, you know, I’m sure the government will do more. I’m certainly pushing it to do more. But fundamentally we’ve halved our emissions since 1990.

Here we see the nuance, and the danger, of the language of pragmatism. It allows politicians to hold two positions at once. They can acknowledge the need for rapid change, while promoting a “pragmatic” position against it.

The calls for pragmatism appeared to stem from MPs’ desire to present a reasoned and rational case for climate action that does not impinge on constituents’ lives. They also used pragmatism to distance themselves from arguments they portrayed as “extreme” or “shrill”.

The flawed assumption underlying these calls to pragmatism is that the public will not support ambitious, transformative climate policies. We concluded that whereas a few years ago MPs promoted climate policies “by stealth”, meaning they did it on the quiet, now they turn to ideas of pragmatism in an attempt to maintain a fragile political consensus in favour of net zero – a consensus that is already fracturing.

Top-down pragmatism

This turn to pragmatism can now be seen at the very top of British politics, threatening the UK’s steady ratcheting up of climate ambition to date.

Former Labour prime minister Tony Blair recently wrote in the Blair Institute’s report on climate change: “People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality.”

Blair then asserted: “Any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.” This is despite the widespread consensus among scientists that both phasing out fossil fuels and reducing consumption of at least some products are essential.

The report goes on to say: “A realistic voice in the climate debate is required, neither ideological nor alarmist but pragmatic.” This language is intended to sound rational, reasonable and even scientific. The problem is that it can be used to justify actions that appear to ignore what the science is telling us.

Former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak warned against treating climate change as an “ideology” . Notably, Sunak referred to “pragmatic, proportionate, and realistic” climate action shortly after his government announced hundreds of new licences for oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

His message coincided with ongoing road-building programmes, plans for airport expansion, and insufficient action to insulate the UK’s housing stock, all of which could jeopardise the UK’s climate targets. Again we see the language of pragmatism working against the rapid societal changes that are necessary.

The pragmatic road ahead

In general, the MPs we spoke to were not using pragmatism in bad faith. Rather it was a way of navigating the complexities of climate politics where the huge changes demanded by climate mitigation are deemed too challenging to sell to constituents. But this political strategy is a very risky one and underestimates the public’s appetite for “strong and clear” climate leadership from government.

The current government is already struggling to reconcile net zero commitments with its economic growth agenda, which includes a new runway at Heathrow airport. Not only is prime minister Keir Starmer facing divisions within the ruling Labour party over net zero ambitions, he is also dealing with increasingly prominent net zero scepticism from the leaders of the Conservative and Reform parties.

The political language of “pragmatism” therefore risks spreading from Badenoch to Starmer, becoming a discourse of delay that promotes non-transformative solutions.

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Steve Westlake, Lecturer, Environmental Psychology, University of Bath

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate models are complex, just like the world they mirror. They simultaneously simulate the interacting, chaotic flow of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and they run on the world’s largest supercomputers.

Critiques of climate science, such as the report written for the Department of Energy by a panel in 2025, often point to this complexity to argue that these models are too uncertain to help us understand present-day warming or tell us anything useful about the future.

But the history of climate science tells a different story.

The earliest climate models made specific forecasts about global warming decades before those forecasts could be proved or disproved. And when the observations came in, the models were right. The forecasts weren’t just predictions of global average warming – they also predicted geographical patterns of warming that we see today.

These early predictions starting in the 1960s emanated largely out of a single, somewhat obscure government laboratory outside Princeton, New Jersey: the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. And many of the discoveries bear the fingerprints of one particularly prescient and persistent climate modeler, Syukuro Manabe, who was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in physics for his work.

Manabe’s models, based in the physics of the atmosphere and ocean, forecast the world we now see while also drawing a blueprint for today’s climate models and their ability to simulate our large-scale climate. While models have limitations, it is this track record of success that gives us confidence in interpreting the changes we’re seeing now, as well as predicting changes to come.

Forecast No. 1: Global warming from CO2

Manabe’s first assignment in the 1960s at the U.S. Weather Bureau, in a lab that would become the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, was to accurately model the greenhouse effect – to show how greenhouse gases trap radiant heat in Earth’s atmosphere. Since the oceans would freeze over without the greenhouse effect, this was a key first step in building any kind of credible climate model.

