Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a bleak future for global deforestation, the Wagner Group chief’s flight to Belarus, and an environmental lawsuit against a French energy giant over projects in Uganda.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a bleak future for global deforestation, the Wagner Group chief’s flight to Belarus, and an environmental lawsuit against a French energy giant over projects in Uganda.
Almost 10.2 million acres of primary rainforest around the world were lost in 2022, according to a report published Tuesday by the World Resources Institute in conjunction with the University of Maryland. That’s 10 percent more deforestation than occurred in 2021 and the equivalent of losing 11 soccer fields of trees every minute. The destruction of more than 10 million acres of forest produced 2.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide—or around the same amount as India’s total annual fossil fuel emissions.
What makes the report’s findings particularly devastating is that 2022 was supposed to be the “turning-point year” in global reforestation efforts, said Laura González Mantecón, a climate adaptation and reforestation fellow at the U.S. Forest Service. In late 2021, 145 nations pledged to reverse deforestation by 2030 at the U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, known as COP26. But international efforts to achieve that goal are already facing monumental challenges.
One of the greatest hurdles to achieving zero deforestation is the lack of financial liberties available to local communities. Lack of economic opportunity “leaves a lot of people with no other recourse but to clear land, to have a farm and be able to feed their family,” González Mantecón said, allowing large corporations to take advantage.
That is evident in the nations with the highest levels of deforestation last year—Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, respectively; they also have high levels of poverty and financial instability. In Brazil, home to 47 percent of the world’s total rainforest, cattle grazing and highway construction caused most large-scale clearing. And Indigenous communities in Congo, facing severe poverty, have been forced to clear land to expand their agriculture businesses as a primary means of subsistence.
These countries’ governments have also contributed to the world’s deforestation crisis, the report found. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro used his four years in power to erode environmental protections and weaken the rights of Indigenous communities reliant on the land. Despite a $500 million agreement at COP26 to protect the African nation’s forests, the Congolese government auctioned off permits for oil and gas exploration in these very forests last November.
There is hope. Numerous countries have implemented policies to protect forests and limit the release of carbon dioxide. Last month, the European Union adopted regulations on palm oil, cattle, wood, coffee, cocoa, rubber, and soy—all of which contribute to large-scale clearings. In April, China announced a new collaborative effort with Brazil to control illegal trade caused by cutting trees. And under Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, deforestation in the country’s rainforest fell almost 10 percent in May.
“The value of a tree is not just the value of the timber that you’re selling, but the value of the biodiversity that it provides, the value of water filtration services that it does, the climate benefits that it brings,” González Mantecón said.
Prigozhin’s exile in motion. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group, arrived in Belarus on Tuesday after an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to exchange exile for his immunity. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Putin, negotiated the deal on Saturday. Russian authorities also dropped a criminal investigation into Prigozhin’s attempted coup—although the Wagner Group leader denies that was his goal.
Alongside reports of Prigozhin’s flight into Belarus, the United Nations published a report on Tuesday that indicates Russian forces summarily executed 77 Ukrainians who were arbitrarily detained during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In total, the U.N. has documented 864 cases of arbitrary detention by Russia since the war began in February 2022. The Kremlin denies committing atrocities against or targeting civilians in Ukraine.
French energy giant under fire. Ugandan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are going after a heavyweight investor in the country. On Tuesday, five French and Ugandan NGOs, along with more than two dozen civilians, launched legal action against French energy giant TotalEnergies. The case seeks compensation for environmental damage caused by the Tilenga oil drilling project and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
According to the lawsuit, more than 118,000 people in Uganda and Tanzania faced total or partial expropriation due to the two projects—leading to “serious food shortages” and disregard for the local populations’ land rights. Environmentalists say the multibillion-dollar projects also threaten Lake Victoria’s freshwater and damage the park surrounding Murchison Falls.
Pakistan’s military crackdown. Pakistan’s military fired three senior Army commanders for their insufficient handling of violent protests in support of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan following his arrest in May. Fifteen other top officers were also disciplined after the military accused them of failing to secure military installations from protesters attacking them.
Khan was removed from office last April with a no-confidence vote and arrested this year on corruption charges. The former prime minister has accused the military of orchestrating his removal. Now, Khan could face a military trial, where the threshold for evidence is murky and transparency is virtually nonexistent, journalist Betsy Joles wrote in Foreign Policy
Talk about leaving your mark on history. Italy’s culture minister called for a nationwide search on Monday to identify a man caught on video carving his and his fiancée’s names into the Colosseum in Rome. That’s right: While visiting the largest amphitheater ever built, tourists can now find “Ivan+Haley 23” etched into the structure. If convicted, the man could face a fine of at least $16,360 or up to five years in prison.