To test his calculations, Manabe created a very simple climate model. It represented the global atmosphere as a single column of air and included key components of climate, such as incoming sunlight, convection from thunderstorms, and his greenhouse effect model.

Despite its simplicity, the model reproduced Earth’s overall climate quite well. Moreover, it showed that doubling carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere would cause the planet to warm by about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius).

This estimate of Earth’s climate sensitivity, published in 1967, has remained essentially unchanged in the many decades since and captures the overall magnitude of observed global warming. Right now the world is about halfway to doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the global temperature has warmed by about 2.2 F (1.2 C) – right in the ballpark of what Manabe predicted.

Other greenhouses gases such as methane, as well as the ocean’s delayed response to global warming, also affect temperature rise, but the overall conclusion is unchanged: Manabe got Earth’s climate sensitivity about right.

Forecast No. 2: Stratospheric cooling

The surface and lower atmosphere in Manabe’s single-column model warmed as carbon dioxide concentrations rose, but in what was a surprise at the time, the model’s stratosphere actually cooled.

Temperatures in this upper region of the atmosphere, between roughly 7.5 and 31 miles (12 and 50 km) in altitude, are governed by a delicate balance between the absorption of ultraviolet sunlight by ozone and release of radiant heat by carbon dioxide. Increase the carbon dioxide, and the atmosphere traps more radiant heat near the surface but actually releases more radiant heat from the stratosphere, causing it to cool.

This cooling of the stratosphere has been detected over decades of satellite measurements and is a distinctive fingerprint of carbon dioxide-driven warming, as warming from other causes such as changes in sunlight or El Niño cycles do not yield stratospheric cooling.

Forecast No. 3: Arctic amplification

Manabe used his single-column model as the basis for a prototype quasi-global model, which simulated only a fraction of the globe. It also simulated only the upper 100 meters or so of the ocean and neglected the effects of ocean currents.

In 1975, Manabe published global warming simulations with this quasi-global model and again found stratospheric cooling. But he also made a new discovery – that the Arctic warms significantly more than the rest of the globe, by a factor of two to three times.

This “Arctic amplification” turns out to be a robust feature of global warming, occurring in present-day observations and subsequent simulations. A warming Arctic furthermore means a decline in Arctic sea ice, which has become one of the most visible and dramatic indicators of a changing climate.

Forecast No. 4: Land-ocean contrast

In the early 1970s, Manabe was also working to couple his atmospheric model to a first-of-its-kind dynamical model of the full world ocean built by oceanographer Kirk Bryan.

Around 1990, Manabe and Bryan used this coupled atmosphere-ocean model to simulate global warming over realistic continental geography, including the effects of the full ocean circulation. This led to a slew of insights, including the observation that land generally warms more than ocean, by a factor of about 1.5.

As with Arctic amplification, this land-ocean contrast can be seen in observed warming. It can also be explained from basic scientific principles and is roughly analogous to the way a dry surface, such as pavement, warms more than a moist surface, such as soil, on a hot, sunny day.

The contrast has consequences for land-dwellers like ourselves, as every degree of global warming will be amplified over land.

Forecast No. 5: Delayed Southern Ocean warming

Perhaps the biggest surprise from Manabe’s models came from a region most of us rarely think about: the Southern Ocean.

This vast, remote body of water encircles Antarctica and has strong eastward winds whipping across it unimpeded, due to the absence of land masses in the southern midlatitudes. These winds continually draw up deep ocean waters to the surface.

Manabe and colleagues found that the Southern Ocean warmed very slowly when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increased because the surface waters were continually being replenished by these upwelling abyssal waters, which hadn’t yet warmed.

This delayed Southern Ocean warming is also visible in the temperature observations.

What does all this add up to?

Looking back on Manabe’s work more than half a century later, it’s clear that even early climate models captured the broad strokes of global warming.

Manabe’s models simulated these patterns decades before they were observed: Arctic Amplification was simulated in 1975 but only observed with confidence in 2009, while stratospheric cooling was simulated in 1967 but definitively observed only recently.

Climate models have their limitations, of course. For instance, they cannot predict regional climate change as well as people would like. But the fact that climate science, like any field, has significant unknowns should not blind us to what we do know.

Nadir Jeevanjee, Research Physical Scientist, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The collapse of a major system of ocean currents, the meltdown of major ice sheets or the dieback of the Amazon rainforest are all examples of negative climate tipping points. These are the big risks associated with a changing climate, where harmful change becomes self-propelling. Each could cause environmental disasters affecting hundreds of millions of people.

The prospect of such irreversible and massively damaging outcomes is looming ever closer, as we are set to exceed 1.5°C global warming. Every year and every 0.1°C above this threshold increases the risk of crossing negative climate tipping points. To avert them, climate action must accelerate spectacularly. We need to decarbonise the global economy five times faster than the current rate to have reasonable odds of limiting warming well below 2°C.

This sounds both frightening and daunting. We are facing existential risks and to avoid them requires extraordinary rates and scales of social and technological change. It is understandable to feel climate despair or doomism – particularly with the current spate of backsliding on climate commitments.

But there are credible grounds for conditional optimism. They lie in the evidence of positive tipping points – where changes to zero-emission behaviour and technologies become self-propelling. This is now the only plausible way we can accelerate out of trouble, because we have left it way too late for incremental change to rescue us.

Tipping points happen when amplifying feedback within a system gets strong enough to support self-propelling change. Like putting the proverbial microphone too close to the speaker. They can happen in a range of systems, and history shows us they have happened repeatedly in social systems. Think of political revolutions, abrupt shifts in social norms – like the abandonment of smoking in public, or the rapid transition from horse-drawn carriages to cars.

Happily, almost everything that contributes to human-induced greenhouse gas emissions could be positively tipped towards zero emissions. It can take a lot of work to bring a system to a tipping point, but some key sectors have already positively tipped, at least in some countries.

Norway has tipped from buying petrol and diesel cars to EVs in the space of a decade. The UK abruptly shut down coal burning. While gas temporarily replaced some of coal’s role in electricity generation, rapidly growing renewable power has now replaced coal burning and is starting to displace gas. Neither transition happened by chance. Tipping our societies to zero emissions requires deliberate, intentional action from us all.

In Norway, change was started by social activists in the late 1980s, including members of the pop band A-ha, pushing the government to adopt a package of policies to incentivise EVs. In the UK, tipping was triggered by a rising floor price on carbon in the power sector, a policy that can be traced to the Climate Change Act, which started life as a private member’s bill, in turn born out of decades of environmental activism.

The beauty of tipping points

In my new book, Positive tipping points: How to fix the climate crisis, I highlight how just a small change can make a big difference. A minority can ultimately tip the majority. That minority activates amplifying feedback loops that get stronger with the more people who join in the change. This means we can all play a part in triggering positive tipping points.

We all make decisions about what we consume. Just by adopting a lower emission technology or behaviour (like eating less meat) we encourage others to join us. This is because people imitate one another, and the more people who adopt something the more people they can influence to adopt it too – a phenomenon known as “social contagion”.

With technologies, there are extra amplifiers of “increasing returns”: the more of us who adopt a new technology, the better it will get (through learning by doing), the cheaper it will get (due to economies of scale), and the more other technologies will emerge that make it more useful. This is how solar PV panels, wind turbines and batteries that power EVs have got ever cheaper, better and more accessible.

Policy usually also plays a crucial role in stimulating positive tipping points. Mandates to phase in clean technologies and phase out fossil fuelled ones are particularly effective. But despite polling evidence that roughly 80% of people worldwide support more decisive action on the climate crisis, governments can dither or be captured by vested interests. Sometimes they need to see what we support.

This may inspire us to get involved with social activism, which has its own tipping points. Each person joining a protest movement makes it incrementally easier for the next person to join. This can reach a critical mass – as it did for Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion in 2019. Or if, like me, you are not so comfortable on the march, there are other forms of social activism, like divesting from fossil fuels, or bringing civil cases against companies causing the climate crisis and governments failing to adequately respond to it.

Together a fraction of us can trigger positive tipping points to avoid otherwise devastating negative climate tipping points.

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Tim Lenton, Director, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Environment groups have called for federal intervention following revelations an LNG export hub in Darwin has emitted large volumes of methane from an LNG storage tank since 2006.

The ABC on Monday revealed years of failures to address the leak. State and federal authorities reportedly approved Santos’ controversial 25-year Barossa offshore gas project without requiring the leak to be repaired or replaced.

The incident adds to serious doubts about whether Australia can meet its commitment to reduce emissions of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.

The vital pledge will only be met if governments and industry prioritise climate action and human health over profits.

What happened in Darwin?

The Darwin case demonstrates dangers of relying on industry to assess and manage risks to the climate and human health.

The leak involved an enormous above-ground tank which contained highly processed methane derived from LNG (liquified natural gas).

According to the ABC, the leak was caused by a design flaw. The reports said the tank’s original owner, ConocoPhillips, discovered the leak in 2006 and reported it to the Northern Territory’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), describing the emissions as “minute”. The tank held gas for the next 18 years.

Two measurements using drone technology, in 2019 and 2020, reportedly indicated the leak was bigger than initially thought – up to 184 kilograms of methane was leaking per hour. This was not reported to the EPA until months later, according to the ABC.

Gas giant Santos now operates the tank, which is now reportedly empty. But it’s set to be filled again, as part of Santos’ Barossa gas project.

The ABC says state and federal regulators have not forced Santos to repair or replace the tank, adding:

They and the company say the leak is stable, and poses a moderate climate risk but no immediate threat to the public or the environment.

Santos told the ABC regulatory approvals and an ongoing monitoring program were in place, and the company reports its greenhouse gas emissions annually.

Methane: a major climate culprit

Methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas which drives about 30% of global warming. While it does not last in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, its ability to trap heat is potent. In fact, methane is about 86 times more harmful than carbon dioxide (CO₂) in global warming terms, when measured over two decades.

Aside from the harms caused by escaped methane, the leak also represents an enormous waste of a substance produced at a very high cost to the climate. Natural gas extracted from the ground is transported to processing plants and liquified for export, by cooling it to about -160°C. This is an extremely energy-intensive process which itself is powered by natural gas and creates substantial greenhouse gas emissions.

Methane reduction is considered a crucial step towards averting a climate disaster. The International Energy Agency says methane abatement from oil and gas operations offers some of the world’s best opportunities to cut emissions – was also likely to give companies a commercial advantage.

In 2022, Australia signed the Global Methane Pledge, a non-binding commitment to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030. Australia’s energy producers also claim they are committed to reducing methane emissions in Australia.

The Darwin methane leak reveals a host of problems with gas regulation in Australia – including a lack of public transparency issues with the methods used to quantify leaks. These problems undermine industry and government pledges to reduce emissions.

A health time bomb

Bushfires and backburning already pollute the air around Darwin.

What’s more, the neighbouring Inpex LNG plant in Darwin has also consistently released huge amounts of highly toxic substances including hydrogen sulphide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds.

Methane adds to the problem. It reacts with other chemicals in the atmosphere to form a dangerous air pollutant known as “ground-level ozone”.

Research has found each year, ground-level ozone contributes to up to 1.4 million deaths globally, from respiratory and cardiovascular disease.

Tropical areas immediately adjacent to cities, such as Darwin’s outer suburbs, are most at risk from such pollution.

Environment Centre NT has also expressed fears the leaking methane presents an explosion risk.

A challenge exposed

The problem of methane emissions is not confined to gas projects. For example, research earlier this year showed methane emissions from an open-cut coal mine in Queensland were up to eight times higher than reported annually by the operator.

And the problem is not confined to Darwin. Methane-emitting fossil fuel projects are proliferating across Australia. Recent approvals include expansion of Woodside’s Northwest Shelf gas project and numerous coal mines.

What’s more, Australia does a poor job of measuring and reporting methane emissions.

Australian governments and their agencies must get serious about acting on climate change. This includes efforts to rapidly curb methane emissions – while also dramatically cutting CO₂ emissions.

No industry in the world carries more power to secure the planet’s future than the fossil fuel operators. Together, industry and governments must stop fuelling our demise.

Melissa Haswell, Professor of Health, Safety and Environment, School of Public Health and Social Work, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At the end of the 1960s, there was every expectation the Great Barrier Reef would be drilled for oil.

The first gas well had been drilled in Victoria’s Bass Strait in 1965 and oil was discovered soon afterwards. Queensland wanted to follow suit. In 1967, the state’s entire coastline was opened to oil exploration.

In August that year, conservationists began fighting to save the reef. Public opinion strongly backed their campaign. Even so, victory was by no means certain.

But in 1975, a national marine park was declared over the Great Barrier Reef, banning oil, gas and mining.

The reef had been saved – for a time. Fifty years later, the Barrier Reef, like coral reefs across the globe, faces the far larger threat of climate change.

It can be easy to look back at history and think what happened was inevitable. But events could very easily have gone down a different path.

How could an immense reef system be vulnerable?

In 1908, the author Edmund Banfield imagined a future where his tropical home, Dunk Island, and neighbouring islands would form part of a “great insular national park”. Ornithologists and nature writers such as Banfield successfully lobbied to protect many of the reef’s islands to save birds from hunters.

Early in the 20th century, turtles were routinely butchered and their meat canned and sent abroad. By the 1950s, public outcry over their treatment and falling numbers prompted governments to severely limit their exploitation.

In 1956, park rangers a national park across the Whitsunday Islands or an even larger area to protect reefs from tourists. Reef-walking and coral-collecting were popular, but rangers and conservationists feared the reef might be loved to death. Authorities restricted shell and coral collecting, but the national park idea went nowhere.

Naturalists and scientists had long known the Great Barrier Reef faced natural threats. In 1925, the naturalist E. H. Rainford observed a “scene of the utmost desolation” after floodwaters covered Whitsunday reefs with silt:

the corals dead, broken to pieces and blackened by decay; the clam shells gaping wide and empty […] a scene with hardly any life in it.

For many, a corals capacity to survive in such conditions was part of their beauty. But in 1960, a new threat emerged – the first recorded crown-of-thorns outbreak. These large coral-eating starfish devastated popular tourist reefs near Cairns.

It shocked people into seeing the entire reef as vulnerable. The future director of the National Museum of Australia, Don McMichael, called for “serious thinking” about the reef’s future.

A reef in need of saving

In 1967, cane growers in Cairns applied to mine lime from Ellison Reef off Mission Beach.

Outraged, the local artist John Busst began organising to stop it. His determination would earn him the sobriquet of the “Bingil Bay Bastard”. Poet-turned-environmentalist Judith Wright, forester Len Webb, and the Queensland Littoral Society soon joined.

Their Save the Reef campaign succeeded in stopping the lime mining – only to find oil and gas drilling posed a new threat.

Their expanded campaign caught the Queensland government flat-footed.

A 1968 noted the government was “not well informed” over how much damage the reef could tolerate and had failed to “silence or satisfy the vociferous objections of absolute conservationists”.

Later in 1968, Joh Bjelke-Petersen became the new Queensland premier – a title he would hold for nearly 20 years. Neither he or his deputy, mining minister Ron Camm, had any sympathy for those campaigning to Save the Reef. In fact, Bjelke-Petersen had shares in mining companies with leases over the reef.

What’s more, some reef scientists from the Great Barrier Reef Committee, an influential research group, endorsed the idea of “controlled exploitation” of the reef – including mineral and petroleum resources. This position ruptured relationships between conservationists and scientists.

Meanwhile, the federal government was under increasing pressure from conservationists and the public to stop oil and gas drilling.

It wasn’t clear, though, which tier of government had sovereignty over the reef and its resources. Conservationists believed the federal government had exclusive rights under a United Nations convention on territorial waters. But the Liberal Prime Minister, John Gorton, was unwilling to test the notion.

As the first major reef drilling operations loomed in January 1970, Queensland’s trade union council announced a “black ban” on any ships or rigs used for reef oil exploration. The two companies affected, Ampol and Japex, stopped preparations and called for an inquiry.

Buoyed by public support and positive media coverage, the Gorton government persuaded Queensland to stop all reef drilling pending a joint royal commission.

A state park – or national?

In May 1970, the royal commission began its marathon hearings into petroleum drilling on the reef. Prominent figures such as the first Reserve Bank governor H. C. “Nugget” Coombs gave statements, alongside scientists, mining experts and conservationists.

Coombs told commission members they were “making a judgement […] on behalf of the community as a whole”, while marine biologist Patricia Mather, the secretary of the Great Barrier Reef Committee (now the Australian Coral Reef Society), drafted and tabled legislation for a possible Barrier Reef Act.

It would take four years for the Royal Commission to deliver its report.

During this time, Australia elected its first Labor government in 23 years. The new Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, had big changes planned.

In 1973, the Whitlam government introduced laws asserting Commonwealth control over Australia’s “submerged lands”. It would mean Canberra controlled the Great Barrier Reef’s oil reserves. Queensland and the other five state governments promptly took the matter to the High Court.

In the meantime, the federal government began drafting reef protection laws – based on the submission by marine biologist Patricia Mather.

The Royal Commission handed down its report on oil drilling on 1 November 1974. Of the three members, two accepted some drilling could occur. But the chair, Gordon Wallace, recommended against any oil drilling at all.

Armed with the chair’s recommendation, Whitlam reached out to Bjelke-Petersen to seek Queensland’s cooperation to protect the reef. But the premier was focused on creating a series of state marine parks which would couple oil, gas and mineral mining with stronger protections.

In a , Bjelke-Petersen described the prime minister’s actions as “impulsive” and asked him to wait for the High Court decision. He stated his government did not wish to be associated with unconstitutional matters and expected Whitlam would “take a similar responsible attitude”.

Whitlam pressed on. In November 1974, he told The Australian Queensland was being run by “environmental vandals”. The laws were to:

protect an irreplaceable part of Australia’s natural heritage.

In May 1975, the Whitlam government introduced the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Bill to parliament, where it became law. No mining or oil and gas drilling would be permitted.

On November 11, 1975, the Whitlam government was dismissed. The next month, Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Party was elected. Not long after that, the High Court ruled in favour of federal control of submerged lands.

In the “spirit of cooperation”, Bjelke-Petersen reached out to the new prime minister to gauge his thinking on the reef.

Fraser told him the federal government would push on with its marine park laws – and that there would be no oil and gas extraction or mining in the marine park.

Hard-won protection – for a time

It’s hard not to be impressed by the scale of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park: 344,000 square kilometres – larger than Victoria – 3,000 coral reefs and more than 1,000 islands. But it is the scale of life which enraptures. Above and below the churning ocean and in the blistering sun, it hums with absolute splendour and wonder.

Unfortunately, “saving” the reef doesn’t just have to be done once. All coral reefs face human threats: fishing, coastal development and declining water quality. But these pale compared to the big one – climate change. As intense marine heatwaves multiply, coral bleaches over large areas and can die.

In the 1960s, conservationists fought hard to stop oil and gas on the reef. Their campaign eventually succeeded. But the reef couldn’t escape the damage done by the oil and gas extracted and burned everywhere else. Saving the reef is going to be even harder this time round.

This account draws on the author’s book, Saving the Reef – The human story behind one of Australia’s greatest environmental treasures.

Rohan Lloyd, Lecturer in Science and Society, James Cook University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On September 2, 1945, the second world war ended when Japan officially surrendered. Today, on the 80th anniversary, the physical legacy of the conflict remains etched into land and sea.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Pacific. There, fierce battles left behind sunken warships, aircraft and unexploded bombs. These remnants are not only historical artefacts but toxic time capsules.

They leak fuel, heavy metals and other hazardous substances into fragile ecosystems, threatening biodiversity and, potentially, human health.

This problem is a reminder of the enduring environmental harms of conflict. Toxic remnants of war can damage ecosystems and communities long after the fighting stops.

The Pacific as a dumping ground

World War II in the Pacific involved four years of conflict between Japan and Allied forces. The war began in the region in December 1941 when Japan attacked a United States naval base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.

The Pacific conflict included the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway and the Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands.

Pacific islands became staging grounds for battles. Weapons were stockpiled and hazardous material discarded. Ships and aircraft were sunk. When the war ended, much of this material was simply left behind.

Among the remains are an estimated 3,800 wrecks still lying on the Pacific Ocean floor.

An environmental hazard

As remnants of war degrade, they often leach toxic pollutants into nearby waters and soils. These can build up in marine life, enter the food chain and pose serious risks to both biodiversity.

At Palau, a WWII Japanese ship sank in Koror Harbour and became known as the Helmet Wreck. It contains Japanese depth charges leaking acid into surrounding waters.

Researchers have shown the long-term environmental impacts in the Baltic Sea of unexploded WWII ordnance – bombs, shells and grenades that failed to detonate. An estimated 3000kg of dissolved ammunition chemicals have been found.

Coral reefs and mangroves, which are vital for coastal protection, are especially vulnerable to both chemical exposure and physical damage.

For example, researchers examined the effects off Puerto Rico of unexploded ordnance. They found nearby sea animals contained potentially toxic compounds leaking from the ordnance, which meant the substances had entered the food web.

Human communities on high alert

Unexploded ordnance continues to endanger communities. Just last year, for example, more than 200 bombs were found buried beneath a school in the Solomon Islands.

In places such as Palau, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, these dangers are unearthed regularly. They can be found by farmers working their land, children playing or fisherman working.

Buried bombs, sunken ships and downed aircraft often contain fuel and heavy metals. This includes lead and cadmium which can interfere with the body’s hormone system and cause serious health issues.

Research into the human health impacts of war remains is limited – especially in the Pacific. But existing studies suggest exposure is linked to serious consequences.

For example, parental exposure to wartime contaminants has been linked to birth defects in Gaza and Vietnam.

And a study of Britsh Army ammunition technicians released earlier this year found significantly higher rates of bladder cancer than the general population. This suggests occupational exposure to explosive compounds may pose long-term health risks.

Climate change is increasing the risk

As Earth’s climate warms, extreme weather events are worsening and seas are rising. This is exacerbating the dangers posed by wartime remnants.

For example Cyclone Pam, in March 2015, exposed unexploded WWII ordnance in Kiribati and Tuvalu. Further investigations revealed remnants including high explosive projectiles, mortars and 5,300 rounds of ammunition.

In 2020, a visiting fisherman found an unexploded bomb near Lord Howe Island. Then-Environment Minister Sussan Ley suggested the device may have been shifted by a cyclone or ocean currents.

Similarly, floods and landslides can move these hazards over significant distances, increasing uncertainty around their locations and complicating clearance efforts.

Rising sea levels are threatening to breach one of the Pacific’s most toxic legacies – the Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands. This concrete structure was built in the late 1970s to contain radioactive waste from US nuclear testing decades earlier.

Research shows extreme storms could increase radioactive sediments in the area to up to 84 times higher than normal. There are also concerns cracks in the dome’s surface could lead to contamination of surrounding waters.

Reflecting on war’s toxic legacy

Despite the risks to people and health in the Pacific, remediation has been slow. The 80th anniversary of WWII offers an opportunity to reflect on the toxic legacy of war – and to act.

The scale of the problem demands coordinated, well-funded action. The work should not just remove dangerous materials, but restore damaged ecosystems and monitor long-term health impacts.

Some support has been offered. It includes Operation Render Safe, a program to remove war remnants led by the Australian Defence Force. But more is needed.

Regional partners – including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United States – have a chance to lead. This means investing in environmental cleanup, supporting affected communities and acknowledging historical responsibility.

It also means listening to Pacific voices, who have long called for greater attention to the war’s toxic legacy. Their knowledge, resilience and lived experience must be central to any response.

The authors acknowledge Nixon Panda for his contribution to this article.

Stacey Pizzino, Lecturer, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland and Bryan G. Fry, Professor of Toxicology, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In recent years, Pacific island nations have earned global credibility as champions of climate action. Pacific leaders view sea level rise as an existential threat.

But this united front is now under strain as some Pacific nations pursue a controversial new industry – deep-sea mining. Nauru, the Cook Islands, Kiribati and Tonga have gone the furthest to make it a reality, attracted by new income streams. But nations such as Fiji, Palau and Vanuatu have called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters.

Public opinion across the Pacific is often divided, pitting possible economic gains against the potential risks of an industry whose environmental impact remain uncertain but potentially significant. As this tension intensifies, it may split the Pacific and risk the region’s moral authority on climate.

What are the concerns over deep-sea mining?

Deep-sea mining targets three types of mineral deposits – polymetallic nodules strewn across deep underwater plains, cobalt-rich crusts on seamounts, and the ore deposits around hydrothermal vents.

To extract them, mining companies can use unmanned collectors to pump ore to the surface and return the wastewater. This creates plumes of sediment which can smother marine life. Methods of minimising damage to species from mining on land are largely unworkable at depth.

Deep-sea ecosystems are poorly understood, but we know they are slow to recover. Researchers have found areas mined as a test more than 40 years ago still show physical damage and immobile corals and sponges remain scarce.

Why is there so much interest in deep-sea mining?

Deep-sea mining hasn’t begun anywhere in earnest, because the International Seabed Authority has yet to finalise rules governing extraction. This authority oversees the 54% of the world’s oceans beyond territorial waters.

But plans for deep-sea mining operations can still be submitted and considered without these rules in place.

Analysts have estimated seabed minerals could be worth a staggering A$30 trillion. Some of the richest deposits lie in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in international waters between Hawaii and Mexico, thousands of kilometres away from Pacific nations. Under international law, companies cannot mine in international waters on their own. They need to be officially sponsored by a national government, which has to keep effective control over its operations.

One reason deep-sea mining companies see Pacific states as such useful partners is that these countries can access reserved areas of international seabed set aside for developing countries, as well as potential resources in the very large territorial waters around many island states.

Backers in Nauru, Tonga, the Cook Islands and Kiribati argue rising demand for manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel could deliver significant economic returns and diversify economies.

Nauru

Nauru’s enormous deposits of guano – compressed seabird excrement long sought as fertiliser – once made the country wealthy. But the guano is largely gone and the small nation has limited other resources.

Nauru sponsors Nauru Ocean Resources, a wholly owned subsidiary of seabed mining company The Metals Company. In 2011, the company received an International Seabed Authority contract permitting exploration of polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, more than 8,000km from Nauru.

Nauru has since “proudly taken a leading role” in developing international legal frameworks in mining nodules in the international seabed.

In June, Nauru signalled Nauru Ocean Resources would apply for an exploitation license.

Tonga

Tonga’s government is similarly backing deep-sea mining by partnering with The Metals Company to explore mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

In August 2025, Tonga signed an updated agreement with Tonga Offshore Mining, a subsidiary of The Metals Company. The agreement was originally signed in 2021 amid large-scale criticism over the lack of public consultation.

The mining company has promised new benefits, ranging from financial benefits, scholarships and community programs. Even so, the revised deal has encountered opposition from civil society, young people and legal experts. Prominent Tongans remain unconvinced, citing environmental, legal and transparency risks.

Economic pressure is part of the picture. Tonga owes an estimated A$180 million to China’s Exim Bank – roughly a quarter of its annual GDP.

Cook Islands

The 15 Cook Islands are widely scattered, giving the government exclusive rights to almost two million square kilometres of ocean. The government has issued exploration licences inside its Exclusive Economic Zone to three companies – Cook Islands Consortium, CIIC Seabed Resources Limited, and Moana Minerals. The Cook Islands government has established a domestic regulatory framework and is building research capacity.

Kiribati

Kiribati’s atolls and island are even more dispersed. The nation’s exclusive economic zone covers about 3.4 million km². The state-owned Marawa Research and Exploration company holds a 15-year exploration contract with the seabed authority. Kiribati has opened talks with China to explore potential collaboration.

The Pacific split

While revenues could potentially be sizeable for the Pacific, costs, technologies and environmental liabilities are highly uncertain.

The experience of Papua New Guinea is a cautionary tale. In 2019, the PNG deep-sea mining venture Solwara-1 went into administration following intense community pushback. The fallout cost the government an estimated $184 million. The PNG government now opposes deep-sea mining in its territorial waters.

While deep-sea mining now has clear backers, other nations are far more wary.

In 2022, Palau launched an alliance calling for a moratorium on mining in international waters. Early signatories included Fiji, American Samoa and the Federated States of Micronesia. Since then, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands have joined, as well as dozens of other countries. PNG has not yet joined.

Opposition from these Pacific states is based on the precautionary principle, which favours caution when knowledge is limited and damage is possible.

Pacific youth are among the most prominent opponents of deep-sea mining. The regional Pacific Blue Line coalition uniting civil society, faith groups, women’s organisations and youth networks has consistently called for a complete ban in the region. Young people have spoke out publicly in nations such as Tonga, where youth advocates criticised limited consultation and rallied against the plans, as well as the Cook Islands, where young people have demanded transparency.

Reputation under a cloud?

Pacific leaders have built a worldwide reputation for their principled climate diplomacy, from championing the 1.5°C goal to the major new advisory opinion on climate change issued by the world’s top court in response to a case instigated by students from the University of the South Pacific.

If some Pacific leaders open the door fully to deep-sea mining, it risks undermining the region’s united front on environmental issues and threatens its credibility.

The way this plays out will shape how the world hears the Pacific on climate and the oceans in the years ahead.

Kolaia Raisele, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, La Trobe University and Aidan Craney, Research Fellow, Anthropology and Development Studies, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.